INDUSTRIAL ZONE - EPISODE 4  
Written by Iron-K

Amy looked worriedly through the specks of rain on the car window as they drew into the parking lot, and she looked around the front of the building for the main doors to the studio as her boyfriend searched for a space.

"You don't think we're too late, do you?" she asked nervously, keeping her eyes on the entrance. Unseen to her, he shook his head, bringing the car to a stop. Amy leapt out of the vehicle before he had even turned the engine off, and started heading right for the doors.

"Calm down, it's only a few minutes past..." Amy's boyfriend, a rabbitmorph named Dexter, leapt out of the driver's side and turned to lock the car, then dashed across the parking lot to catch up with the white-furred mousegirl as she reached the main entrance.

The receptionist, a blonde vixen wearing spectacles, looked up as the two of them hurried in.

"Hi, I was meant to be here for the start of Industrial Zone about ten minutes ago - we got lost on the way, and my phone was out of batteries, and..." she burst out breathlessly. She had to stop to catch her breath, and the receptionist interrupted her.

"Don't worry - Amy, isn't it? We've been looking for you. If you head towards the elevator on the left..."

"Hey!" A call from a corridor to the right made the three of them turn around. Immediately, Amy recognized Alex, the tall and muscular red wolf that hosted the show, dashing towards them with characteristic enthusiasm. He slowed as he reached the desk, and stuck out his hand in front of him.

"You must be Amy," he grinned as she shook his hand. "Glad you got here."

"Me too," she answered, relieved that she hadn't missed her chance. She looked over at the elevator that the receptionist had pointed out.

"I know it's all a bit sudden, but we'd better get going," Alex continued, "the others are waiting."

"Okay." Amy stepped forward towards her boyfriend, giving him a hug. He placed his hands on her curvy hips in response, stroking her lightly through her jeans.

"I hope you don't mind me borrowing your girlfriend for a couple of hours?" Alex asked Dexter.

The rabbit laughed, looking over Amy's shoulder towards him. "Don't worry, I've got something to do."

The hug broke off, and Dexter slid his hands down to join with Amy's. She looked down at them and smiled - he had one white hand and one that was tan like the rest of his fur, and she always found it comforting to look at this unusual feature of him.

"Good luck in there," he said. She leaned forward to kiss him, grinned widely, then turned back to walk towards Alex. He put his hand on her shoulder and gently nudged her into the lift, turning to press one of the floor buttons.

"Don't go easy on her!" her boyfriend called after them. Amy turned around and stuck her tongue out at him playfully, then blew him a kiss as he turned away, giving her a final wave.

The doors closed and the lift began to move. Amy looked up at Alex, secretly feeling a little awkward.

"Thanks for waiting for me," she managed.

The presenter chuckled. "That's not a problem - we were beginning to get worried, though. If we'd waited much longer I would have got Sira on the reception desk to come down and take part - I've been wanting to get her for a while." Amy laughed, but it sounded as if he was only half joking.

She hadn't expected to meet the host so soon, and was struggling to find anything to say. Alex noticed this and made conversation himself.

"So you've been looking forward to this?"

"Oh, definitely." She tried to relax and forget about the panic of the last half-hour. "I applied to come on at the end of the first series, but I didn't think I'd be picked."

Alex chuckled as the lift came to a halt. "That's what everyone says - but it's got to be someone, and you were one of the lucky ones this time!"

The doors opened, and they walked down the corridor together. Amy couldn't take her eyes off the large IZ logo on the wall as they passed it - this entire floor of the studio was the Industrial Zone set.

She looked back and saw that Alex had stopped at a door. The word "Welcome" was stencilled in faded-looking yellow paint across it, and it was bordered by black and yellow danger stripes - the industrial theme started even outside the set.

"I know it's difficult being the last one in, meeting all three other team members at the same time," he said to her as she hurried over. She heard excited chattering coming from the other side of the door. "But I've been talking to them already - it seems like you've got a great bunch of team-mates. Ready for this?"

"Yeah." Amy nodded, and Alex smiled back at her as he pushed the door open.

"I've found our fourth team member!" Alex called into the room as he held the door, and Amy followed him in shyly as three other girls' faces smiled up at her. "This is Amy, everyone," he continued, and Amy nodded to acknowledge their greetings while glancing round at them - a slim rabbit-girl with golden yellow fur and red hair tied back in a ponytail, an attractively curvy skunkette, and a young honey-coloured ground squirrel sitting opposite them. All three of the others were already changed - the bunny girl and the skunkette were wearing the show's black and yellow bikini outfit, while the squirrel had gone for the less revealing shorts and T-shirt.

Alex turned to speak with Amy. "I'm just going to run through and make sure the last couple of things are ready - if you get changed just now, we'll get you all introduced afterwards, OK?" He gave a reassuring smile, then dashed through the door on the far side of the room, leaving the four of them alone. Still slightly uncomfortable, Amy looked at the door to the changing rooms, and started towards it. Suddenly the squirrel looked up, brushing a strand of her chin-length blonde hair out of her face.

"What are you going to be wearing?" she asked her as Amy put her hand on the swinging door. She paused a moment, looking at the bikinis worn by the other two girls.

"Swimwear, definitely," she answered.

"In that case, I'm coming in with you - I don't want to be the only one in all this!" She gestured down at her clothing, then sprang up from the bench and started towards her.

"You don't have to -" Amy began.

"It's OK. I'm Coco, by the way." She was about a head shorter than Amy, and had to look up to speak to her, but Amy could see she was practically jumping with excitement.

Amy nodded, answered with her own name and turned to push the door open, hearing her shoes click against the tiled floor as she stepped forwards. The changing room was similar to that of a swimming pool, with a row of changing cubicles taking up one wall and showers at the back.

She held the door as Coco scampered in behind her, heading towards the rack of show outfits on the opposite side and already pulling her T-shirt off over her head to reveal the yellow bikini she was wearing underneath.

Amy reached around her to take a similar set of black swimwear off the rack as the squirrel stepped out of her shorts, wiggling her hips to straighten out her little tail. Turning away, Amy headed over to one of the cubicles. Closing it behind her, she began quickly taking off her clothing as Coco called through the door to her.

"So what made you want to come on?" she asked as Amy wriggled out of her shirt.

"My boyfriend and I both applied after the first series ended," Amy answered her as she unclipped her bra, sliding it off her arms and replacing it with the bikini top. "But I was the only one who got a reply."

"Shame," Coco answered. Amy heard the sound of her pacing up and down in front of the cubicle. "That would have been great, having a couple on the same episode!"

"Well, he's going to enjoy watching me getting messy anyway. I think that was reward enough for him." Sliding the bikini bottoms into place, Amy reached around to slide her long, thin tail through them before pulling them up fully. Even though she felt slightly uncomfortable having a conversation through the cubicle wall with someone she didn't know while getting changed, she could understand the squirrel girl's excitement - she herself had been wanting to appear on the show ever since she first saw it when she was eighteen.

As she checked her bikini in the thin mirror on the side of the cubicle, she paused. Eighteen was meant to be the minimum age for being on the programme because of the possibility of losing clothing during the games - though that was always up to the contestants themselves - and Coco looked a lot younger than the rest of the contestants.

Flicking the lock on the cubicle aside, she bundled up the clothes she'd come in with and stepped out again, walking across the room to the lockers and placing them inside one of them.

"You look great!" Coco enthused, looking her up and down.

"Sorry, but... how old are you?" Amy asked, and shuddered as she realized how awkward the question sounded.

The short squirrel didn't seem to mind the question, and just giggled. "Don't worry, the others asked as well. I'm just eighteen today."

"Oh." Amy nodded. "Happy birthday," she remembered, still embarrassed at having asked.

"It should be - I'm getting to play on IZ, after all!"

Amy smiled at the squirrel's enthusiasm, then looked down at her outfit one last time.

"Coming?" Coco asked, and turned to leave the changing room. Amy followed her as she bounced back into the seating area, seeing that Alex hadn't returned yet.

"How do I look?" she asked, putting one hand on her hip and the other behind her chin-length blonde hair. The others smiled and nodded appreciatively, and she turned back to Amy again.

"Amy, this is Sadie," she said as she stretched her arm out towards the skunk girl, "and Tamara."

Amy nodded to greet them both. Sadie had a curvaceous figure and was grey-black all over, apart from a wide pair of white stripes along her tail and a tuft of slightly lighter fur above her chest. Her hair was a darker shade, almost black, and came down untidily to her shoulders. She kept on having to brush it out of her face with a hand - it was obvious she wasn't used to wearing it loose. The rabbit girl next to her was slim and sporty by comparison - her short fur was golden yellow becoming a little whiter over her chest and tummy, and she wore a confident eager grin as she looked back at her. Her bright red hair was tied back in a tight ponytail.

Coco went back to where she had been sitting, and Amy sat down beside her. "I can't believe we're about to be on IZ!" the squirrel repeated excitedly, shaking her head.

"I know, I've been wanting to do this since I was a kid," the bunny opposite her joined in, leaning back and stretching in the seat. Amy smiled quietly - she was definitely in like-minded company.

She looked over to the team member who hadn't spoken yet as the other two talked about why they applied to be on the show. Sadie seemed quiet and reserved, but was leaning forward with her elbows on her lap and listening to every word the others were saying, smiling as they mentioned the older shows that they used to watch.

"Remember that game where one of them was locked in a gunge tank and the other team-mate had to shoot that foam cannon at the targets around them to stop it from going off?" Tamara asked. The others all nodded - that had been one of Amy's favorites as well.

"I always wanted to be the one in there, they used to get absolutely covered!" she continued. "I did apply to go on, but the show finished the next year."

"So you never got your chance?" Sadie finally said, a soft smile on her face.

"Well, we used to do a couple of messy charity events with my swimming club, but they were never as good as anything I'd seen on TV," the bunny said back to her. A thought seemed to strike her, and she leaned forward, grinning widely.

"Think we'll get the Sludgecube?" she asked, looking round at the three of them. Amy noticed the other two girls flinch, and she shuddered a little herself - she had been hoping that they would avoid that particular room.

At that moment, the door opened again and they all turned their heads to watch as Alex entered the room again. He was now dressed in his usual outfit for the show - a pair of bright yellow drawstring trousers that matched the colour of the contestants' swimwear.

"Miss me?" he smiled, turning to close the door and drawing up a chair so that he was in the middle of the four of them. "Have you had time to talk to everyone a bit, Amy?"

"Yes, it's fine." She nodded, quietly eager to get going.

"All right - I think you all know the basic idea of what's going to happen over the next couple of hours." The red-furred wolf twisted in his seat to get a floor map out of his pocket, unfolded it and spread it out over the low table in the center of the room. The girls all leaned forward in their seats to get a closer look at it - Amy recognised the shape from the wireframe model that was displayed between games during the show, and she looked around the map to see a couple of familiar rooms marked off. "We'll be visiting sixteen of the game rooms around the set. They're already set up for us, so the games you'll be in are fixed but the order of them isn't - the team leader will get to decide that."

"The back story of the show... you've all seen it before, haven't you?" He looked around to see four nodding heads. "Then you'll all know - the idea is that we're going round a complex controlled by a self-aware computer that's setting up the obstacles for us, with the aim of collecting enough points to have the time to shut it off at the end. One of the production people upstairs does the voice for him - he'll only actually appear in a couple of games, but you'll definitely remember it!"

"It might look as if he and I are making things up as we go along for most of the time - we try to keep it as little like a normal TV show as possible as far as cuts and re-takes go," he continued. "Most of the cameras you'll see are going to be remote-controlled ones on the walls and ceiling, though there are also a couple of camera operators that will follow us round. You might see them occasionally - just try to ignore them and pretend they aren't there." He looked around at the four of them. "In fact, I say this to all teams before they start - you'll probably forget you're being filmed at all after the first couple of games. Do you believe me?"

"No," Sadie spoke up, shaking her head as a nervous smile spread across her face. Alex chuckled, and reached into his pocket.

"No one does, but I promise it's true - mostly because of the main distraction during the show. This," he grinned as he produced a small bottle of thick green stuff, "is a small sample of what you're going to be getting covered in." All four of them leaned forward to get a closer look as he sloshed it around in the container, leaving a slowly dripping film on the sides, then put it down on the table. Coco immediately stretched to pick it up, and examined the bottle in fascination, tilting it from side to side as he continued.

"That stuff's made from industrial food thickener, and a bit of colouring," he explained. "It might feel a bit unpleasant, but it isn't harmful - you can get it in your eyes or mouth without it stinging or anything. The only thing to be careful of is that it's obviously slippery stuff - most of the floors on the set have rubber grips on them, so keep to them to stop yourself falling over - particularly if you've just had to climb out of a vat of the stuff." He noticed the team look at each other, the bunny girl's smile getting even wider. "And you'll experience that at least once!"

"Just remember," he said, leaning in closer suddenly, "we want you to enjoy yourselves, even though we're going to get the chance to... pick on you a bit during the games. Remember that no matter what my script says when we're in there, we can always interrupt a game if you're seriously uncomfortable with anything. We've never had to do it yet, but just shout for me if you want us to stop."

The four of them nodded, and he leaned back in the chair again. "Didn't mean to scare you with that... and I think that's everything I have to explain. All we need to do now is choose a team leader."

"Tamara?" Coco asked, pointing at her. The others nodded - she seemed like the obvious choice to them all. The bunny girl leaned back, thinking.

"I would," said Tamara, "but that would mean I wouldn't get to do the swimming bit in the final, wouldn't it?"

"That's true," Alex nodded.

"And I think I'd be good at that," she added. "Anyone else? Coco, Sadie? Amy?"

Amy watched the other two shrink back a little in their seats shyly. She hadn't thought of asking to be the team leader before, but she didn't mind what it involved - picking team members to go into each game, and having a less active role in the final.

"I'll do it," she spoke up. Tamara excitedly clapped her hands together.

"Okay, then I think that's everything! The show starts as soon as we're through that door." He pointed over his shoulder. "All ready?"

"Yeah!" Tamara sprang up from her seat, the others getting up as well. Alex spun around and headed for the door, the girls clustering excitedly around him.

"Have fun, everyone," he said as he pushed open the double doors to the entrance, holding it for the four of them to get through.

Amy blinked as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The room they had entered was large, circular and metallic, with pipes running along the walls and the ceiling supported by girders. Four corridors stretched off this hub, and opposite the team, a large metal door dominated the back wall.

"Welcome to the Industrial Zone!" Alex said as he turned on his heel to face the team. "Through the door behind me is the computer that you're trying to beat, but to get time in there you're going to have to earn it in the games set up around the complex. Team leader?"

"Yes." Amy stepped forward from the group nervously, still very aware that she was being filmed.

"We've got a choice of four areas to start off with, so where do you want to take us first -" he counted them off on his fingers - "the orbital base, security station, chemical plant or the factory?"

Amy tapped her bare feet on the cold floor, deciding briefly which one to pick as she thought of the usual games in each of them. "The... chemical plant," she said.

"All right, follow me!" Alex turned around again and took off at his usual rapid pace, pointing down the corridor as he dashed towards its entrance. The team ran to keep up with him, eventually passing under a doorway labelled with the building's name, surrounded by special effect smoke. The host was waiting for them on the other side.

"We're here! And it's nearly time for your first IZ experience." Alex crouched down so his face was level with Amy's. "But who's going to be the one to try it?" he asked, looking past her towards the team.

Amy turned around and looked at the other three girls. Sadie stood towards the back of the group, looking a little nervous, but the other two looked very eager to be picked.

"Tamara," she decided. The bunny girl flashed her wide grin.

"All right, are you ready for this?" Straightening up, he offered his hand and she took it, leisurely walking up to his side.

"Yeah," she answered, and nodded, making her long ponytail bob behind her.

Alex took off at a run again without warning, and Tamara stumbled to keep up. After a few paces of running, he turned around, making the others nearly crash into the two of them, and he guided her back towards a door they had just passed.

"Now, normally we try and give teams a gentle start, but as this is the last chance of the series, I think we'll just jump right in," he commented as he effortlessly keyed a long combination into the keypad next to the door with his free hand. "Literally, in your case." The door hummed open and he pulled her gently inside.

The other three girls crowded in behind them as the door closed itself, and Amy grinned as she looked around the room, recognizing it immediately. A large valve wheel dominated the back wall, and in front of it was a round vat, about three metres across with its sides at neck height. Stairs led up around the vat to a higher level at the back of the room. Standing on her tiptoes a little, Amy peered over the edge of the vat and saw a lumpy bright green surface inside.

Tamara grinned back at her team mates as Alex led her up the stairs and around to the edge of the vat, giving her a gentle pat on the back as she curled her toes around the rim, her hands clasped behind her. She looked fixedly down at the gooey surface, then around to the wheel as Alex descended the shallow stairs.

"We're starting off with something quite complex here," Alex explained to them as he rejoined the group. "Basically, your objective is to turn that wheel as far round as you can - you'll get points for how much you've moved it at the end of the time limit." Amy looked up at it again and noticed crude graduations painted on to the wall, going around the circle up to sixty.

"But the trouble is that it's locked in place at the moment, and the keys that allow it to move are up there." He pointed upwards, and all four of them looked up to a rack of buckets suspended from the ceiling, placed about six feet above the surface of the vat.

Amy looked back at where Alex had been, but he had moved - she turned around and saw him coming back from the side wall with a bundle of poles in his hand, like the kind that were used to open high windows.

"And to help you retrieve them, we're going to use a tool that's survived even here - the pointy stick," he smiled, handing one out to each of them. Amy held it up to test its weight, using her other arm to keep it steady.

"So your task is to overturn as many of those buckets as possible - there are six keys in there somewhere. And Tamara's going to be in the slime vat retrieving them - once she puts a key in the panel behind her, you'll be able to move the wheel, and for every turn you make, you'll get ten points." Alex mimed catching his breath after the long explanation. "Got that?"

The three of them nodded, giggling with excitement.

"Tamara, we'll have two and a half minutes from the moment you jump in." Alex stepped to the side of the room, pointing to a large timer above the door. He leaned back against the wall and nodded at the bunny as she drummed her toes on the tank's rim, grinning. Slowly, she leaned forward and jumped off the edge, yelping as she squelched down into the ooze below.

Amy and the others dashed forward and took a side of the vat each, trying to knock over the basins above as Tamara shuffled about in the vat, a slowly-closing furrow being left behind her as she wriggled through it. Skimming her hands on the tummy-deep slimy surface, she kept her eyes on the buckets above her as the other team members attempted to dislodge them.

Amy, surprised at how heavy the buckets were to turn over, heaved upwards and eventually managed to push one so that it tipped. Tamara stood underneath it, her hands held out to catch anything coming out of it. As it fell over, a wave of green slime poured out, hitting the surprised bunny in the face just before she turned away.

Amy put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh as the bunny shook her head, sending drops of dark green stuff spattering down into the vat, her face and chest stained with its colour. She blinked her eyes open and realised she had caught a plastic white key along with the gunge, and struggled back through the gooey liquid to put it in the slot behind her.

Sadie and Coco tipped the basins that they had been trying just after she turned away, sending more slime down into the vat with a thick glooping noise, but Amy didn't see anything else come down with them. Instead, she moved on to another bucket, poking at it wildly in an attempt to empty it more quickly.

Tamara turned back from the key panel and glanced around at the rack, watching for the next downpour to come towards her. She lunged towards Sadie's side as she knocked a bucket over, but stopped as she didn't see a key.

"You've got about a minute and a half left," called Alex as Coco strained upwards, tipping another bucket down. Tamara turned around and dived at it as another plastic key fell into the vat, and she scooped it out of the ooze just before it glooped beneath the surface.

Amy, concentrating on another bucket, finally got hers to tip over, and watched as the contents poured right on to Tamara's back as she straightened up. She squealed as the green gunge slapped against her, splattering outwards messily as it hit her back, and wriggled to the side to avoid the last drizzle. Stumbling quickly back to the edge, she deposited another key.

"Remember you're going to have to get that wheel turned!" Alex called to them, pointing at the back wall. The three girls outside the vat looked at each other. Amy quickly put her pole down and dashed up the stairs towards the wheel.

Hearing more splashing noises as another couple of buckets were emptied into the vat, she grinned to herself as she gripped the large valve, still hardly believing she was actually on the show. Tugging on it, it gave way a lot more easily than she had thought, and she guided it around to the twenty-point mark, feeling it click into place.

Turning around to go back, she saw the messy rabbit girl holding up yet another key, and put her hand back on the wheel as she waited for her to get back again. As she waded back towards the panel, another white key dropped out of a bucket that Coco had overturned, splatting on to the surface and then slowly sinking.

"Another one!" "Get the key!" Sadie and Coco tried to call above each other to Tamara at the same time, and she turned back to them as she placed the third key in the slot. She pulled her hand out of the gunk and cupped it to her ear as they shouted again, and waded slowly back, pointing at where they were trying to signal her to go.

"Thirty seconds!" Alex called. Amy looked at the timer again as it ticked past half a minute.

Amy watched as Tamara felt around where the key had been for a moment, the other two trying to look between the buckets, watching the bunny anxiously and glancing over their shoulders as the timer counted down towards zero. Suddenly she seemed to find something, and straightened up - then, sucking in her breath, dipped below the surface completely.

After a moment, she burst into view again, dripping thick dollops of green slime from all over her body. Laughing, she held the slippery key up in the air, gunge oozing and trickling down through her fur.

"Ten seconds!" Alex warned, and she jumped around, struggling quickly through the vat and using her hand to scoop gunge out of the way as she moved, Sadie and Coco cheering her on. Amy suddenly realized she hadn't turned the wheel, and put her hands on it again as she stuffed the key into the panel. Hauling it past the thirty point mark, she jumped as a loud hooter blared, then quickly stepped forward again to lock it into place at forty. Breathing out, she turned back to face the room, watching the thin green drips and trickles spatter down into the vat.

"I'll give you that," Alex smiled as he moved from his place, sauntering up the staircase towards her. "Forty points for the first game, everyone! That's not bad at all."

He turned towards the bunny in the gunge vat, and crouched down at the edge to speak to her. Blinking, she grinned back up at him - her entire body was covered in a lumpy light green layer which slowly dripped from her fur as she leaned on the side of the tank. Her tight ponytail hung behind her, heavy with gunge and trailing in the vat. "How do you feel, Tamara?"

"Just great," she answered, shivering at the feeling as lumps of the stuff rolled down her.

"You should do - you did very well." Alex straightened up again, taking Tamara's slippery hands and hauling her out of the pool with some difficulty. There was a sucking noise as her feet glooped out of it, and he gently deposited her back on the floor.

Amy looked on, fascinated with the look of it and imagined how the bunny felt underneath it all. She shivered as she remembered that she might be getting equally covered later on.

"So Amy, who's next?" The host turned to her as Sadie and Coco scampered up the stairs to join the group. Tamara got up and wandered  to the edge of the vat again, then dipped her toe back in with a smile.

"Um..." Amy looked between the other two clean girls. The skunkette was looking a little more relaxed now, if slightly out of breath. "Sadie, do you want to?" she asked.

Alex turned towards her as she nodded, and held out a hand to encourage her. As she accepted it, he walked past her down the stairs, turning her round, and took off at a run when they reached the door of the room. The others dashed to catch up, Tamara trailing behind a little as she wiped the gunge from her head and face.

Sliding to a halt, Alex hung on to Sadie as she stumbled, and guided her to face a heavy door set into the wall. It had a barred window in it, and sections of the walls around it were also barred so that the team could see the gloomy interior.

The chamber wasn't much more than six feet square, and the only feature was a black swivel chair illuminated by a white spotlight in the ceiling. Walking forward and peering up through the bars, Amy grinned as she saw there had been no effort made to hide the large cylinder of yellow gel-like stuff suspended above the seat, a cone-shaped nozzle directed down towards it.

"We call this the Questioning Room, Sadie," Alex commented, and she turned back to him. "It's a pretty simple game, but I'll have to warn you that it involves a direct conversation with that computer you're trying to beat."

The skunkette squirmed a little, looking down at her feet. "Okay," she said, suddenly facing back up at him and nodding.

"He's going to ask you ten questions, and if you don't get enough right... well, you'll find out. I'm not sure what the limit is, but as it's the first round I've tried to get him not to be too harsh."

Leaning forwards, he began keying in a combination on the panel next to the door. "As we're starting in the chemical plant, you're going to be quizzed on chemistry - are you any good at it?"

Sadie laughed a little. "It's my major in college," she answered.

With a buzz, the lock clicked open. Alex put his hand on the doorhandle, and returned the smile as he swung it open.

"In that case, I think that we're about to get a very disappointed computer," he chuckled as he nudged her inside. Amy heard her gasp as she saw the canister above the seat for the first time, and looked to her sides as Tamara and Coco clustered around to watch. The short squirrel gripped the bars and pressed her face up against them to see.

Sadie padded around to the front of the chair, her eyes fixed on the gunge reservoir above her as she turned around and eased herself into the swivel chair, tapping her fingers and looking around to see if something would happen.

Suddenly, a loud bass tone played from unseen speakers, and a screen gradually faded in in front of her to show the red polygonal skull-like face that represented the computer. It just stared at her for a while, floating gently on the screen.

"Hi," she said quietly, lifting a hand off the seat and waving it slightly. Coco burst out in giggles, covering her nose and mouth with one hand to stifle herself.

"You need seven out of ten to pass." All four of them jumped at the booming electronic voice, which continued immediately to ask Sadie her first question. "What is the chemical symbol for iron?"

"F - e". The skunkette seemed surprisingly unintimidated by the giant face, and answered confidently, staring right back at it.

Amy listened as the questioning continued. Sadie seemed able to answer them all, with only a couple causing her to pause slightly. Eventually, the face vanished from the screen, and was replaced with a large figure zero.

Sadie tapped her fingers on the arm of the seat, waiting for something to happen. Slowly, the number on the screen began counting upwards, indicating the amount of questions that Sadie had got right. She leaned forward as it paused on five. Suddenly it changed to six and stopped again. The rest of the team looked up at the tank worriedly, only for it to click on to seven, then continue to eventually reach ten.

Amy looked sideways at Tamara and Coco, who were looking as shocked as she felt. Suddenly the bunny girl whooped and clapped her hands for Sadie, who was smiling at them relaxedly from inside the chamber.

"You're all right! Come out of there, Sadie..." the host called above the cheering, stepping forward to open the door again and showing her out with his hand. She hopped down from the chair, obviously pleased with herself, and walked confidently out into the corridor again to be greeted by her cheering teammates. The squirrel girl skipped forward to hug her ecstatically as she came through the door.

"Ten out of ten right - that's amazing, and earns you a full sixty points for the game," Alex said, closing the chamber's door behind her. "If you can keep this kind of performance up then you're not going to have any trouble at all. Amy, who's going to earn your team the next sixty?"

Amy turned to Coco, but she spoke before she could nominate her.

"I think Amy should have a go next!" she smiled.

Amy turned around to see nods and grins from the other two girls, and her shocked expression became a nervous smile as Alex stepped forwards to take her hand. She thought of the image of Tamara crawling out of the vat again - this time it was going to be her.

"It's only fair, Amy! Now, as you're the team leader, we've got something special for you lined up..." he started. Amy bit her lip, rocking back and forward on her heels as he looked around the corridor, eventually pointing to a door and starting towards it. The others gathered round as he keyed a combination into the panel beside the entrance, and as it hummed aside, he gently pushed her in ahead of him.

Amy stepped into the room, giggling a little as she saw its contents. The only feature was a six-foot-high cubicle with a metal frame and perspex walls. A chair was fixed to the floor in the centre of the tank, and directly above it, a large pipe led into the low ceiling.

She heard the others laugh to themselves as she was led towards the gunge tank, and looked it up and down as the host leaned down to slide the front door upwards for her. With another encouraging push on her back from Alex, she ducked inside and sat down, looking up at the dark opening above her. She had always wondered what a gunge tank would look like from the inside, and it was close to what she had been expecting - she could see the pipe opening was covered by a dark circle held in place by a small catch. Swishing her tail nervously as the door was slid down into place, trapping her inside, she watched the others gather round eagerly.

"As your team leader, Amy's going to be sending you three to very messy fates over the next hour, so I wanted you to give her a taste of it before we got too far in," Alex began, reaching in to his pocket and producing three small devices. He held up one of them and showed it round to the girls as he continued. "Pressing on each of these remotes will give you twenty points for the team," - Amy craned her neck to get a better look at the device in his hand, which was a simple paddle with one button attached - "but unfortunately it'll also activate one of the three gunge tanks that Amy is sitting under at the moment. The question is - do you want to slime your helpless team leader?"

Amy smiled as the other girls cheered enthusiastically. No team had ever let their team leader get away with anything less than all three tanks.

"In that case, I'll let you decide how you're going to organize this." She watched Alex hand the controllers out, tapping her fingers nervously on the bottom of the seat and trying again to imagine what being gunged would feel like, watching the three of them huddling together to plan out the order. Eventually, they turned back to Alex.

"All ready?" The three of them nodded. "Are you ready, Amy?"

Amy let her breath out, flicking her tail again. "Yeah," she said, and looked up into the pipe that was about to cover her, picturing the catch sliding aside and the cover bursting open. She crossed her legs, tapping one foot on the floor with excitement and nerves.

"It's all yours." Alex stepped back, letting Amy's teammates cluster around the tank, their hands at the ready. She watched them carefully, squirming uneasily as she waited for something to happen. After a pause, Coco suddenly thumped on her button. Amy instinctively held her hands up to her ears as a loud hooter sounded, and closed her eyes just before a heavy wave of slime pushed her head down.

Amy leaned forwards under its weight, giving a high pitched squeak and biting her lip as she felt the cold runny custard-like liquid lap against her head and slither down her bare back, coating her in a heavy wet layer. She gasped as two trickles from the flow worked their way around her shoulders, and she hunched her neck up, shivering as she felt the stuff creep down her chest and settle in her bikini top.

Smiling as she got used to the feeling of the slippery gunge covering her, she brought her hands around to cover her nose and mouth, stifling a squeal as she felt another stream start up and slop back and forward across her shoulders. Holding her hand up to her forehead to stop it dripping into her face, she opened her eyes and blinked as she saw mixed red and yellow slime drip across her vision.

The lower parts of the once clean walls of the tank were coated in gunge, with blobs of the mixed orange stuff slowly sliding down the perspex surface. Looking down as her heavy hair fell to the front of her shoulders, she curled her toes and felt the pool of collected slime at her feet slither between them.

Bringing her hands up to her hair and flicking it back behind her head, she leaned to the side and looked up at the gunge pipe again. The catch on it had opened and was hanging down from the opening, with the colourful stuff dripping down on to her shoulder from its edges. Breathing out, she straightened again, and looked out at the front of the tank at her teammates. Tamara was standing right at the front of the tank, her thumb still hovering over her button.

As another alarm hooted, Amy barely had time to close her eyes before feeling another slimy downpour slap on to the top of her head. Yelping with surprise, she ducked down a little in the chair, but smiled as she kept her head under the downpour and imagined the gunge doming off her like she'd seen on the programme before. Carefully opening her eyes, she watched the light green stuff spatter in front of her in a bowl shape, splashing against the walls of the tank and covering them as well.

Slowly, the downpour eased off, and Amy shut her eyes as the dome came inwards, soaking first her legs, then moving back to her lap and finally subsiding to a drizzle on her head.

Amy sat still for a moment, hearing the other girls' cheers as the gooey stuff slid down her. She wiped her hands on her hips, trying to get them at least a little cleaner, then brought them up to her face to clear her eyes. Hearing the tank's door being opened as she dragged the slime off her face, she opened her eyes again to see Alex grinning into the tank at her.

"How did being gunged by your teammates feel, Amy?" he asked.

"Slippy." Amy looked down at herself to see hardly any of her white fur visible, and shuddered as the green gunge dripped from all over her. Alex extended his hand to her, and she carefully got up, shuffling her feet in the slime puddle to stop herself from falling over.

The three others giggled as she was guided back to safety, a trail of mixed colours of slime being left behind her. She shook her feet as she walked, trying to dry them off a little, and she could feel the stuff squeezing between her toes on every step. The host grabbed the door and slid it back into place, turning away from it as the last green drops continued to fall onto the seat.

"Well done, everyone - that was an easy sixty points, but Amy's in the perfect position to get her own back on you all for that later on. Just now, though, we're going to start heading out of here - there's a game that we need the whole team for. Come on!"

Beckoning over his shoulder, he took off at a run out the door and turned into the corridor. Amy brushed yet more slime off her shoulders as she jogged to keep up with everyone.

As they rounded a corner, Alex slowed, and walked the last few paces to where one wall of the passage widened out. The four team members gathered around him and looked at the back wall.

A row of four green inflatable chairs were placed against the wall, and above them was a rail stretching from one end of the row to the other. Attached to the bottom of the rail on the left hand side was a large funnel-shaped nozzle, with a wide tube leading from it to a pipe in the ceiling, and other pieces of complex-looking tubing attached around it.

"This is the Dispenser!" the host announced, looking up at the large arrangement. Amy nodded - this had been a popular game from the first series. "And for this game, you're going to need a bit of protective clothing." He walked over to a locker in the nearby wall, which squeaked noisily as he pulled it open.

The four girls looked at each other as he threw a set of faded orange overalls to each of them - protective clothing hadn't ever been a feature of the show before. Hesitantly, Amy untangled the shirt of her outfit and began sliding it on over her slippery arms.

"Don't worry about it," Alex said as he closed the door again, seeing the team's confusion. "You might be losing them during the game."

Tamara smirked as the explanation came, and put on her overalls loosely, leaving the shirt open at the front. The others struggled into their outfits, and headed towards the row of chairs as Alex held out his hand towards them.

Amy turned around and sat down, on the second seat along from the funnel between Tamara and Sadie. Looking across the room to the wall behind the host, she noticed a large screen for the first time. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the seat as she looked up at the threatening nozzle, then jumped as a humming noise started and the machine began to move.

Ducking down slightly as the gunge chute passed over each of them, the girls all watched it as it made its way from one side of the room to the other and back, then they all turned to the host as they waited for an explanation of how the game was going to be played.

"We're going to play a memory game here," Alex said, pacing a little up and down the row. "What's going to happen is a number of items are about to be shown on this screen, and you've got to try and remember as many of them as possible."

The four of them nodded, and their eyes moved to the wall-mounted screen as it turned on. Amy blinked a couple of times, rubbing one eye but keeping the other intently fixed on the monitor.

"Here it comes!" Alex stepped out the way as a random sequence of objects flashed up on the screen, being displayed for about half a second each. Amy fiddled with the collar of her overall shirt nervously as the images flashed past, trying to remember as many as possible but feeling that she was forgetting everything before each new item. As the screen turned off again, she mouthed to herself, trying to keep at least a few of the objects in her head.

"Now, I'm going to ask you each in turn to name an item that came up," Alex said as he moved in front of the screen again. "There were twenty-four of them, so you'll need to name six each. But if you say something that wasn't there or that's already been mentioned, then you've got the choice of either taking off a piece of the protective clothing you've been provided with, or..." He pointed up at the nozzle. Sadie giggled nervously as the humming noise began again, sliding back and forward over the row of girls.

"So it's a fairly generous game - you're allowed twelve mistakes before we have to move on. We're going to start with someone at random," Alex finished as the nozzle began to slow. Amy watched it intently as it passed over her, towards Tamara and back again. She squirmed a little as it positioned itself above her, and swallowed as it clicked into place.

"Amy, name something!" The host encouraged her, getting her attention again. He had produced a card from his pocket and was glancing between it and her.

"Um... there was a key." Alex had stalled for a while after the things had been shown, but Amy was still sure of her answer.

"Yes. Next, Sadie!"

Amy watched as the nozzle progressed along the other two girls to her left, who both named items correctly, and flinched again as it passed over her on its way to Tamara.

Tamara tapped her toes on the floor as she thought about what she had seen. "A bottle?" she asked.

"There was a bottle there, but what was in it?"

The rabbit paused, running her fingers through her long ponytail as she thought. "Orange juice?" she guessed, leaning forwards and resting her head on her hands.

"Sorry, it was just water.... but, because I'm a nice sort of guy," - he paused, and the girls laughed - "I'm actually going to give you the points for that one. The catch is you're still going to have to pay the forfeit..." Alex tailed off as Tamara eagerly shrugged off her shirt before he had finished the sentence, and threw it towards him. She put her hands behind her head and leaned back, looking up into the chute above her before it pulled away to reach Amy again.

Amy opened her mouth to speak. "So Amy, that's four down and twenty to go," said Alex before she had a chance. "Can you name another?"

She hesitated, looking down as she realized she'd forgotten what she was going to say, and guessing that she was going to run out of time soon. "A playing card!" she called, looking at the host again, just as a buzzer sounded.

"Just in time! I'll give you that," he smiled, and paced along with the nozzle as it reached Sadie again. "Sadie, anything you can remember?"

The skunk girl opened her mouth, her eyes darting to the sides as she thought. The buzzer sounded, and she shook her head, closing her eyes.

"It's all right, you've got plenty of chances to go..." the host encouraged her as Sadie undid the front of her overall shirt, pulling it off over her head and dropping it behind her as the nozzle moved again. Coco managed to name an item correctly, and the two girls in the middle ducked as the chute slid all the way back to the rabbit girl.

"Tamara, anything else?"

"Headphones," she said immediately.

"Yes!" Amy felt her heart beat faster as the chute clicked into position above her - Tamara had named the item that she was going to say. She closed her eyes, trying to come up with another, but her thoughts were interrupted by the harsh buzzer.

"Bad luck - you know what to do," the host said, pacing along with the nozzle as Amy struggled with the buttons on the overall. Leaning to the side, she slipped it down her arms as Sadie was questioned.

"A playing card?" Sadie asked hesitantly, looking shocked as the buzzer sounded again.

"Sorry, Amy already said that one," the host responded. Unbuttoning the front of her overall trousers, the skunk girl slipped them down her legs and tossed them towards him. Now with only her bikini left, she leaned back in the seat, tapping her fingers on the plastic arms, and watched Coco name yet another item correctly.

Alex dashed back to the other end of the row as the funnel returned to above the bunny girl. "Tamara, things are getting a bit more difficult now, and it's not easy being the last of the four - but can you remember anything else?"

The bunny stayed silent, playing with her hair as she thought. The other three watched her anxiously, hoping that she would remember something, but she shook her head as the time-out buzzer sounded.

"Well, you've still got half your overalls on, so you're now in the same position as Sadie..." Tamara began to take off the trousers of the overalls, but then hesitated, pulling them back up. Instead, her hands reached around her back and she undid the bra part of her bikini, sliding it down off her arms and winking across at the host as Coco giggled from the other end of the row. Amy looked away embarrassedly, but smiled as the bunny dropped the bikini top off the side of the chair, wriggling a little in the seat.

"Or... yes, you could do that." Alex smiled, keeping his composure as the nozzle slid back to Amy again. She sat up as she was addressed. "Amy, can you remember anything, or are you going to follow Tamara's example?"

Amy took a guess at an item, and smiled as the host told her it was correct. Tapping her fingers on the arm of the seat, she looked over at the bikini-clad skunk girl.

"Sadie, if you don't get this right, you get gunged." Alex grinned as she squirmed, looking up at the threatening funnel above her head. "No pressure..."

"A calculator." Sadie interrupted him and nodded, seemingly sure of her answer. There was a pause.

Suddenly, a click sounded from above her, and she quickly brought her hands to her face, but the nozzle simply slid aside and positioned itself above Coco. Sadie breathed out heavily, giggling as she relaxed again. But the squirrel girl got her guess wrong for the first time, and began unbuttoning her shirt as the funnel slid back to Tamara again. At the prompting from the host, she just shook her head and waited for the buzzer to sound.

"Well, you've got a choice now, Tamara," Alex said, pacing a little back towards Amy. "You've still got some overalls to forfeit, or you can declare yourself out now."

"I'm not going to give up that easily," the rabbit grinned, pulling the crumpled orange trousers down her legs. She leaned back in the seat and pulled them off the rest of the way with her feet, kicking them up to her hands and throwing them towards Alex as she watched the nozzle return to Amy.

"All right, so that's Tamara almost out of forfeits - but the good news is that we've had four rounds and you've named ten of the items correctly. You've also made only five mistakes out of the twelve you're allowed, so you're doing well. Just to help you along, you're going to see the list again - here they come!"

Amy tried to concentrate on the screen as the images flashed past, slightly faster this time, and focused on remembering a couple that she thought she hadn't heard called. She blinked as the screen turned off and the nozzle hummed into position above her head. Alex nodded at her.

"There was an alarm clock," she said, sure that she was right but holding her breath all the same. The nozzle clicked above her, and moved aside to reach Sadie, who was nervously gripping her knees and drumming her feet on the floor.

"Socks!" the skunkette called, before the host could get a word in. He paused, then simply nodded again and walked with the funnel to Coco.

Both Coco and Tamara also got their guesses right, helped by the list having been shown again. But when the nozzle came back to Amy, she named something that had already been said before, and wriggled out of the overall trousers as Sadie watched the chute come back to her.

All three other girls held their breath as the skunkette hesitated, looking up at the nozzle above her and wriggling down in the seat. "There was a... what's it called... a mortar-board!" she called suddenly, sitting upright and pointing a finger at the host.

"Yes!" He nodded, and Sadie raised both hands in the air triumphantly. "You're still hanging on... Coco, what about you?"

The squirrel shrugged, watching her feet tapping a little on the floor as she thought. Eventually, the buzzer signalled her time was up. She reached down for the button at the front of her overall trousers.

"You were doing so well at the start of the game, but now you've only got one chance left... and so does Tamara!" Alex dashed back to the beginning of the row to face her as the funnel slid into place above her head. Tamara looked up at it and breathed out heavily as she thought, her arms folded across her bare chest. "A key?" she suggested. The buzzer sounded.

"Sorry, that's already been said!" Alex looked up from the card as she glanced again at the nozzle above her. "So it looks like your time has finally come... unless..." He faltered as the bunny girl grinned, moving her hands slowly towards her hips.

The host averted his eyes, trying to seem nonchalant and smiling slightly as Tamara slid her bikini bottoms off, wriggling to get them down her legs and gently kicking them aside with her foot. She giggled and bounced in the chair eagerly, squeezing her hands between her thighs.

Alex coughed, and shook his head to clear it. "All right, let's carry on!" Amy looked up as the nozzle left the naked bunny girl and slid into position above her own seat. "Your turn, Amy."

Thinking desperately and trying to ignore the large funnel above her, Amy guessed an object and was surprised to get it right. Sadie did as well, and the nozzle clicked into position over Coco.

"Coco, you were doing so well at the start of the game - can you save yourself now?" Alex asked, pacing over to her side of the rail. She breathed out, a smile spreading across her face as she looked up and shook her head.

"No," she giggled under the sound of the loud buzzer as the other three girls leaned forward to watch. This time, it started sounding repeatedly in sharp bursts, then at the sound of a lower siren, the nozzle twitched and a column of yellow gunge dropped from it.

Coco squeaked as the slime slapped against her head, and leaned forwards so that it poured down her back, streams of it slipping around her sides as the downpour splattered out over her. A thick stripe of yellow stuff clung to the top of her hair, and slowly slid downwards to slop down into her lap. Her mouth was open in a shocked smile, her eyes tightly shut.

The gunge colour changed to orange, and the column turned into a wider fan as the flow slowed, covering the squirrel girl as she bounced from side to side in the inflatable seat. As the final drizzle poured on to the back of her neck, she looked up, placing her hands back on the messy seat's arms.

"Sorry, Coco, you're out!" The host grinned over at her as she straightened up again, shuddering as the cold gunge dripped from her hair and slithered down her light fur. "Tamara, let's get back to you..."

Another round passed as the dripping squirrel girl looked on, leaning over the side of the seat. All three of the remaining clean contestants answered correctly, and the funnel hummed back to Tamara again. After pausing and tapping her feet on the floor anxiously, she uncertainly made a guess.

"I'm sorry, that's wrong!" the host announced. A grin spread across the bunny's face. "And you've got nothing to remove now... get her covered up again!" he shouted to the nozzle, raising his voice as the repeating klaxon began to sound. Tamara closed her eyes as the siren went off, and huddled down on the seat, folding her arms across her chest.

Amy shifted left a little as a torrent of blue and green gunge slapped down onto the bunny girl, the sticky liquid splattering off her head in a dome shape and pressing her ears down as she wriggled around underneath the downpour. Specks of the stuff flew off in all directions around her, and Amy squirmed away as some of it spattered on to her right side.

As the flow began to ease off, Tamara raised her hands up to her head, lifting her ears up and flicking the gunge off them with a giggle. Shivering, she returned her hands to her lap, her arms tucked in to cover up her chest a little, and shuddered as the mixture of turquoise slime drizzled from her soaked fur.

"You made a good effort, Tamara - now, get your clothes back on," Alex smiled as he turned to Amy. "Amy, it's all up to you and Sadie now, and there are still four things left to name. Let's have one of them!"

Amy paused, realizing that she couldn't think of anything and that the nozzle was about to go off at any moment. "There was..." she started, and was interrupted by the harsh klaxon. She looked up to see the mechanism open above her, and quickly hunched down on the chair, gripping the arms of the seat tightly.

She flinched as the downpour glooped over her, flattening her ears down on to her head and splashing down to her shoulders. Lifting her arms off the seat, she moved to wipe at her face, but suddenly slid down the slippery surface of the seat. She spluttered as the gunge splashed right into her face, and turned her head to the side, closing her eyes tightly as she flailed to grab something. She could hear Tamara giggling at her struggling over the sound of the slime falling around her.

As she felt the downpour ease off, she raised her hands up to grab the seat arms again and hauled herself upright, spitting out slime to get the custardy taste out of her mouth. She had thought that she would get used to the feeling of being gunged after it happened for the first time, but the cold, heavy feeling was just as much a surprise as before.

Wiping across her face, she opened her eyes and looked down at her messy green and yellow fur, then got up to join Alex as he beckoned them to him, setting her slippery bare feet carefully down on the floor.

"You're doing very well, team. Sadie was saved from the slime thanks to Tamara's sacrifice, and you got twenty out of 24 - that brings you up to 210 points for the round!"

Amy joined in the cheer as the points were announced, looking back at Tamara, who had just finished getting back into her swimwear and was padding towards the group.

"And we still have three areas to visit - if you do as well in them as you did here then you won't have any trouble at all. Where are we going next, Amy - the security station, orbital base or the factory?"

"Orbital base", Amy chose at random, running her hand over her head and grimacing as she felt the collected slime slither down the back of her neck.

"All right - and there's a way to get you cleaned up a bit just before we get there. Follow me!"

Breaking through the group, Alex took off at a run again, leaving the four of them to catch up as he sped through the corridors. Jumping around a corner, he stopped and waited for them to gather round again.

Amy breathlessly jogged the last couple of steps, and turned to face the dimly-lit small room in front of them. It had a channel of water across its centre, a chainlink barrier stretching from the water surface to the ceiling. The small bank on the other side of the water had a small rounded door leading off it.

"It's just a matter of diving in and getting to the other side," Alex said, keeping towards the back of the group as they moved forwards. "Want to show them how it's done, team leader?"

Amy glanced back at him, then nodded and dipped a toe into the water, flinching at its cold temperature. Turning around to kneel on the water's edge, she slowly lowered herself in backwards, trying not to show her reaction to the cold as her feet touched the bottom. She waded forward in the neck-deep pool, then held her nose and ducked underneath the barrier, feeling suddenly cleaner as the slime on her head was washed off.

Breaking through the surface again, she shook her head and wiped at her eyes, then bobbed forward as she heard another splash accompanied by a squeak behind her. She glanced around to see Tamara re-emerging through the surface from where she'd jumped in, and turned back to climb up the ladder leading to the opposite bank as she approached.

Coco and Sadie were the ones left on the opposite bank, and both looked unsure as they shuffled forward to the edge. Tamara, who had climbed out of the water and was sitting on the opposite bank, clapped a little to encourage them. With a glance at each other, they held hands and then, after a moment's hesitation, jumped into the water together.

Amy laughed as the two girls shrieked at the cold of the water, letting go of each other and splashing around as they tried to get their balance again. Coco recovered first, and used her hands to push the water aside as she bobbed forwards to the grille. Putting a hand on its bottom to steady herself, she ducked underneath it, closely followed by Sadie.

As the two of them headed for the ladder, Amy looked back at Alex, the last one of them still to cross the water. Nonchalantly, he strolled around a narrow ledge surrounding the room and pushed open a small hatch in the barrier to let himself through. Tamara stuck her tongue out at him as he approached them, still clean and dry.

"Feeling a little cleaner?" he asked the group in general as he spun a valve on the round door open. Amy stepped aside as he swung it towards them.

"And a little colder!" shivered Coco, her arms hugged across her tummy.

"Don't worry - we can warm you up in here." He motioned to them to go inside, and Amy stepped around the door to follow the others. Beyond the door was a small chamber made up to look like a space vessel, with a few consoles and blinking controls surrounding them. A similar door was placed on the opposite side. The chamber was only a few feet across, and they had to squeeze together as Alex joined them, closing the door behind them.

The host reached up and pressed a button, starting a low humming noise, then turned one of the many dials to make a stream of warm air turn on and fill the chamber. Coco let go of herself as the air jet tousled her blonde hair, spinning round as much as she could in the small space to get dry.

"That's us heading up to the base now," Alex commented, "and we've got another four challenges for you up there. Like before, we're going to be needing a volunteer for the first game - who's that going to be, Amy?"

"We still have to try and get Sadie gunged," Amy replied immediately, looking in the direction of the still clean skunkette.

"Exactly what I was thinking - and I think we have just the game for you!" Alex grinned knowingly as she accepted his outstretched hand. The humming noise surrounding them stopped, and he pressed on the opposite door's handle, making it swing outwards.

Amy looked past the two of them to see a room with a large circular vat set into the centre of the floor. A seat was suspended above it, and towards the back of the room stood another cubicle with a pipe leading from its top and angling into the wall. Sadie gasped at the sight of the room, her free hand pressed to her chest nervously.

"Don't worry, we're not putting you up there," Alex reassured her, quickening his pace as the group made its way to the opposite door of the room. "There's something even better round the corner..."

Amy and the others followed the two of them as they passed through a dimly-lit corridor, and after turning a couple of corners, she grinned to herself as she saw one of the show's most famous machines in front of her - it was the Pod.

Sadie shook herself free of the host's hand and hugged his waist nervously, giggling as she was led towards the gunge machine. It was a large dark metallic sphere, about two metres across and covered in slowly pulsing lights. It was supported by three legs that protruded from near its base to the floor, and a seat was placed under its centre. Alex put his arm around Sadie's back reassuringly, and pressed her  head gently down to guide her underneath it. As she sat down, he reached up to the front of the sphere and swung down a keyboard that was attached to the front with two thin metal arms, positioning it above her lap.

"Now, I don't think any of you need the rules of this one explained to you..." he said as he turned around and walked back towards the other three girls. Amy shook her head - this game was one of the ones that had become an Industrial Zone classic, and it was also known for being very difficult to escape from clean.

"But here's what you have to do anyway - Sadie has a keyboard in front of her with six unique symbols on it and the rest in pairs. What you have to do is find the six symbols that don't match any others, and you've got ninety seconds to do it before that pod opens." He turned towards a large screen mounted on the side wall, which turned on to show a view of the keyboard from just above and in front of Sadie. She was already looking it over, her hands hovering over it.

"It looks like she's ready - go for it!" Alex clapped his hands together, then stepped back to let them gather round the screen. Sadie immediately leaned forwards to press one of the buttons, sounding a bell as the key lit up underneath her finger. Quickly, she took her hands off the keyboard and kept staring at it intently.

Amy looked at the image on the screen nervously, trying to find one symbol that stood out from the many similar ones. Coco suddenly stepped forward and pointed at one of the lower keys, looking back at the others for confirmation.

"Second from the bottom on the right hand side!" Tamara called over to Sadie. Leaning forward again, she pressed it and was rewarded with another bell sound.

"That's two already, and you've got over a minute left," commented Alex from behind them. Before he had finished speaking, the skunkette jabbed at another key and illuminated it too. 

After finding three of the buttons so quickly, there was a long pause as they all looked frantically around the board to try and spot the others. Sadie leaned over the keys a couple of times, looking as if she had found something, but sagged back each time.

"The one that looks like a backwards G, Sadie!" Tamara suddenly shouted out, hopping up and down excitedly as she waved a finger at it. "On the right hand side!" After a short pause as she looked at it, Sadie jabbed the button and brought the number they'd found to four, with just over thirty seconds on the timer.

The seconds seemed to tick away even more quickly as time went on, and Amy glanced nervously back and forth from the keyboard display to the timer. Sadie found another correct button, meaning that they only had to find one more, but they only had just over ten seconds left.

Amy shifted her weight from foot to foot as a buzzer started sounding with each second that came off the timer, and glanced at the frantically searching skunkette. Suddenly she realized that she could see the last one.

"Sadie!" she shouted above the noise, pointing at the screen and turning to her. "It's... four from the top, in the middle there!"

The other two saw it as well, and joined in encouraging Sadie as she carefully hovered her finger around the keyboard. The three of them cheered as she finally got to the right button, and pressing down on it hard, she stopped the timer with three seconds to go.

Amy let her breath out, grinning as she turned to look at the skunkette again. She looked up at them, a smile spreading across her face as she brought her hand up to brush her thick hair back behind her head. The keyboard raised out of her way, and she got up from the seat.

"Sadie, I think you have to be the luckiest contestant we've ever had on Industrial Zone... I can't believe you're still clean!" Alex put his hand on her shoulder as she rejoined the cheering group. Coco, who was jumping up and down and clapping for her, suddenly pounced forward and hugged her, making her almost lose her balance as she returned the embrace.

"So, girls - against all odds, Sadie escaped the Pod, and she's earned you all another sixty points for that. I'm going to take you all further into the base for the next game. Come on!"

He dashed down the corridor away from the machine, and the others followed him. After turning a corner, the group arrived in a brighter, circular room, lined with flashing computer bank props along its walls - it was made up to look like the bridge of the orbital base.

Its most prominent feature was the seat on a raised platform in the centre, which looked slightly like a dentist's chair with short rod-shaped handles at the ends of the arms. Above it, a cylindrical tank was mounted to the ceiling, with something that looked like a showerhead protruding down from it. Forming a semicircle at the front, a number of short metal poles stuck out from the ground, with nozzles pointing at the chair in the middle. Amy kept her eyes on it as Alex beckoned them forward.

"We're in the hub of the base now, but before we move through it, we're going to need someone to go in to that." He turned towards the seat mounted in the centre of the room, and paused for a moment to let them look at it again. "Want to volunteer someone, team leader?" he finished, bringing the team's attention back to him.

Amy, distracted by the menacing-looking chair, glanced around at the others and tried to remember who aside from Sadie had been gunged the least so far. "Coco hasn't been in a game on her own yet," she decided.

"Coco!" the host repeated, offering his hand to her as a hint of a smile crossed her face. Taking his arm, she was led up to the chair. She sat down slowly, lifting her feet carefully on to the footrest at the bottom, then rested her hands next to the two handles.

The squirrel girl fidgeted as Alex walked casually around the seat, the other three girls gathering to watch. When the host reached the other side, he leaned across to point at the chair's handles.

"You'll be in control for this game, Coco," he started. "The way to start up the machine is by pushing both of these handles forwards and keeping them held down." He demonstrated on one of them, flicking it forward with a finger and watching it click back into place as she nodded. "But of course, while it's on you'll be being sprayed with all sorts of stuff from the nozzles around you."

Amy looked at the sprayer beside her, and quietly stepped out of the way behind it.

"If you want it to stop, all you have to do is let go, but I'm going to give you a point for every second you keep the machine on. Think you can make a minute?"

"Yeah." Coco nodded, looking at the showerhead above her and wrapping her fingers around the levers.

"Then start whenever you're ready!" Alex stepped out of the way as the squirrel took a deep breath. After a moment's pause, she jerked both her hands forward to push down the handles.

Nothing happened for a moment apart from a faint gurgling sound, accompanied by a slowly rising mechanical whine. Coco hunched her shoulders up in anticipation, and suddenly the showerhead began spraying a thin greenish liquid down on to her in a wide fan shape.

She huddled her shoulders up further, biting her bottom lip and giving a high pitched squeak at the ticklish feeling, her hair and fur slowly darkening from the wetness of the translucent slimy liquid. Slowly she relaxed, only to giggle and squirm as the back of her neck was sprayed.

Amy jumped back again as she felt the pipe nearest her twitch, and watched as it began to shoot a stream of thicker gunge towards Coco. With a squeal as the green slop splurged against her chest, she tried to wriggle away from it, but it was joined a moment later by another stream from her other side. She turned her face away as the gunge played over her chest and tummy, coating her in a slippery green layer. 

Coco squirmed from side to side as a pool of gunge began to spread out from the chair, leaning forwards to look down at the handles. She slipped her slimy hands around them to keep her grip and looked up at the team, but screamed as two yellow spurts started up from the sides, splattering against her cheeks. Quickly, she leaned back in the chair again, her eyes tightly closed and her face screwed up, the slime clinging to her face and dripping slowly from her chin. She shook her head a couple of times as the yellow streams flew just past her nose.

Amy looked up as the showerhead clicked open, and the light spray from above suddenly turned into a thick red downpour which hit Coco right on top of her head and domed outwards to splatter against the floor. She jerked forwards again, trying to duck down further to avoid the yellow streams as well, and wriggled underneath the slimy flow as the red stuff mingled with the green on her fur to form a sickly brown colour. Drumming her feet on the floor rapidly as she tried to hold on, she ducked too far and the green sprays hit her face, making her hands jerk upwards and let go of the handles.

Coco coughed as the sprays shut off, drizzling over the floor as they slowly subsided along with the alarm sound. Raising her hands from the gungy levers, she shook them to dry them off and then wiped at her face, flicking her wet hair behind her head. She pursed her lips and blew out heavily to spray the slime away from her nose and mouth.

As she opened her eyes, she gasped at the sight of her completely coated body, grimacing slightly as she felt the stuff slither down inside her bikini top, but couldn't help giggling as she looked at the wide splatter mark around the seat. Still wiping at her eyes, she looked up at Alex as he came forwards again, picking his way through the puddle on the floor.

"Are you all right, Coco?" he asked with a smile, offering his hand again to help her up. Shivering as globs of slime dripped from her arms, she stretched them out and flicked her hands a couple of times to shake the slime off them. Reaching forward, she grabbed his hand and hauled herself upright again, slipping slightly as her feet touched the floor.

"Fine," she responded, breathing out heavily again. The two of them walked back over to rejoin the cheering girls.

"Well, you survived just over thirty seconds in the chair, so I'm going to round your score up to thirty-five for the game," the host said. Coco grinned and moved to hug Sadie, who squeaked and stepped back before she could touch her. "Who's going next, team leader?"

"Tamara", Amy answered immediately, pointing at the only slightly wet rabbit girl. She bounced on her feet eagerly, and stepped over to take the host's hand.

"All right - the next game isn't far away," he said, striding towards a door set into one of the four corridors stretching off the room, with Tamara skipping slightly to keep up with him. Amy and the others hurried over to duck inside after them.

Amy looked around the new room as Alex led Tamara over to the other side. The room was slightly larger than normal, but very blank - the only unusual feature was that the floor had a set of foot-high barriers scattered around it, forming a twisted path over to the far end of the room. Looking up to where the bunny girl was being led, she saw a large metallic cylinder on the opposite wall, and grinned as she stepped over the obstacles to get a closer look.

Alex was bending down to open a hatch in the side of the cylinder when they caught up with him. Amy stepped around to the front - the cylinder was blank apart from a screen attached to its front, and on it she could see a top view of a chair placed at a metal table. Peering at the table's image, she could see that two joysticks were set into it. Looking down and stepping back, she also noticed a small opening on the floor in the front of the booth, no more than about a foot square.

"Ready, Tamara?" the host asked. Amy padded around back to the rest of the group as he opened the hatch and nudged her inside. As she took her seat, Alex bent down to pick something up off the floor of the booth, and he turned around to reveal it was a small remote control buggy.

"Want to wish her good luck?" he smiled as he put his hand on the side of the hatch. The other team mates waved to her as he slid it back into place, hiding her from view. After making sure it was closed, he began to pick his way back to the room's entrance.

"Once the hatch has been secured, the only way to unlock that tank is from the inside," Alex called back to the others, beckoning them to follow him. "And Tamara's going to need the key - which is in here." Turning around, he showed the top of the buggy to Amy as she approached. It had a clear box on the top with a small card key rattling around inside it.

He turned around again, setting the vehicle on to the ground next to the room's entrance. "Now, Tamara has the controls for the vehicle in there, but she can't see what she's doing. You're going to have to guide her to get the key to her within two minutes."

Amy looked around at the route they would have to follow - there were a few awkward turns in it, but the start was mostly made up of straight sections. She looked back at the image of Tamara on the screen, who glanced up as Alex called her name.

"Are you ready, Tamara?" he asked her. She looked up to face the camera and acknowledged him with a nod and a thumbs up sign, then turned back to put her hands on the controls.

"Ready?" Alex repeated to the other three, turning around to face them. "Then go!"

"All right... go forward, Tamara," Amy said hesitantly, crouching down next to the buggy. Suddenly it sprang forwards with an electric whine, making her jump, and she watched as it slammed into the wall of a corner ahead, and kept repeatedly bouncing back and bumping into it.

"Stop!" she called over its noise. Tamara let go of the controls, and waited for more instructions. Amy glanced at the others, who seemed happy to stay quiet and let her do the guiding. "Turn left a little... slowly!" she added as it spun around in place. The bunny girl eased back on the levers, making the crazy spin turn into a more gentle turn on the spot, and Amy stopped her when she was facing the right direction.

Tamara was beginning to get the hang of being more gentle with the controls, and progress was easier as Amy gave her the directions to guide the robot along a long straight and back towards the others. Amy paced along with it as they approached a sharp corner.

"Turn around to the right... and stop," she said quickly. "Now forwards, forwards, forwards..." She shifted on her feet, knowing that they were being too slow. Sensing the same thing, Tamara pushed on both controls hard, but hit one slightly after another which made the robot curve, bump on the corner and end up scooting backwards along the track.

"No!" A chorus of warnings from the three girls made Tamara jump away from the controls, and Amy tried to sort her out again while keeping one eye on the rapidly decreasing timer.

After the three of them got her going in the right direction, Amy dashed to the chicane that the buggy was approaching and guided Tamara to manoeuvre it around the awkward section of the course. Frustratingly, she always seemed to move it just too far or too fast, making progress very slow.

"Come on, Tamara..." Amy wiped at her forehead. A loud klaxon blared in the background, and she had to raise her voice above it. "Just turn it a little to the left..." She stopped as she realized what the sound must mean, and all three of them looked at each other, then to the screen that showed what was happening inside the cylinder. Tamara slowly leaned back, taking her hands off the pair of joysticks, and squeaked as a huge downpour of white stuff slapped down on to her from the ceiling.

Amy put her hand to her mouth as the bunny girl was hidden from view, the white wave being tilted from side to side as it poured down on to her. As the stuff splattered off her head and smacked on to the floor, making a thick splat mark, she realized that she was being covered in custard pie foam. She watched as two more sprays started up from underneath the desk, making a hissing noise as the creamy gunk piled up on her chest and tummy, blobs of it breaking off and falling to the floor.

Tamara giggled and squirmed in the chair, her hands out to her front to defend herself as the main downpour sputtered and eased off. Specks of the foam from the front rebounded up from her hands and floated down to settle on her head and the rising layer of foam in the tank. Laughing helplessly, she tried to hold out one arm in front of her as the front sprays continued, and wiped the pile of foam from her head and face with her other hand.

Suddenly she froze as another alarm sounded, and a moment later ducked down as a downpour of thinner blue gunge slapped down on to her. She straightened up, making sure to get her head underneath it, and wriggled around as her ears were folded down by the weight of the falling slime. As it thinned out, the team saw her grinning as the slop dripped down across her face and the downpour shut off.

"Bad luck, team... let's see how she is," Alex said, chuckling as he moved around the tank towards the hatch again. He hauled it open, making the pile of foam against it slump out on to the floor, and greeted Tamara with a grin as she turned in the chair. She was still laughing helplessly as her team mates gathered round to see her covered in the white and blue slime mix. Dipping her feet into the foamy surface on the floor, she carefully got up from the chair and stepped to the entrance, kicking up blobs of the stuff as she went.

"Well, as Tamara's found out, you didn't quite make it, but you did get... where did you get to?" Alex asked himself as he closed the hatch. Stepping over a couple of barriers to get back to the buggy, he picked it up and paced back along the track until he reached a line painted on the floor. "The thirty-point mark!" he announced. "So that's half points for this game, but that's not a disaster - it's a difficult one." He came back to the team, pushing the buggy into the opening in the front of the tank. "Now, for the next game, everyone gets to take part - but you're all going to risk getting..." he paused, waving a hand in front of him, "...a little bit gungy as well. How does that sound?"

He grinned at the whoop from the four girls, and spun on one heel back towards the door. "Follow me, we're going to take the lift down!" he called back over his shoulder. Amy felt slightly worried at the mention of the lift, but didn't show it as they clambered over the obstacles to catch up with him - she knew where that meant they might be going.

After dashing through the corridors, they arrived at a rusted grate covering a cargo lift. Alex already had his hands on it, acting trying to tug it aside.

"This is our way down... but it hasn't been used in a while. Could you give me a hand?" he asked them, pausing to dust his hands off. Amy stepped forwards as he took his grip again, and couldn't help smiling a little as it actually moved aside quite easily.

"Easy," the host congratulated as the team members stepped inside. He followed them in and pushed a button on the wall, making the cage-like lift slowly descend with a rattling noise.

Amy peered into the darkness of the room that gradually emerged on the other side of the lift - all that was visible was a set of pipes twisting around in the gloom, but that was enough for her to know what machine was going to be used for the next game. Nervous but excited, she turned to the others as the lift clattered to a halt. From Sadie's look of quiet tenseness and Coco and Tamara's excited expressions, she could tell that they knew what it was as well.

"I can tell you already know what's down here!" Alex smiled as he hauled open the opposite lift door, letting them step into the warm musty air of the basement room. Reaching over to the wall, he flicked a light switch, making the fluorescent ceiling lights buzz into life.

Amy blinked as the lights came on. The room looked pretty much exactly like she'd seen it on the show before - clusters of pipes weaved across the room, splitting off to join other groups and forming a tangled mess at the front of the room. In the centre was a grimy metallic cube, six or seven feet on each side. Various valves and pipes protruded out from it.

Alex stepped forward and led the team around the left side of the cube, ducking under a couple of low pipes as he made his way around it. On the opposite side, the room became more open, and Alex leaned against the side of the cube as the girls gathered round him.

"This, as you'll no doubt recognize, is... the Sludgecube." He grinned at them, watching their reaction to the word. Amy looked at it nervously - this side was made up of a large perspex window to let them see inside, where pipes of various sizes and angles jutted out of its walls. "Now, don't worry - you might all have to go in there, you might not - it all depends on your team leader!"

Amy gulped, knowing that Tamara would be eager to do it, but that the others wouldn't be so sure. She remembered reading in a TV magazine interview that this tank had been put in to give even the people who wanted to be gunged something to worry about, and it was definitely having that effect on her.

"The dial up there shows the chance that the Sludgecube has of turning on," Alex pointed to a large display on the wall opposite the window into the cube. It was a circular dial, with a rotating pointer and segments all highlighted in red. "I'm going to give you one minute to reduce the chance it'll activate as much as you can, then Amy's going to decide whether to risk putting you all in there or not. How does that sound?"

All four of them nodded, but Tamara was easily the most enthusiastic. She skipped forward to stand in front of the host as he pulled a set of question cards out of his pocket.

"Here's how it'll work - I'm going to ask each of you in turn a question from these cards," he explained, waving them in the air. "If you get it right, you can go around there and shut off one of the valves at the back. Each valve is worth five points." He pointed behind him to the other side of the cube, where the maze of pipes started up again. Looking carefully, Amy also noticed a couple of nozzles protruding from the wall.

"After your time's up, we'll see how much chance the cube's still got left of turning on, and then we'll decide if you want to risk going in, for double the points that you earn during the game. How does that sound?"

The girls nodded. Amy fell into place behind Tamara as the host prepared to ask her the first question, and turned to watch Coco and Sadie line up behind her, giggling amongst themselves.

Suddenly she turned around as she realized the game had started. Tamara got her first question correct and sped off into the tangle of pipes, ducking underneath them and shrieking as the nozzles in the walls sprayed cold water at her with a hissing noise. Trying to concentrate on the question, Amy stepped forward, but got hers wrong and had to return to the back of the line as Coco stepped forwards.

The squirrel also got the right answer, and ran over to the pipes, where she began climbing carefully over the first low one and squeezing between it and a higher pipe. Straightening up, she vanished from view as Tamara re-emerged from the other side, breathless and soaking.

Amy turned to look as the bunny girl rejoined her, then turned back to see that Sadie had already answered her question and was hesitating at the side of the cube.

"Go on, Sadie!" Tamara called, jumping up and down. Sadie looked over her shoulder, then reluctantly climbed between the pipes, yelping as the cold water sprayed on to her.

This time, Amy got her question right and dashed over to the pipes, putting her hand on the first one and feeling that they were softer than they were made to look. Scrambling over the first large obstacle, she tumbled through the maze of foam-lined pipes, trying not to squeak out loud as the water sprayers soaked her fur and swimwear.

Eventually she found her way through, and was just in time to see Tamara's disappearing tail as she ran around the other side of the cube. Looking at the valve handles that she had seen when she came in, she took hold of one that hadn't been rotated and pulled hard, making it squeak as it turned. With it locked into place, she turned to go as Tamara dived out of the tangled pipes, shaking her fur dry.

Dodging past the thinner pipes on the other side of the cube, Amy arrived back at the group to see Sadie and Coco having difficulty answering another question correctly. Stepping forward as Coco was sent to the back again, she got one right and, pausing only a moment to catch her breath, flung herself into the soft pipe tangle again.

Stumbling through the dark area, she heard the sounds of someone else behind her, and turned to see Coco following her with a grin on her face. Suddenly a water sprayer started up and spurted at the side of her head, making her squeal and throw one hand up as the water dripped from her soaking hair. Amy turned back around only to be hit by another spray from the floor, and spitting out water, felt her way the rest of the distance.

Emerging from the twisted pipes, she shook her head to get the water out her eyes then jogged towards the valve handles on the back, tugging on them to see which ones hadn't been turned. She found one and began spinning it, but jumped as she was interrupted by the familiar time-out klaxon.

"Time's up! Come back around here..." Alex called from the other side of the cube. Amy let go of the valve handle that she had been spinning and picked her way through the pipes between the wall and the tank to rejoin the others. She looked up at the large dial on the wall, which was now half filled with red segments and half with blue.

"You did pretty well, team, and turning off half the valves over there has got you thirty points for the game. But now it's decision time, Amy - if you want to double your score, you're going to have to decide whether to put the team into the Sludgecube and risk getting covered..."

Amy looked wordlessly at the other three girls. As she'd thought, Tamara was nodding eagerly, but Coco and Sadie looked slightly less sure.

"It's just a fifty-fifty chance of you being completely gunged if you decide to go in - what's it going to be?" Alex asked her, crouching down so their faces were level.

She glanced around at the others again, then at the inside of the machine, shifting from foot to foot nervously as she decided. "I'm going to put us in," she finally nodded. Tamara whooped, pumping her hand in the air, and the other two looked at each other, nervous smiles on their faces.

"All right! Let's get you inside there." Alex stepped around to the side of the cube and hauled a ladder down from the top, setting it on the floor then scaling it quickly to reach the top of the machine. Amy followed him more slowly as he bent down to undo a set of catches on the ceiling, and she reached the top just as he swung a panel aside to reveal the entrance.

Amy accepted the host's outstretched hands as she looked down into the dim interior of the cube, letting her feet leave the floor reluctantly as he hoisted her over the gap and lowered her gently inside, speaking to the others. "Remember, your team leader's getting you full points for the game, and you've got a pretty good chance of staying clean..."

She squirmed out of his grip as she touched the padded floor and looked around at the walls with the various sizes of pipes protruding out of them. It looked somehow different and more threatening from the inside. Pacing forward, she looked up into the darkness of the large central pipe on the ceiling, then turned around as Sadie was lowered in after her.

The skunk girl dropped to the floor and laughed nervously as she looked at her surroundings. Amy gave her a sympathetic smile as she glanced around, heading towards the corner of the tank that looked safest and leaning on the wall.

Tamara came in next, clambering down into the cube herself and scampering eagerly into the centre, right below the opening on the ceiling. After a moment, Coco was lowered in too, and she stayed where she was, blinking as the hatch was slammed closed behind her with a heavy clunk.

Amy rocked back and forwards on her heels as they all heard Alex climbing back down the ladder, and watched as he reappeared on the other side of the glass panel in front of them. Amy moved to the front of the cube as Coco squeezed slowly back to join the skunk girl. The cube was about seven feet on each side, so didn't offer much room with four of them in it.

"Are you all ready?" he asked them, moving over to the large button on the podium in front of the cube. Tamara cheered again from behind Amy, who joined in a little more hesitantly. She glanced back to see Coco and Sadie hugging each other as they waited.

"Team leader, just say the word and I'll start it up," the host said to her.

Amy swallowed, then breathed out. "Go," she said. Alex moved for the button.

"Oh, by the way..." he said as if remembering, making the four of them lean forward to listen. "Fortunately we're quite near the showers if anything goes wrong..."

Amy's heart jumped as he thumped the button, an exaggerated mechanical noise played and a low humming sound began as the dial on the wall began to spin.

All four of the girls watched it rapidly turn around, going past the red and blue areas alternately, and all held their breath as it began to slow down. Tamara leapt forward to join Amy at the front of the machine, pressing her nose against the perspex as it slowly ground to a halt. It moved into the safe blue section, slowing down even further, and eventually a buzzer sounded as it stopped just past it.

A low rumbling noise started up as Amy looked sideways at Tamara, who grinned back at her and eagerly leapt back to the centre. Looking past her, she saw the other two hugging each other even more tightly as they waited for the tank to start up. Suddenly Amy shrieked as a diagonal pipe above her spewed light brown lumpy gunge on to her head with a loud hissing noise.

She turned her face away and wiped at her right eye, dodging out of the messy downpour but hearing even more pipes gurgle into life as she moved. Opening her clean eye, she looked at the back of the cube where Coco and Sadie were being covered by two streams of translucent goo from the pipes at the sides, struggling as they tried to move out of the way.

Another gunge chute began spurting slightly darker stuff into the cube, catching Amy on the left shoulder. She sidestepped out of the way, looking around her carefully to try and get out of the way of any more pipes that might start up. The tank was beginning to fill up with gunge, and she grimaced as the level oozed over her toes, looking sideways at the still relatively clean Tamara.

Suddenly a loud hooter sounded and the bunny girl was hidden by a massive downpour of light and dark brown gunge, which splattered into Amy's chest as some of it domed outwards from the giggling rabbit's head. As the level of slime began to rise more quickly, a slimy arm reached out of the mess and grabbed Amy by the shoulder, and she shrieked as Tamara pulled her into the gunge along with her.

Holding her breath and keeping her head down as the lukewarm torrent engulfed her, Amy kept her eyes firmly closed as the lumpy gunge splattered on her head and soaked its way into her fur, creeping around her neck and covering every inch of her. She tried to wriggle out of the bunny's grip, placing her hands on her hips to push away, and eventually slipped out of her slimy grasp. Stumbling towards the wall of the cube through the waist deep muck, she panted for breath as she wiped at her face again.

As she felt the gunge rise to her chest, the ringing of alarms and sound of pouring slime began to ease off, and she turned around to look at what had happened. Sagging her shoulders, she giggled as she saw the state of the cube - it was covered in a muddy mixture of light and dark brown lumpy gunge, with a few drizzles from the ceiling still sputtering down onto the surface. Tamara was a barely recognisable blob standing in the middle of it, and Coco and Amy had let go of each other and were looking down at themselves. While they weren't as covered as Tamara and Amy, their fur was mostly coloured by splashes of muck as well. Slowly the skunk girl backed away, a band of brown clinging slime visible on her chest as she bobbed up and down in the mess.

"Come over here!" laughed Alex, laughing as he enjoyed the view of the four girls struggling in the gunge tank. Amy slowly moved to the perspex again, scooping the slush out of the way as she walked forwards. She grimaced a little at the strange sensation - the gunge seemed to be sucking at her as she tried to move through it. Out of breath, she leaned on the clear wall, hearing the others move into place behind her.

The host looked at the four of them for a moment, a smile on his face. "It's just as well that it's shower time next," he said, shaking his head. "Sorry, team, but it wasn't me that put you in... it was Amy that volunteered you..."

"Hey..." Amy began, then shrieked as she felt two messy arms stretching around to grab her chest, squeezing her and dragging her backwards. She heard Tamara's giggling as she struggled to keep on her feet, and screwed her face up as another pair of hands began rubbing handfuls of the slimy stuff all over her head. She flailed her arms out as the bunny girl dodged aside, dumping her backwards into the gunge with a thick splash.

She kicked her legs back to put her feet on the floor again as she felt the muck close over her head, and burst out of it again, coughing to catch her breath. She kept her eyes tightly closed as she felt the slush trickle and drip from all over her body, hearing all three of her teammates cheer at the sight of her. Slowly she raised her hands to her face and wiped her eyes, laughing a little uneasily as she blinked them open. She was caked in a clinging layer of the muddy substance, with just a thin outline of her swimsuit visible underneath it. Noticing one of the straps of her bikini top had fallen off her shoulder, she hurriedly grabbed it and pulled it up again.

Alex had moved to the top of the cube, and all four of them looked up as the hatch in the ceiling was opened. Stretching up to reach his outstretched arms, Amy wriggled in the muck as she was slowly hauled out of the tank, shivering as she felt it drip off her legs.

She sat down on the edge of the cube and got her breath back, laughing as Sadie was lifted out after her. She had managed to keep most of her top half clean, but she was coated in the muddy mixture from the waist down.

"You all right?" she smiled as the skunk girl sat down beside her.

"Yeah." Sadie swung her legs back and forward, watching the gunk drip down to the floor below them. "Had to happen in the end." Coco was lifted out of the tank behind them, and stood flicking her hands repeatedly to shake off the sludge.

"Actually, have you ever had a mudbath? It feels like that," the skunkette continued.

Amy shook her head. "No, but I'm definitely going to get my boyfriend into one somehow now that I've done this."

Sadie nodded with a smile, shaking her legs again and watching Alex and Tamara climb down the ladder to their right. "I think that's fair enough!" Shifting forwards as the host held out his arms towards her, she pushed herself off the edge and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he caught her.

"All right, I promised you the chance to get cleaned up after all that, but do you want to know how you've done first?" the host asked them as he helped Amy down. "You've just earned a full sixty points for the game, and that brings you up to 395 points - you're well on your way!"

Leading them back towards the lift as they cheered, he strode towards the door and hauled it open. After beckoning them all inside, he jumped in himself and thumped the button for the platform.

"So, team leader, where do you think we should go next? We've got the security station and the factory left to visit."

"Let's go to... the factory," Amy decided after a moment. She raised her hands to her face again and brushed off a few more lumps - she would be glad to get into the showers.

"I can take you there as soon as we've got you cleaned up," Alex answered, noticing her discomfort. As the lift stopped, he gestured towards the grating on the opposite side, which Tamara shoved aside, and followed them through the gap.

"You'll be able to shower off in here," he said to them, pushing open a door on the opposite wall. "And if you'll wait for me on the other side, I'll see you all again in the factory!"

Amy joined in the whoop that Tamara gave, and gratefully followed her through into the shower room. Alex watched them all go, then turned to the camera operator that had been following them through the corridor.

"Now, if you'll keep following me," he said, "we've got a special guest for the last show of the series." He turned away, strode down the corridor a few paces and pushed open a set of double doors. "How are you doing, Gwen?"

The camera followed him into the small room and swung round to show a curvy pink dragongirl sitting in a tank set into one of the walls, behind a slightly curved clear door that reached up to her shoulders. She was wearing a black IZ bikini similar to the other contestants' swimwear, and was sitting on a wide inflatable sofa-like seat that stretched the width of the tank. She smiled as he came in.

"Hi," she said simply, waving a little in the direction of the camera.

"Welcome back to the Industrial Zone - are you ready for a repeat of what we did to you last time?"

She laughed a little, looking around the inside of her tank - three wide grilles were placed near the ceiling, one at the back and one on each of the walls. As well as those, there was the usual round opening placed on the ceiling slightly in front of her head. Turning back to the host, she nodded out at him.

"Well, in case you didn't see the first episode of this series," Alex said, turning back to the camera, "here's some idea of what happened to Gwen in the first round."

He looked up at the video screen on the wall, and the dragon girl laughed as a series of still images played, showing her first sitting on an inflatable chair in a dark chamber, then being coated from above by a massive downpour of blue and yellow slime that slowly filled the tank. In all the shots, she was hardly visible, with only her slimy head being seen above the mixed green slime bath at the end.

"Pretty much what you'd expect from losing a game on Industrial Zone," grinned Alex as the screen blinked off again. "The trouble was that we had a problem with the cameras inside the shuttle, so we couldn't show the whole thing - isn't that right, Gwen?"

"Yeah," Gwen said hesitantly, looking down and scratching the back of her neck distractedly.

"So we wanted another chance to gunge you," Alex grinned at her, and she giggled in response. Suddenly a quiet beeping noise started, and a look of shock crossed her face.

"Not to worry, that's just the tank starting up. Shouldn't be long until it goes off," Alex smiled, watching one of the four lights above the tank turn on. He looked at her, drumming his fingers on the door of the tank, enjoying watching her squirm. "Do you want to know how this thing works?"

Gwen looked around her, wriggling from side to side. "Yeah," she said hesitantly, thinking it might be the wrong thing to say.

Alex leaned into the tank, looking up at the various openings near the ceiling. Gwen shifted back a little as he pointed at each of them. "Each of those leads to a tank somewhere above you. The team are getting ready for the second half of the show now, and we've rigged the whole thing to activate when all four of the showers are turned off again." Gwen nodded, biting her lip. "So you've got two more to go... let's hope that they spend a while getting cleaned up!"

The dragon girl nodded slowly. "I think they will, seeing as you put them all in the Sludgecube."

The host laughed. "Yes, it should keep them occupied for a while. You've had some experience of that yourself, haven't you?"

She giggled again, remembering her appearance on the programme. "Yeah, I wasn't actually inside it, though. It looked really icky..." She looked him in the eye to ask him a question of her own. "Haven't you ever wanted to try it yourself, then?"

"Well..." Alex chuckled, pacing to the other side of the tank. "I'm sure someone's going to get me eventually. So you've been watching the team's progress so far - what do you think?" he continued.

"They're doing OK," she nodded. "I don't think that they're going to win in the end, though. Do you?"

"I can't say," the host answered. "We haven't had a winning team in the series yet, so they've got the last chance."

They continued talking for a few minutes, with Gwen giving a start each time a light above her buzzed into life. When the third one came on, she looked around the tank again. "How much is in this thing?" she asked, pointing up.

Alex leaned back, stroking his chin. "Two hundred gallons, I think? Something like that," he said. Gwen swallowed, but a hint of a smile appeared on her face. "Normally five is enough for a decent gunging... so we usually use about ten at the minimum on IZ."

Her smile turned into a grin. "And what was..."

She ended her sentence with a shriek as the familiar loud hooter blared, and she was hit by two waves of thick green gunge poured sideways from the grilles on the sides of the tank. She shivered a little as they played over her, her hands clasped near her chest as she was rapidly coated in a green layer. Gradually, the two downpours eased off slightly, falling back so that they were pouring the stuff down the walls and continuing to fill up the tank.

Gwen giggled, raising one hand up to her face and flicking the slime out of her eyes, balancing with her other hand gripping the seat. A yellow wave suddenly spewed out of the grate behind her, and she leaned forwards under its weight as it splattered off her back, clinging on to the seat with her other hand as well. She grinned and closed her eyes, hunching her neck up to try and stop the slime from creeping round her shoulders, making a few waves splash over her head as she squirmed around.

As the yellow torrent continued, she opened her eyes again and eased her head round to look back at the gunge chute behind her, but quickly faced forward again as the wide wave splashed into her eyes. She shook her head and blinked a couple of times, grinning up at the host as she raised her gungy arms out to the sides, getting them coated in the new colour as well, then smiled downwards as she felt the level of slime creeping up her legs.

Her eyes widened a little as the klaxon began sounding again, her grin growing as she waited for something else to happen. On the third blare of the hooter, its sound dropped much lower and she squeaked again as she vanished completely underneath a wide column of mixed blue and yellow gunge poured in from the ceiling.

Her hands flew to her head, covering her face as the new downpour domed outwards from hitting her, a few splashes getting over the door of the tank. Slowly she leaned backwards out of it, edging back on the seat and giggling as the yellow wave from behind slapped over her head again. She was now completely hidden by the slimy deluge. The tank was filling up much faster, and the level quickly raised over her tummy, towards shoulder height.

The gunge from above eased off a little, but came backwards to splash off her head again as it slowed to a drizzle. As the tank filled up completely and slime began to spill over its door, the other flows subsided, leaving the barely recognisable Gwen completely covered in a layer of thick yellow and green ooze.

Alex stepped forwards again, picking his way through the slippery puddle on the floor, and laughed as Gwen slowly pulled her hands out of the gunge with a glooping noise, running them over her messy head to try and clear it. Wiping her face, she opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, squeaking as another couple of splashes dropped onto her from above. Relaxing again, she leaned back in the chair so that the slime came up to her neck, and grinned at him.

"You all right, Gwen?" he asked. She closed her eyes and nodded in response, still laughing to herself. "How does it feel in there?"

"'Gungy' is the only word for it," the dragon girl grinned back, raising her hands out of the slop again and letting it pour off into the full tank. She squeaked as a hissing noise started up, and giggled as two light streams of foam sprayed on to her from the ceiling, the airy white blobs piling up on top of the gunge.

"That's good news, because we're hoping to be using this tank more in the next series," Alex explained, pacing to the other side of it and leaning in a little to talk to her. She squirmed from side to side, closing her eyes, obviously enjoying the feeling of sitting in the slime bath. "Is it up to our standards, do you think?"

"Definitely." She laughed again, nodding as she looked around at the mess. Slime dripped stickily off her face as she moved, a couple of drips still falling from the pipes above her and splatting on to the surface.

"All right - thanks for coming on again. I'm going to leave you alone now, and we might get you cleaned up later if we feel like it." He grinned as she pulled her arm out of the stuff and waved at him, and turned away as she leaned back again, sinking into the ooze as he left the room.

Alex turned the corner and found the team waiting for him outside the exit of the shower room. "Ready to go again?" he called as he approached, and grinned as he was met with four cheers. "Who's going first, Amy?"

Amy looked round at the other three. "I think we need to try and get Sadie a bit more messy," she decided. The skunk girl blinked slowly and smiled, stepping over to take Alex's hand.

"You're right there," Alex responded. "And we need someone to be a potential victim so that we can get into the factory - come and follow me!" Taking off at a dash again with Sadie, the others ran down the corridor to keep up with them, stopping quickly as the passage opened out into a room.

At the other end of the room was a large door, locked with a wide metal bar on the front that protruded into the wall. Looking to the side as she followed the others in, Amy saw a table placed in an alcove at one side of the room, then looked the other way and couldn't help laughing as she saw what she'd volunteered Sadie for.

Alex led the giggling girl towards the main feature of the room, which was a clear cubicle set into the wall, similar to the one that Gwen had been in. This time, two gigantic tanks were mounted on the wall above it - one filled with yellow gunge, the other with pink. Sadie couldn't take her eyes off them as Alex opened the door for her, and she backed into the cubicle to sit down. Still staring up, this time at the wide nozzles above her head, she shook her unruly hair back out of her eyes.

"Have a look over here," Alex said, pointing to the other side of the room and running through the group of contestants as he dashed towards it. Following him, they gathered around the table. It was divided into sixteen squares, with fifteen tiles and a gap. Tilting her head to the side, Amy realised that the pieces looked like they could be rearranged to form the show's logo.

"This is a classic sliding puzzle, you'll all have played something like this before," Alex said, looking around at them as they nodded. He left them standing by the table and walked slowly over to Sadie again. "But this time, you're playing to save Sadie from being slimed in the Mixer."

Sadie giggled again, squeezing her hands between her knees and drumming her feet on the ground as he approached. He pointed to a large red button next to her tank. "You need to hit this Stop button to save your friend, but it'll only activate once the puzzle is complete. If you don't make it within two minutes of time starting, Sadie's going to get a little messy."

"A little?!" Sadie leaned out of the tank again and looked up at the huge tanks, her mouth open in a smile.

"Maybe a bit more than a little," admitted the host. "But you've been fortunate so far apart from that bit of bad luck in the last game - are you feeling confident?"

"No," she answered decisively, leaning back into the chair again and shaking her head.

"Let's prove her wrong, team - your time starts now!" Alex called. He looked down and started the stopwatch that he wore around his wrist.

The other three girls huddled over the puzzle, whispering to each other about where to move first. Eventually, Coco stretched across the table and began sliding the top left corner of the logo into place.

Amy and Tamara encouraged her as she looked around for the second tile and uncertainly moved it up the board. Amy leaned across to help her, trying to keep a count of the time in her head.

"You've got a minute and a half left," Alex called as the fourth tile was moved into position. Surprised at how fast time was running out, Amy looked over at the girl in the gunge tank, who was looking back and forward between the game and the nozzle above her head.

Coco struggled to get the second row lined up as the time reached one minute, with the help from Tamara and Amy distracting her more than helping. Eventually, half of the logo was completed, and she turned her attention to the seven tiles on the bottom.

Flicking the remaining tiles around the board as the other two glanced anxiously over at the tank, the squirrel quickly lined up the third row and snicked it into place. Hesitating as she looked down at the fourth, she realized that they were in the wrong order, and stopped with one hand on the last tile.

"Come on!" Tamara called, practically jumping up and down. Shaking her head, Coco reached out to move again, but froze as a loud hooter blared and a high-pitched whine started up. All three of them looked over to Sadie again, who had her hands clasped nervously in front of her with her eyes tightly closed.

As they watched, two streams of light green foam began pumping in from near the bottom of the tank, slowly filling the cubicle. Sadie squeaked as she felt the stuff on her toes, and opened her eyes to watch as the level slowly rose around her. She lifted her feet up slightly and moved her hands to cover her ears, giving a scream that turned into a laugh as her legs got tired and she dipped her feet back in.

"You've still got ten seconds before the main tanks go off - hurry!" Alex called above the noise of the machine.

Coco looked down again, but Amy couldn't help watching as the skunk girl squirmed from side to side, watching the green stuff creep upwards to cover her bare tummy. She clasped her hands together and placed them on top of her head, away from the rising foam. The hooter sounded again as the level of foam reached the top of the door and began spilling over it, blobs of the stuff breaking off and splatting heavily on the floor. Sadie looked from the foam to the gunge chute above her and back, giggling helplessly as the klaxon blared for a third time. A loud click sounded, Sadie drew her arms in a little tighter to her head and she was engulfed by a downpour of yellow and pink gunge from the tanks above her.

The other two looked up as Sadie wriggled underneath the heavy slime, leaning slightly forwards to get her head out of the flow. Slowly the downpour was brought forwards to follow her, splattering off in a messy dome as it hit her head. She balled her hands next to her ears as she felt the gunge slipping down and around them, and tried to gather up her hair which was falling in front of her face as it got heavy with slime.

Slowly she raised her hands up in the air out of the huge downpour, and brought them round to her chest, suddenly flicking her hair behind her head again so that the team could see her face. Her eyes were firmly closed, but her mouth was hanging open in a slightly shocked smile. Suddenly her face was hidden by the glistening slime slumping down over it, and she ducked down into the foam again as the two colours of gunge slithered down her, mingling into each other as they went.

The high-pitched siren began to fade out, and Sadie leaned to the side a little as the steady downpour slowed, with dollops of the stuff falling out of the chute and splatting on to her already messy shoulders. She had been completely coated by a mixture of foam and gunge, with none of her black fur visible under the mess. As the last drizzle fell from the tanks above her she straightened again, her shoulders shaking with giggles as the slime dripped onto head.

"I think it was about time that happened," laughed Alex, beckoning to the other three to join him beside Sadie's gunge tank. "Are you all right in there?"

The colourful blob with the skunk girl underneath moved about as she nodded, and she carefully gathered up her hair and placed it back behind her head, revealing her face. She laughed again as she opened her eyes and saw the others approaching, then looked down at herself and tried to push some of the slime off her shoulders.

"Well, you did get covered in the end, but the team completed three rows of the puzzle and that's worth 40 points. Was it worth getting slimed for that?"

"Maybe," Sadie answered, panting slightly to get her breath back. She squealed as another drizzle started up and hit her head, giggling as she ducked out of its way.

"Let's get you out of there before the tanks get the chance to fill again," the host said as he moved towards the door. Pulling it open, he raised his hand to show the victim out. Slowly, she wriggled forwards off the chair and carefully put her feet down on the floor, dragging part of the pile of green foam out with her as she walked back out again. She stood in front of it as the door was closed, her hands stretched in front of her and dripping with slime.

Alex moved away from the group and began to haul the heavy door at the far end of the room open. As the team watched, Sadie suddenly stepped forwards and put her slimy arms around Coco in a hug, making her shriek and squirm out of her grasp, pawing at the yellow stuff smeared across her chest and tummy. The host turned around amusedly, beckoning them on.

"Come on! We're inside now, and we need another volunteer..."

"Amy's turn!" Sadie said eagerly, pointing straight at her. Another drizzle of slime fell from the tip of her finger.

"I don't think I can argue with that," Alex grinned as they all came forward towards him. He turned to move into the corridor beyond the door, and looked back over his shoulder. "It's been a while since you were in a game, hasn't it, Amy?"

"Yeah." Amy nodded, nervous at being the centre of attention again but looking forward to it all the same.

"And I think I know just the place to put you - come with me!"

Amy stumbled as she was led by the hand past the door and down a rusty corridor. This part of the set was made up to look a lot older than the rest of it, and exposed pipes and scattered debris lined the passageway. After a moment they arrived at a door, which Alex began opening with the valve handle in its middle.

"I think that you've been let off pretty lightly for the team leader so far, Amy," he said as he rotated the handle round. "But we can always sort that out..." Amy gulped as he pushed the door open, and followed him in.

She looked around nervously, spotting her place in the room immediately. Half of one of the walls was taken up by a semicircular vat of yellow stuff, with walls stretching about three feet off the floor. Its surface was lit by a row of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. Next to the lights, a pipe jutted down towards a rickety-looking chair which was attached by rails to the wall.

Following Alex towards the side of the vat a little reluctantly, she watched as the chair hummed sideways on its rails so that it ended up away from the pool. Alex put his hand on one of its arms as they stopped.

"Want a hand up?" he asked her. She nodded, then squeaked as he put his arms around her and picked her up with little difficulty. Gently, he turned around and placed her on the seat, where she nervously placed her hands on the chair's arms and rested her feet on the bar below it. With a jolt, the seat began to move again, and she gripped the arms a little tighter as she was carried sideways, stopping above the vat's centre so that there was no escape.

Taking her eyes off the gooey-looking surface below her, she looked up at the rest of the room. Opposite her, the wall was lined with eight large buttons, about a foot across each. To the side of them, an alcove was set into the wall, with a perspex door covering half of it. Above this cubicle, one side of a circular metal tank curved out of the wall - it was marked "Grease" in crude stencilled letters.

She watched as the other girls gathered around the vat, looking between her and the obvious gunge tank on the opposite wall. They all looked to the side as there was a loud clank, and Alex turned away from the now closed door and moved back into the light.

"Now, as you've got the risk of being tipped into this, Amy," he said, spreading his arms out and pointing down to the vat, "I think it's only fair that you get to nominate another team member to go into there. Any preference?"

Amy smiled, looking between the three of them. She didn't want to pick Sadie because she had already been in a game, so that left Coco and Tamara. And Tamara probably wanted a bigger gunging than this, so Coco was the obvious choice. She looked at the worried-looking squirrel girl, who looked back at her, her hands clasped over her tummy.

"Remember when you volunteered me to go into the tank at the beginning, Coco?" she asked. Coco looked down, wriggling her toes.

"Yeah..." she giggled. She looked up as Alex tapped her on the shoulder, and followed him as he walked over to open the tank's door for her. She stepped up into the grimy cubicle, her hands held out to brush against its walls for balance as she turned around. Alex closed the perspex door behind her, and she looked up at the nozzle above her head.

"This is a game based purely on chance," the host said as he returned to the middle of the room between them. Putting his arms around Tamara and Sadie, he led them over to the button wall. Coco leaned forward out of the tank to watch.

"Basically, you've got to pick six of these buttons to press between you," he continued. "Seven of them will keep your team leader safe, but there's one hidden among them that will plunge her into the vat of gunge down there." Amy tapped her arms on the seat as she glanced down again.

"You can choose the buttons however you like - in turn, at random, whatever you want. Tamara and Sadie are going to be the ones who decide how you do it. Sound simple enough?" They all nodded.

"Oh, and Coco... I don't think I need to tell you what happens if Amy finds six safe buttons," he grinned over at her. She nodded, and pointed at the vat of gunge above her. "So your goal in this game is to find the activation button before you get slimed yourself."

He turned to face the two girls who were safe for the moment. "So it's all up to you - get this game going!"

Tamara and Sadie exchanged a few words that Amy couldn't hear as the host walked to take up a position beside Coco's gunge tank. After nodding at the skunkette, Tamara turned to Amy.

"I'm going to get Coco to pick them," she announced. Shifting a little in the uncomfortable seat, Amy nodded. The bunny girl spun around energetically and skipped towards Coco, obviously enjoying being the host for a game.

"Coco, you've got six chances to find the button that dunks Amy. Can I have your first three choices?" she asked, looking up at her with her hands clasped behind her back.

The squirrel leaned out of the tank again to look at the wall beside her. "The three on the top row nearest me," she said.

Tamara nodded over to Sadie, who quietly stepped forwards and stretched up on her tiptoes to reach the top row of buttons. Amy held her breath as she awkwardly pushed forward. She watched Coco flinch as the button was pressed, but it lit up to the accompaniment of a bell sound.

The skunkette moved along the row, pressing the other two buttons that Coco had selected, with the same effect. She looked back at Tamara.

"It wasn't any of those," the bunny girl announced. "But you've still got three more chances to stop that huge vat of gunge from opening..." She raised both her hands up towards it. "Scared?"

"Yeah." Coco bit her lip as she glanced upwards at the spout pointed down at her, twisting nervously from side to side.

"Can I have your next two choices?" Tamara asked, looking back over at the wall.

"I don't know..." She tapped her hands on the door of the tank as she thought. "The two furthest away on the bottom."

Amy tensed up again, watching Sadie head for the button. She looked around before pressing it, waiting to see her thrown into the gunge pool, but the bell sounded again. She moved over to the one beside it and suddenly thumped on it.

Nothing happened for a moment, then the sound of the same bell rang out. Amy let her breath out, slumping a little in the chair.

"No! Now, you've got a one in three chance of finding the right one this time, or you know what happens!" Tamara was practically bouncing with excitement

Coco laughed tensely, and leaned out to look at the layout of the buttons again. "The one that you're right next to now, Sadie," she decided, shaking her head.

"All right - get back in there and we'll see if you're right!" Coco straightened up, looking upwards once again at the gunge chute. Amy curled her bare feet around the dunk seat's footrest, trying not to hold her breath as Sadie used both hands to push the large button.

There was a moment of silence, a low rumbling being played from somewhere as they waited for the sound. After five seconds that seemed much longer, the button lit up to the sound of the bell.

Amy relaxed, clapping her hands together, then looked up at the squirrel girl as she remembered what was going to happen. She was standing straight in the middle of the tank, her hands clasped over her face in readiness.

"I'm really sorry about this, Coco..." Alex said as he stepped forward, making her peek out from between her fingers. A gurgling noise played, and she covered her face again as a gooey column fell from the tank above her, hiding her from view as it splurged outwards over her head. Tamara threw her hands in the air and jumped up and down as she watched the tank covering her.

As the downpour continued the squirrel leaned forwards, bowing her head down and putting her hands on the front corners of the tank to balance herself. She grimaced as the gel-like substance glooped on to her neck and splashed in a slow wave outwards, a few drops making their way over the door of the tank. With a smile, she leaned to one side, turning her face away as the gunge poured on to her shoulder.

Feeling the flow ease off, she straightened up and let the last gooey drizzle pour on to her sticky hair, where it dribbled down to drip on to her shoulders. "Eurgh," she giggled as she ran her hand through her hair, then held her hands out in front of her to make the translucent goo drip from the tips of her fingers.

Alex grinned, stepping slowly towards her as she held her fringe up with a hand to her forehead, with gooey dollops dripping from her darkened blonde hair. Still shaking from laughter, she coughed a couple of times as he approached and opened the door for her.

"Well, if it's any consolation, you did just earn sixty points for the game," he said as she took his hand, stepping down carefully toes-first on to the floor. Shivering as the gunge continued to drip from all over her, she looked up at Amy, who was still perched above the pool of yellow stuff.

Alex put his arm around the slimy squirrel. "You know, we could always get your team leader back for that anyway..." he said casually. Amy's heart jumped, and she tapped her feet on the footrest, looking down into the gunge pool that she knew she was about to be thrown into. Coco turned to the host sharply, an open-mouthed grin of delight on her face, and nodded rapidly.

"Want to try and find that button, you two?" the host called over to Tamara and Sadie. The bunny girl skipped back over to join the skunkette, and watched as she thumped the button next to her. Amy looked on nervously as it lit up like the others had done. Looking up at the only remaining button, Tamara sped over and jumped up to hit it. This time, an alarm sounded and she spun round to face the vat.

Amy raised her hands up from the arms of the seat and held them near her face, her eyes on the surface of the pool as a set of flashing lights came up and spotlit the patch right below her. Suddenly she heard a mechanism opening above her, and squeaked as a cold, runny downpour domed out over her head. As she arched her back to stop it trickling down the back of her neck, she forgot about the pool below her, and when the chair suddenly fell forwards she fell face first into the vat with a loud gloop.

Turning around underneath the gooey surface by pushing her hands against the floor of the vat, she struggled into a sitting position again, feeling the coat of thick dripping yellow stuff ooze and trickle through her fur. Wiping at her eyes, she carefully blinked them open and looked around at her cheering team mates. Another spray splattered down into the vat just behind her, making the surface wobble and lap from just below her shoulders to her neck. Giving a half-sigh, half-giggle, she pulled her hands out of the gunge and ran them over her head to try and neaten her hair a little, shivering as the stuff in her hair ran down her back to settle on to the surface.

"You all right, Amy?" Alex detached himself from Coco and leaned over the side of the vat. Amy sat up, hugging her knees as she felt the liquid ooze around her.

"Yeah," she laughed in response. An idea came to her, and grinning to herself, she brought her hands up to splash the yellow slime out towards him. He instinctively jerked back as the wave hit him in the face and chest, and she laughed as he spread his arms and looked at the splatter mark covering his front.

Shaking his head, he leaned forward again and put his hand forward to help her out. Raising her hand up to grip his, she hauled herself upright, wiggling her hips to get out as the heavy liquid poured down her body. She stood in the vat for a moment, brushing the gunge off her arms and shoulders, then waded forward and carefully stepped on to the floor again.

Alex approached to take her hands as she steadied herself, the yellow slime rolling down her and dripping heavily on to the floor. "So after that, who would you like to be the next victim, Amy?" he asked.

Amy looked over at Tamara, bringing a hand up to brush the gunk that was dripping from her forehead away. "We've only got one clean team member left," she smiled.

"All right! Tamara, I could see how much you enjoyed gunging people, so let's give them another chance to get their own back..." He spun on his heel and strode out of the room, reaching a hand behind him to catch her arm and drag her along with him. She skipped a couple of steps and walked alongside him as the group headed out the door. After marching her round a couple of corners, they arrived at another entrance, which he hauled open.

Still feeling the custard-like stuff trickling through her fur, Amy shivered as she followed them in. The most obvious feature of the room was a large chessboard-like raised section of the floor, a chequered eight-by-eight grid of two-foot squares. Looking over to the right, where Tamara was being led, she saw the victim's seat for the game.

On the wall of the room, two cylindrical tanks were mounted, each about a foot in diameter and a couple of yards high. They were filled with a pulpy-looking bright orange substance. Pipes led from the top of each of the tanks, and they met in the middle where a spout pointed down at a clear inflatable chair nestled in between the two cylinders. Tamara was being shown into the seat, sliding backwards on to it and looking up at the funnel above her head, then bouncing a little to get comfortable.

"It's up to you to save Tamara from the slime here," Alex announced as he moved back towards the other three girls. "Step up here and I'll show you."

He beckoned them up to the chessboard-like arrangement in the middle of the room, pointing out where they should each stand - Sadie on the left corner, Amy on the right, and Coco standing on one of the squares in the middle of their side.

"We're going to be playing a game against the computer," Alex explained, stepping off the board. As he moved away from it, the lights in the room darkened and a red spotlight illuminated one square on the opposite side of the board. The light was masked so that the shape of the light on the square looked like the face of the computer.

"You three and the computer get to move one square each turn," the host continued. "Your goal is to make it off the other side of the board before he catches you - but if he ever manages to move into the square that you're on, you're captured - and if that happens, Tamara's going to get a surprise as well."

Amy looked at Tamara, who was also spotlit in the darkness. She grinned up again, resting her head on her hands and putting her elbows on the seat's arms, bouncing her feet off the inflatable surface of the front of the chair.

"Have you got that? After every move the computer makes, you can all move one space." The three of them nodded, and Alex moved away from the light.

Amy turned her attention back to the red spotlight, and watched as it moved slowly towards them, stopping on the next square. She glanced at the other two girls, who took their steps along with her - Sadie and Amy moving forward, but Coco hanging back.

The turns continued, with the girls moving towards the centre of the board, wary of the face coming to get them. On its next turn, it slanted towards Sadie, who took a step backwards. Coco and Amy kept moving towards the other side of the board, with the squirrel girl stepping diagonally to try and get away from it.

"That's right - split up, he can't go for all of you," Alex commented from his position out of the light. Once again, the face moved to be beside Sadie, and shyly she moved back to be cornered by it. Amy glanced at the bunny girl again, who was watching the situation eagerly.

On the next turn, Sadie had no choice but to step into a square next to the skull-like face, and she closed her eyes as the spotlight moved on to her. A buzzer sounded as the red light blinked on and off, and an alarm rang out from the side of the room.

The three girls turned to watch as Tamara tensed up, hunching her neck and closing her eyes. A moment later, there was a loud glooping noise as air bubbles rose up in both the tanks, and suddenly a downpour of lumpy orange gunge spewed out of the spout above her. The thick downpour domed out over her head as it hit her, her messy ears visible for a moment before they were both pushed down on to her head by the weight of the slime.

With her top half hidden by the upturned bowl shape, the team watched her drum her feet on the ground as the downpour splattered off her and coated the sides of the cylindrical tanks as well as the floor around the seat. As it began to ease off, she brought her hands up from the chair's arms and turned them upwards, catching the lumpy stuff and letting it drizzle through her fingers. Shaking with giggles, she brought both her hands up and mushed the handfuls of slime into her face, turning her head up to catch the last of the flow as it drizzled thickly on to her head.

The team heard Alex laugh as the echo of the siren died. "It's your turn again," he said simply.

Amy moved another step forward, and turned to watch the face move back towards them diagonally. She looked forward worriedly to see if it could catch her before she made it across to the other side, but after a few more turns, they both stepped off the other side safely.

The lights in the room came back up as Alex walked slowly towards them, clapping. "Two out of three isn't bad at all," he said, "and that gives you forty points for the game. Want to come and see how Tamara is?"

The three of them joined the host as he strode over to the tank on the wall. Tamara was barely recognisable even though she'd only got one third of the tanks, and it was difficult to see her top half at all under the pile of gungy orange lumps on the chair. Bringing a hand up to wipe her eyes, she giggled again, dislodging chunks of the stuff and sending them dripping to the floor. Opening her mouth to say something, she felt the slime sliding down her face and quickly pursed her lips to shake it off her.

"How are you feeling, Tamara - gunged by your accomplice from the last game?"

The bunny girl couldn't stop laughing as she continued to clean her face off. Suddenly another gurgle came from the machine, and the three others jumped back as Tamara squeaked, another murky downpour splattering on to her from above.

"Come on, let's get you out of there," Alex said as he offered his hand. Tamara took it and shuffled forward in the seat, the mess on the chair glooping down to cover the area she'd left as she struggled to get up. Eventually she straightened again, standing with her arms held out in front of her and repeatedly flicking them to send waves of gunge to the floor. Wiping again at her face, she shook her head to clear it off and playfully threw her collected handfuls of slime at Sadie.

"Shall we move on?" the host laughed, heading back towards the door. The team followed him, the lights in the room flickering off as they left. They filed outside and turned back to the host, ready for the next game.

"By the way, Coco, it's a bit of a special day for you, isn't it?" Alex turned his head to ask her as he closed the door, stepping forward to put his arm around her again and guiding her forwards along the corridor.

Coco smiled, anticipating that it was more than just an idle comment. "Yeah," she answered, "it's my eighteenth."

"I thought so," the host said as they stopped at a junction. One branch of the corridor faded into darkness, but there was a vague spherical shape just on the edge of vision. "That's why we set up a bit of a surprise for you," he finished, and the team jumped as the lights suddenly buzzed into life.

Amy blinked at the sudden light, and looked down the newly visible corridor. The spherical shape that they had seen before was a round machine in two halves - a glass dome on the top and a metallic blue bowl shape underneath. Standing on her toes to peer into it, she was that the bottom half was full of a smooth layer of white stuff.

Beyond that, the corridor's floor changed into spongy inflatable material, and continued until a dead end, where a blowup chair was placed facing them in the center of the wall. Alex started towards it, taking the giggling squirrel by the hand.

The other three watched as they made their way over the inflatable surface, Coco bouncing along it excitedly. It looked like it wasn't fully inflated, and Alex wobbled a little unsteadily as he walked, but he was trying not to show it. When they reached the chair, Coco eagerly sat down, looking up instinctively but seeing nothing on the ceiling.

Alex made his way back towards the team, running awkwardly as his feet sank into the plastic. Slightly out of breath, he landed next to the sphere again and walked around it, undoing catches along its edge as he spoke.

"Usually you have cake on your birthday, but this was the nearest we could get from here," he explained as he lifted the glass dome away from the bowl. From the other end of the corridor, Coco craned her neck and leaned forward in an attempt to see what was inside as the other girls gathered round. They looked down at its contents, which looked like thick white whipped cream.

"We didn't want this to go to waste," Alex continued, pointing down at the smooth creamy surface, "so your objective for this game is simple." He raised his finger up and turned around to Coco again. "Cover her in as much as possible!"

The squirrel girl's mouth dropped open as he pointed at her, and she laughed as Tamara eagerly plunged her hands into the stuff to gather up an armful, grinning maliciously.

"I'll let you get one handful out for free to start with," Alex said as the others reached inside. Amy shivered as her hands broke through the creamy surface into something slimier underneath, and lifted the mass of foamy stuff up to see that a thick yellow custard-like liquid was dripping from its underside. She backed away from the bowl carefully, lining up with Sadie and Tamara at the edge of the plastic surface.

"After you begin, you'll have a minute and a half to get Coco coated," the host said from behind them. "Ready?"

The three girls cheered, laughing as Coco giggled helplessly from the other end of the corridor, and began advancing towards her as Alex gave the word to begin.

Tamara made the fastest progress, blobs of the creamy armful she was carrying dripping down behind her as she bounded towards the squirrel girl. Coco squirmed back in the seat and shielded herself by stretching her hands out in front of her as the rabbit got nearer, but squeaked as Tamara dodged round her and pushed two handfuls of the stuff against her face.

Amy and Sadie struggled over to her as she brought her hands up to clear her eyes, and Amy dropped her handful onto the top of her head. She started to run back along the inflatable surface to collect another, twisting round to watch as Sadie smeared cream along the squirrel's arms, mushing the stuff on her head down into her hair at the same time.

Passing Tamara and almost slipping on a patch of dropped cream, Amy reached the bowl and stuck her hands in again, getting a large blob of the yellow stuff along with the foam. She stepped onto the surface, hugging the stuff to her chest and shivering as the custard-like liquid dribbled down her, and started towards the chair again.

She watched as the bunny reached Coco, who had given up trying to defend herself and was leaning back in the chair and giggling, watching them all approach with one eye open. Tamara grinned again and lunged forwards, squashing the whipped cream right into her chest.

Coco screamed as the bunny girl moved her hands around, smearing the stuff all over the fur revealed by her bikini top, and squirmed around as she moved her hands down to her tummy to wipe them off. Amy arrived at the chair and dropped more on her, and the rabbit dipped her hands into the foamy pile to lather it around and cover her front completely.

The two of them turned away as Sadie arrived, and bounded back towards the nearly empty bowl, hearing Coco's giggles behind them. Together, they reached into it and pulled out a handful each. Amy, slightly out of breath, watched Tamara turn to head towards the chair again, but laughed as she slipped and fell face first on to the inflatable surface, right into the pile of cream that she'd been carrying.

Amy stepped over her as she rolled to try and get up, and looked towards the now almost completely white and yellow squirrel girl, who had raised her hands up in front of her messy face to protect herself. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her head, and blobs of cream and yellow gunge dripped down her as she squirmed in the seat. Amy had almost reached her when she heard the loud klaxon signalling that time was up, and bounced to a halt, scraping handfuls of cream from her front and flinging them over at the chair instead.

"Well done, team," Alex congratulated as he picked his way towards the far end of the corridor, taking care not to slip on the slimy surface. "But I think that Coco's quite relieved that your time is up."

Coco nodded, giggling again and trying to catch the handfuls of foam that Amy was throwing at her. A layer of white foamy cream covered almost her entire body, and blobs of it dripped from her hair as she moved. She wiped her eyes and blinked a couple of times as Alex crouched down beside her, grinning out at him from under the clinging white layer.

"That was pretty spectacular," the host said as he looked at her, "and I can hardly see her, so I think you deserve all sixty points for the game." Coco put her arms up in the air and whooped, clapping her hands together and spraying cream out from them.

"But I don't think any birthday humiliation would be complete without this." Alex got up again and started heading towards a switch on the wall. "Happy birthday to you..."

The other team members laughed, and joined in with the lines of the birthday song as Coco shrank back in the chair, shaking her head. On the last note, Alex pulled the wall switch, making a klaxon sound in a jarring discord.

Amy looked up as a trapdoor opened in the ceiling, and laughed, stepping back a little, as a spray of green gunge cascaded down on to Coco. She shrieked again, raising her hands back to her face and waggling her legs as the green stuff splattered all over her, pushing away the white foam as it soaked into her hair and fur.

The squirrel laughed as she leaned forward, letting the last gungy blobs slap down on to her back. She opened her eyes and stretched her hands out to the sides, looking around at the large green splat mark that had formed around the chair. Shaking her head to get some slime out of her hair, she smiled again, bouncing in the seat.

"I hope we've given you an experience to remember," Alex said as he moved towards her again, offering his hands to help her up.

"Oh, yes," she laughed as she was hoisted upright again. Putting her hands behind her head, she wrung her hair out, grimacing as the stuff slid down her back.

"All right, the sixty points there brings you up to a huge five hundred and ninety-five for the three rounds so far," the host continued, "so I don't think you've got anything to worry about as we head into the last building! We've got to head to the security station now, but first of all we've got to make a stop-off back at the chemical plant. Follow me!"

Pointing enthusiastically down the corridor, he took off at a run again. Amy smiled as she struggled to keep up - the start of the last round on IZ always involved gunging a guest that one of the contestants knew, and she couldn't help imagining seeing one of her friends getting covered. Grinning at the thought, she almost crashed into Alex as he suddenly stopped at a door, keying in a combination on the number pad next to it.

"We've got a bit of a surprise for one of you in here," Alex said as the door hummed open, turning towards the others. "And I think it'll make up for a sliming earlier." Amy looked at his face carefully to see if she could guess who it was from his expression - he seemed to be looking at Sadie, but she couldn't be sure.

She forgot about trying to guess who was on when she walked into the room - it was a place she recognised instantly. One wall of the dingy room had two heavy-looking metallic panels mounted on top of each other, and she remembered that they concealed a tank behind them. On the wall to its side, there was a large screen. The major addition to the room, though, was a wide cylindrical tank supported by four legs. Beneath it, directly under a large spigot, there was a green blowup chair facing the tank on the wall.

Amy gasped as she felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned and looked up to face Alex.

"That's your seat, Amy," he grinned, nodding towards it.

Amy swallowed, looking up at the large vat, and walked distractedly towards the chair, supported by Alex's arm around her shoulder. Climbing into the chair, she first looked up at the threatening valve above her head, then noticed a large lever at the side of the seat. Looking across at the scratched metal panels, her heart got faster as she wondered who was behind them.

Alex walked over to the section of wall opposite her as the other three girls lined up at the side of the room to watch. "Ready, Amy?" he asked. She nodded. "Let's see who you've got the chance to slime." Thumping on a button next to the panels, he stepped back as the top one slid into the ceiling with a  mechanical grinding noise.

Amy peered into the gloomy tank, leaning forward as she tried to see who it was. Her eyes widened as she saw brown chest fur, and caught a glimpse of one white hand. She gaped in amazement as the panel slid fully into the ceiling. Dexter smiled back at her nervously, lit from above by a soft green striplight and surrounded by blinking panels on the tank's walls.

Her shocked expression turned to a smile as Alex moved towards him, and she leaned back in the seat laughing to herself, thinking that she should have seen it coming.

"Welcome to the Hotseat, Dexter," the presenter started, reaching in to shake him by the hand.

"Thanks", he answered, looking around at the futuristic-style tank. "I think Amy's a bit surprised to see me."

She grinned widely as the host looked across at her. "She's definitely eager to get you slimed, though," he smiled. Amy nodded in agreement as he squirmed, looking a little embarrassed.

The screen turned on as Alex looked back at Dexter. "Here's what's going to happen - Amy's going to ask you three questions from a selection on the screen over there, so she can make it as difficult or easy for you as she likes." The rabbit put his hand over his eyes, making all four girls laugh.

"And if you get all three of them right, we'll let you out of there clean, and Amy will be getting another surprise..." All of them looked at the vat above Amy's head. "But if you get even one of them wrong... well, do you want to see what happens to people who give wrong answers on the Hotseat?"

Dexter smiled, shaking his head as the lights darkened, and a video began playing on the screen - a montage of gungings from the tank that series. Amy giggled as she recognised a few people she remembered from earlier shows being covered in gunk from all angles - the tank's speciality was having two gunge sprayers at the sides as well as the one at the top. She laughed out loud as an already messy reptilian girl struggled under a thick downpour of lumpy black grime, and imagined that happening to her boyfriend.

The three girls at the side cheered, obviously looking forward to it as much as Amy was. Dexter ran his hand over his head, wriggling uncomfortably in the seat as he waited for the game to begin.

"Ready, Dexter?" Alex asked, smiling confidently at him.

"Yeah." The rabbit breathed out heavily, looking to the side at the screen, which was now displaying a list of questions.

"Amy, pick your first one."

"All right... Dexter, how would you write the number 100 in binary?"

Her boyfriend sagged, smiling. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that one..." he said, looking up into the mechanism above him. He paused for a while, counting on his fingers. "One..." he began, holding one finger in his other hand. "One, zero... zero, one, zero, zero?" he answered uncertainly.

Amy looked across at Alex, waiting for him to announce whether it was right.

"Carry on," he said simply. She turned back to the screen, looking up and down the list to find something else that would be difficult to do under pressure.

"What's forty-six by nine?", she asked.

Dexter sat forwards, resting his head in his hands as he counted carefully in his head, nodding as he thought. "Four hundred and fourteen," he said eventually, straightening up and putting his hands back on his lap.

"And..." She looked down the list carefully, searching for what she thought would be a difficult one. "What do the initials TNT stand for?"

"Tri-nitro-toluene," her boyfriend immediately answered, a lot more confidently than she had hoped. He nodded, and sat back in the seat as the lights in the room came up again.

Amy wriggled in the plastic seat uncomfortably as the host just smiled at Dexter, no one in the room making a sound.

"Well, Dexter," he said eventually, "Amy asked you three questions..."

The rabbit nodded, jiggling tensely in the seat. Amy glanced at the other three team members, who were huddled tensely in the corner.

"And you got three... right."

Amy's heart lurched as Dexter's expression went through shock to a wide grin, and he pointed across at her, miming gunge pouring down onto his head with his other hand. She gripped the arms of the chair tightly, drumming her bare feet on the floor and holding her breath as she waited for the cold wave of slime to slap her on the head.

Nothing was happening. Confused, she let her breath out again and looked quizzically at the host, who just smiled.

"About that surprise, Amy... we're not actually going to gunge you under there." The grinding noise started up again, and the lower panel of the Hotseat's front slid into the floor. Amy's mouth fell open as she realised what was going to happen.

Dexter hopped down from his seat as Alex approached Amy. He took her by the hand as she giggled helplessly, still remembering the gungings that she'd just seen replayed. As they got up and passed her boyfriend she turned to hug him, feeling him shaking with stifled laughter as he wrapped his arms around her. Giving her an apologetic kiss on the forehead, he pulled away and smiled as he watched her being shown into the gunge tank. She backed into the hard plastic chair nervously, looking around at the array of dull blinking lights around her.

She swallowed nervously as the bottom panel began to slide upwards again, trapping her in the metallic tank. Looking carefully at the walls, she saw the small protruding gunge nozzles placed at shoulder height, and an obvious large opening on the ceiling.

Her boyfriend was being shown into the inflatable chair that she'd just left. He flopped down into it, looking up into the valve that she had thought was about to cover her, and leaned across to the lever, grinning at her eagerly.

"Dexter, you know you're the first person to have ever escaped the Hotseat?" the host asked him.

"Is it usually more difficult?" the rabbit said back with a grin.

The host chuckled a little. "That's not very fair to Amy, she did try her best..." Both of them looked over at her, and Amy immediately tried to put on her best wide-eyed innocent expression for her boyfriend. She rocked edgily back and forward a little, knowing that a wave of gunge was just moments away. She watched her boyfriend's hand move slowly across to the lever, resting on its grip.

"She looks like she didn't mean it - but she tried to gunge you, so let her see what would have happened!" Alex stepped back from the vat as the rabbit tugged hard on the switch. Amy gasped and looked from left to right as a loud hooter sounded, wrapping her hands around her to shield herself from the slime from the sides, but grinned broadly as her boyfriend vanished underneath a torrent of blue and yellow gunge instead.

He yelped from underneath the thick messy dome that was splattering off him, and bowed his head down to let it hit his neck, his ears flattened down onto his head. Two waves of slime spread out from his shoulders as he looked up at his giggling girlfriend, his face spattered with brightly coloured gunge. He flinched as the downpour flicked forward, the liquid splashing down onto his lap.

As the downpour eased off, he straightened up again, bouncing a little in the air-filled seat under the weight of the drizzling slime. He brought his hands up to his head as a wave sloshed down over his eyes, trying to clear the stuff off.

"You weren't really expecting to be let out of here clean, were you, Dexter?" the host asked, leaning on one of the pillars supporting the vat as the flow drizzled to a halt.

Dexter straightened, raising one hand to his head to straighten out his sodden ears, and grimaced as the slime slid down the back of his neck. He shook his head, shivering as a couple more thick drops spattered on to him, then opened his eyes to look down at himself and the wide splatter mark surrounding his chair.

"My only question is..." he said, catching his breath as Amy snickered at the sight of him, "would that have happened to Amy if she'd been sitting here?"

The host chuckled, pacing across the room so that he was beside the mouse girl. She stopped laughing, anticipating that she wasn't going to escape getting messy either.

"Well, you'll always wonder, won't you," he answered with a grin. "But I think we can let you see what would have happened to you if you hadn't escaped..."

Amy jumped as a siren drowned out Alex's last few words, and she closed her eyes, hunching her neck up as she heard a noise from the two side nozzles. A moment later, she gasped as two streams of goo began spurting on to her sides, and she heard the laughter of the other girls on the team. Wriggling back in the plastic seat, she opened her eyes again and watched as the two translucent green streams played up and down, staining her white fur a light shade of green as they went.

The left stream moved up to her face for a moment and she turned her head away, laughing at the ticklish feeling of the continuing spurts as she wiped at her eyes. She paused a moment as a louder klaxon started up, and kept her eyes closed as she remembered the wide pipe above her. She just had time to raise her hands up in front of her face before she was engulfed by the cool, slimy torrent from the top of the tank.

She kept in that position as she felt the gunge dome out from her head, listening to the wet slapping noise it made as it lapped against the walls of the tank, and wriggled her bare toes in the pool that was forming around them. After a few seconds the flow shut off, and she slowly took her hands off her face and blinked a couple of times, leaning back in the seat as she saw that both she and the tank were now coated in a layer of thick yellow custard-like stuff. The other three team members were cheering for her, with her boyfriend laughing and applauding as he watched. She squeaked as the flow suddenly began again, splattering into her lap and on to her tummy, and put her hands in front of her to shield herself from it.

As the yellow stuff from the ceiling thinned out, the two green streams that had been splurging on to her shoulders also moved back, making a thick pouring noise as the stuff fell into the ankle-deep gunge pool. As the last of the green stuff dripped out of them, Amy looked down at her yellow-coated fur and giggled to herself, then her heart leapt as the soft green light in the tank changed to red. Remembering about the last part of the gunge machine as the klaxon changed to a lower blare, she quickly returned her hands to her face and shivered as she felt a thicker, lumpy column pour on to her head.

She held her breath as the slush glooped down over her, not doming out like normal gunge but clinging to her hair and fur as it oozed down the way. Leaning to the side a little in an attempt to escape it, she allowed it to pour stickily off one side of her head and down her left shoulder as she wiped a splash of the grime from her face. Shuddering again as she felt the lumpy liquid creep down her neck and back, she shifted forwards slightly as the downpour sputtered to a halt.

Relaxing and breathing out as she realised it was all over this time, she slowly opened her eyes and looked around at herself again. She was coated in an unpleasant mixture of yellow and black gunge, which was mixing together to form a deep murky green as it dripped from all over her messy fur. Bringing one hand up to her forehead to catch the oozing black stuff as it slithered from her hair, she smiled and waved out of the tank in response to the watchers' applause, grinning across at the slightly less messy Dexter.

"I know I ask this a lot, but how does it feel in there, Amy?" the host asked her. She brought her hands down from her head, feeling the gunk slither between her fingers as it dripped its way to the floor.

"You should've come in with me," she answered, sticking her tongue out at him as she flicked some of the grime in his direction. He just smiled, and stepped back as the lower panel hummed out of the way again to let her out.

Amy hauled herself up from the messy seat, shivering as she felt the collected slime slide down her as she moved. Dexter stood up too, and straightened as he got out from under the vat, offering his arms for another hug. Eagerly, she wrapped her arms around him, scrubbing the black gunge into his hair as he laughed softly.

"That looks like a happy ending to me," Alex laughed as he watched them. "Dexter got all three questions right, so no points for the team there... but I'm going to give Amy ten for getting slimed so spectacularly. Anyway, there's still plenty of time to make up for it."

Amy and Dexter broke off the hug, an arm each still around each other as they faced the host. "Speaking of which, I think it's time to move on now - are you going to be all right, Dexter?"

"Yeah," he answered, picking specks of the black stuff out of his fur.

"We'll have someone along to show you where to get cleaned up... eventually," Alex grinned. "In the meantime, the rest of you, follow me!"

"Good luck!" Dexter called as the girls filed out of the room around him. He blew a kiss to Amy as she turned around in the doorway, and she returned it before running to catch up with the others. Seeing them vanish around a corner, she dashed over to join them, still wiping black and yellow gunge out of her fur. Feeling heavy because of the clinging slime, she managed to catch up with them slowly after running through a long corridor, and walked breathlessly towards them as they gathered round another door.

"We've got something for the whole team in here," Alex said, pushing on a panel next to the entrance to open it. "You all right, Amy?"

"Yeah." Amy nodded, smiling as she panted for breath, then stepped into the room after the others. She blinked a couple of times as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Like the room with the Hotseat, it was made to look much older than the areas that they had been in before, and floor tiles shifted slightly under her feet as she cautiously walked forwards.

Tamara was already heading towards the only visible feature of the room, which was a set of dark inflatable chairs, arranged in a square to face each other. Amy followed her, and glanced up as she sat down to see exactly what she was expecting - cylindrical canisters of gunge were mounted above each of the seats.

Coco and Sadie took the chairs on Amy's left and right as the host closed the door behind them and picked his way over the broken floor, switching on a pocket torch to light his way.

"This is another game where you'll all have to work together," he started as he reached them, leaning on the back of Amy's chair. She twisted round to face him. "It's another questions round, but this time, the time limit is split between the four of you."

The four girls looked up as a set of timers mounted on the overhead canisters beeped into life, showing sixty seconds each. Each of them could see the time above the others' seats, but not their own.

"After you get a question right, you'll have to nominate another team member to pass on to. The aim is to use as much of your time as possible, but the moment one of your timers reaches zero, you're going to go into this."

Amy jumped and lifted her feet as the floor below them jolted. A bright green light shone from the gap that had appeared in the tiles, and soft special effect smoke rose from below as the section in the middle slid away to reveal a pool of murky green gunge.

The girls shifted back a little in their seats as the floor clicked into place, their feet now dangling over the edge of the gunge pit. A couple of bubbles glooped to the surface as they watched. Amy looked up to see Tamara grinning down at it, eager to begin.

"I think we'll let your team leader go first," the host continued, straightening up and wandering casually around to the other side of the group of chairs. Amy blinked as a white spotlight faded in to illuminate her, and swallowed as she heard the timer begin to tick down above her.

"Amy, who played the lead role in last year's film 'Revolution'?"

"Niven," she answered immediately. A buzzer made her jump, and she rubbed her feet together distractedly as Alex read out a different question. She had to make a guess at the answer, but was relieved to hear an electronic bell sound from above her, stopping the timer.

"You're safe! Who are you going to pass on to?"

Amy glanced around. "Tamara," she decided.

The bunny squirmed to straighten up as she listened to her question, then answered correctly. Amy watched as the other three nominated each other in turn, trying to guess what time remained on the counter above her. Eventually, she was nominated again by Sadie, who had spent a lot of time getting questions wrong and only had about ten seconds left on her timer.

Distractedly listening to the ticking of the timer above her as the question was read out, Amy stumbled over the answer as she said it, but still got it right. Looking quickly at the other three counters, she selected Coco, who had the most time left.

Leaning forward, Amy looked down into the slime vat and shivered at the look of the surface of the thick liquid. Suddenly she realized she had been nominated again, and straightened up to face Alex as he read out the question.

"Amy, what are the last five letters of the alphabet, backwards?"

"Z, Y, X", she recited immediately, knowing that this would have been easy if it wasn't for thinking about that canister about to splurge open above her head. "W, V."

"Good! Who's going next?"

She hurriedly glanced around the three timers - all of them only had about ten seconds left. "Coco," she said quickly, and the squirrel sat up as the host turned to her.

"Coco, what number do the keys on a calculator add up to?"

"Um..." The squirrel bit her lip as she thought, tapping her feet on the front of the chair in time to the beeps coming from above her head. Suddenly an alarm shrieked from above her, making her jump and look round at Alex.

"You're out of time!" the host shouted over the noise of the siren. Amy followed Coco's gaze as she looked up at the canister above her head, and saw the catch snick aside to release a downpour of bright green gunge. The squirrel girl leaned forwards, hunching down on the seat as the slime splattered on to her back, thick waves of it splashing out to the sides to spray Sadie and Tamara as well. As the flow continued, Coco's seat began to tilt upwards at the back, and she squeaked loudly as she slithered out of the downpour, flailing her arms as she disappeared into the gunge vat with a thick glooping noise.

As the now empty chair tilted back again, a slimy drizzle still pouring on to it, the other three girls leaned down to watch the pit. Coco burst through the surface spitting out slime, sending a wave of thick liquid splashing into the air and coming back down into the pool with a heavy splatting noise. Curtains of gunge slid off her head as she straightened up in the shoulder-height liquid, leaving a layer of dripping green stuff coating her hair and face. She raised her hands out of the gunge, shivering as the slippery liquid slithered down her arms, and wiped repeatedly at her eyes and nose.

Suddenly another alarm sounded and another green downpour crashed down into the vat from the ceiling. The squirrel girl squealed as it splashed down on to her, moving backwards and bowing her head down to escape the flow, her hands clasped over her face. As it slowed to a messy drizzle, she slid her hands down to clear her eyes, then dipped her arms back into the slime, her gungy face grinning up at the others.

Alex crouched down beside the vat, and she turned to face him, bobbing up and down slightly as she panted for breath. None of her honey-brown fur was left visible underneath the green stuff, which slowly trickled back into the vat from her hair and chin.

"Are you all right in there?" Alex grinned as she wiped at her dripping fringe, shivering at the feeling. Another short wave of gunge glooped down into the vat behind her.

She shrugged exaggeratedly in response, lifting her hands out of the pool and watching the stuff pour back into it.

"Well, how would you like to get the next lowest scorer gunged as well?" Alex asked her. She nodded eagerly in response. "How does that sound to you, Amy?"

"Fine," she said, smiling over at Tamara and Sadie. The skunk girl huddled down a little in the seat, looking up at the tall canister above her.

"Good, because it's you!"

Shocked, Amy heard the catch on her canister sliding aside, and she only just had time to squeeze her eyes closed before she felt the wave of gunge splash on to her head.

Tilting her head to the side to escape the downpour, she giggled as the stuff poured on to her right shoulder, slithering downwards to cover her chest and back. Squirming to the other side, she heard Coco's laughter along with the sound of the gunge splattering down into the vat in front of her.

Amy straightened again, feeling the final drizzle pour on to her head as the gunge oozed and trickled down her fur. She shuddered, and looked down at the laughing squirrel girl. Sliding her hands over her shoulders, she flicked small handfuls of gunge at her as Alex moved to help her out of the vat.

Coco reached up to grab Alex's hands, kicking her legs to get herself out of the gunge pool. Still giggling, she let go of him and smeared a handful of gunge on to his cheek. As he chuckled and wiped it off, she shivered as the green stuff dripped from her fur, forming a pool around where she was standing. The other three girls got up and joined them as the vat began to close again.

"You managed to use most of your time there, so you get forty points for that game," Alex said as he walked out the door. "It's a bit of a trek to our next room - come with me!"

He ran more slowly this time so the girls could keep up, Coco slipping around a little behind them. As they turned a corner he beckoned Amy to run alongside him.

"So who do you want to go into the next game, Amy?" he asked.

She thought for a moment, as Tamara pushed forward to run alongside them, grinning eagerly. "I think it's my turn," she said.

Alex laughed a little. "Well, you've been in the third game in just about every round so far - why break tradition?"

He caught her hand and ran with her a few more paces, then darted to the side of the corridor and pushed open a set of double swinging doors. Catching them as they came back towards her, Amy held the doors open for the other two as they caught up.

The room beyond the doors was small and metallic, with a bank of monitors and controls on one wall. Opposite this console, two curved metal barriers were on the floor and ceiling, forming a closed-off area behind them with a gap in the wall that led into darkness. The other feature of the room was a seat that looked slightly like a dentist's chair - this was mounted on a set of rails that led to another gap in the wall, covered by a set of dangling plastic strips. It looked strangely like the entrance to a ghost train.

"Tamara, this is what we call the Ride - and you'll be pleased to know it's been upgraded a bit since we last used it on the series." He raised a hand to show her into the chair, and she hopped up on to it, twisting round to get comfortable. As she looked around at the other team members, he leaned over her to secure a restraint across her lap.

"It's not that it's dangerous," he explained, "we just don't want you to have the chance to escape!"

The bunny girl shivered, and grinned as he moved back to the others. The chair was facing away from the door it was going to go through, so she could still watch the preparations for the game.

"Okay, you three - Tamara's going to be on the ride and you'll have the responsibility of saving her from whatever happens during it. Come over here and I'll show you..." He led them towards the bank of confusing switches and displays. "You'll be able to see what's happening up there on the row of screens. Throughout the ride, both you and Tamara are going to get clues as to how to let her escape clean, and you'll have to work together to help her out."

The three of them clustered around the console, trying to work out what he meant as he moved over to a large switch on the wall opposite the slightly nervous-looking rabbit girl.

"Ready, Tamara?" he asked, his hand on the lever. As she nodded, he tugged on it and a mechanical whine started up as the chair began to move. The team watched as Tamara was carried slowly backwards through the door, and was spun around to face the direction she was going in as the chair rattled around the corner.

Amy looked along the row of monitors, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Eventually, she came into view on one of them, and the seat ground to a halt as they watched.

"All right, I can see... there are a lot of rows of four lights on the ceiling. The first one's red, blue, yellow, green," they heard her voice coming through the speakers on the panel, already describing the clues she could see. The three of them looked around for a matching set of controls, and Coco pointed to a row of four coloured buttons. She tapped in the sequence that the bunny girl had read out, but nothing happened.

"What's the next one, Tamara?" she shouted. Another sequence was read out, but it had no effect either.

The rabbit looked up again. "Yellow, blue..." She squeaked loudly as a siren went off and a tank opened above her head, splurging a thick column of red gunge into her face. Bowing her head down, she wiped at her eyes as the torrent splattered off the top of her head, creeping down to coat her shoulders. The chair started up again, leaving the ooze drizzling to a halt behind her.

The team hardly had time to react before the chair stopped again, and Tamara blinked her eyes open to look around. The others could see two sections of wall near the ceiling pivoting inwards towards her.

"All right, there are two tip-tanks above me - one of them has a symbol that looks like an upside-down triangle on it, the other one..." She hesitated, craning her neck to see. Amy looked frantically around the length of the console, searching for a matching control, and finally saw it in an array of buttons to the left. Coco spotted it at the same moment and stabbed at it.

"The other one's a circle with half of it black and the other half white!" Tamara called, squirming away in the seat as drizzles of translucent green goo began falling from the slowly tipping tank. Coco looked down to see about four buttons matching the description. "Which half?" she called back, but the bunny had already hunched down ready for the gunging, and as a klaxon sounded she vanished under a wave of green slime poured from the tank above her.

The team watched as the flow subsided, leaving the gel to dribble down the wall. Tamara raised her sticky fingers to her head and wrung out her ponytail, shuddering as the stuff dripped and oozed through her soaked fur. She jumped as the chair began again with a jolt, carrying her into the view of another monitor. As it slowed down, it began spinning slowly, making her open her eyes wide again and look around frantically.

"There are... a lot of nozzles on the walls all the way around me," she giggled nervously, "and there's something written above them - "G, A, a hash sign, B..."

"They're musical notes," Sadie spoke up from Amy's right. She looked down and saw a set of keyboard keys at the front of the console, then stepping towards them and nudging Amy politely out the way, she pressed in the combination that had been read out.

The girls turned back to the monitor to see the chair start up again, the slimy bunny girl still dripping with mixed red and green slime from the gungings before. As the ride continued, she looked up to the ceiling.

"There's a word on a sign in front of me, it's -" Again, her sentence ended in a squeak as two large sprays of foam started up from the walls ahead of her, the chair slowly carrying her towards them.

"What's the word, Tamara?" Amy called out as she moved to a keyboard to her right.

"Psychology! Psychology!" she repeated above the hissing noise, bouncing in the seat as it slid towards the curtain of white gunk.

Looking down, Amy hovered her hands over the keys and jabbed at the buttons. She was normally a fast typist, but having to do it without a screen and knowing what was going to happen made it much more difficult than she would have thought. Tapping the last letter, she jumped at the sound of a buzzer and watched as the bunny girl was carried through the foam spray, giggling and holding her hands out to the sides to defend herself as the gooey white foam spurted all over her.

A noise came from behind the team, and they turned around to see the bunny emerging from the gap in the wall behind them, leaning forward as the chair juddered to a halt in the alcove formed by the curving wall. Amy glanced sideways at the other team members, and they moved away from the console towards her.

"Now, there's just one more thing to go..." Alex started as the three team members giggled at the gungy bunny girl. She wiped a blob of foam off her right side and flicked it at Sadie.

"You see these two levers?" Amy looked around as the host continued, and followed his pointed finger to two levers on either side of the curve out of the wall - one of them was labelled "Activate gunge tank", the other "Release".

"It looks as if it should be obvious which one to pull, but remember that a lot of the machinery here's been modified since it was set up - it could be a trick," he smiled. "It's up to you which one to pull - one of them's going to let Tamara out and give you a last ten points, the other's going to get her very messy again."

The three team-mates huddled together to decide as the rabbit looked up into the recess above her, its contents unseen by the rest of the team. After a moment, they broke apart and looked at the host.

"Reached a decision, team leader?" he asked.

"Yeah." Amy stepped over to the switch that was labelled as the gunge lever. Tamara just giggled, looking up helplessly again as the foamy mixture dripped from her head.

"Go ahead," he nodded.

Amy tugged on the switch, pulling it down, and jumped as the loud blare of a repeating hooter filled the room. Quickly, she looked back at Tamara, who squealed loudly as a wide spray of multiple streams of blue and green slime slopped down on to her from the recess above. They played a little from side to side, coating her completely.

Shaking with laughter, she brought her hands up to catch some of it as the foam and slime from before slid off her. Flicking her ponytail behind her head as the brief but heavy shower eased off, she put her hands on her head and shivered, thick droplets of the liquid dripping from all over her.

"Bad luck," Alex said simply as he moved forward again. "How are you feeling, Tamara?"

The bunny girl, her fur stained turquoise from the gunge mixture, brought her hands up again to wipe at her face. Shaking her head to stop the slime dripping into her eyes, she just stuck her tongue out at him. Chuckling, he leaned forwards a little more and undid the restraint across her lap.

"Well, you did get Tamara covered in gunge, but you got twenty points along the way for saving her from two parts of the ride... and I'm afraid that we've got to head into the last game now," Alex announced as he took her hands and hauled her out of the seat, lifting her over the barrier and back on to her feet. "Amy, this time it's not going to be so much a game as nominating one of your team-mates to get gunged for the good of the team, to get those last points before the final - do I really need to ask who it's going to be?"

All of them turned to look at Sadie, who was biting her lip uncertainly, with her hands behind her back and dragging one toe on the floor.

"Well, we've only got one team member who stayed clean this round," Amy said. Coco and Tamara nodded, as Sadie's smile turned into a nervous grin.

"Sadie, the team leader's spoken - are you ready to go through with this?" Alex asked, taking her by the hand.

"Sure," she answered, worriedly swishing her tail as she waited to see what was going to happen to her.

"Then come with me!" Alex took off at a run, with Sadie stumbling to stay on her feet as the others tried to keep up. They were led out of the room and down the corridor. Eventually it opened out, and Amy recognised that they were in the room that they had started in, with the large door to the final. Suddenly, Alex darted to the side, and headed down another of the four corridors leading away from the hub. She read the word "Hangar" on the sign above the entrance as she followed, and blinked as the team turned the corner into an entirely blue room.

The only features of the room were a set of four capsules that looked like flight simulation machines. Looking up, Amy saw a set of large tented lights on the ceiling - this room was entirely unlike any other they'd been in as it actually looked like a studio, and the blue colour was so that the background could be added into the programme later. Ducking past the first of the machines, she followed the rest of the team as they gathered round the one at the far end. Alex leaned against it as he turned to face them.

"Now, Sadie," he began as she padded her way to the front of the group. "This machine's due to go through the shuttle wash soon, and usually you're not meant to be in one when we start it off - but I don't think that's going to be a problem for us. The only trouble is that the wash station hasn't been checked in a while, and I'm pretty doubtful that it's actually water in there now..."

The skunkette laughed a little as she realised what that meant for her.

"Now, you're going to be taken up and around to the other side of the complex, and we won't be there to save you. It could get a bit intense in there - so I'm going to give you the option of buying some protective gear in exchange for points." He kicked out a box from under the machine, and pointed down to it. "Ten points'll give you these goggles. Twenty for a shower cap, or fifty for all those and waterproofs. But if you decide to go through with this, remember we're giving you 60 points back."

He pressed down on the door's catch, and guided it with his hand as it swung upwards. Amy craned her neck to see inside past Sadie - the interior was gloomy and dark, with a couple of pulsing lights illuminating an inflatable chair that faced a large monitor placed behind protective plastic. After staring fascinatedly for a moment, Sadie turned back towards the team, biting her lip again.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked.

She looked a little uncomfortable, and Amy was about to ask Alex to give her the waterproofs, but Coco spoke first.

"You don't need to get anything!" she suddenly exclaimed eagerly. "Go on, you'll be fine!"

"Get something if you want," Amy added quickly, anxious for her.

Sadie laughed, and looked back at the capsule then at the team again, looking agitated. Suddenly, her expression changed back to a smile, and she turned to Alex.

"I'll do it without anything..." she said, then pointed at the squirrel girl. "...if Coco comes in with me."

Amy grinned at the idea, and turned to Coco, whose mouth was hanging open with surprise. Gently, she placed her hand on the squirrel's back and gave her a gentle push towards Sadie and Alex, making her step unsteadily forward.

Recovering quickly, Coco shook her head to clear it, and skipped excitedly over to join them as Alex took Sadie's hand and helped her up into the gloomy interior. She clambered in after her as the skunkette sat down, bouncing slightly in the seat as she looked upwards at the blank ceiling. The squirrel turned around and squeezed on to the seat beside her, putting her arm around her and resting her hand on her shoulder.

"Both ready?" Alex called to them, his hand on the door again. As they nodded, he hauled it down and clicked it back into place, leaving them hidden inside. Amy and Tamara looked up at him as he turned away from it.

"Now," he said, lowering his voice, "the cameras are away from us for the whole time on this part, so I can show you what's going on in there..." He beckoned with a finger and headed over to the opposite wall, where a small set of monitors was mounted. One showed the interior of the shuttle, complete with the two girls looking around them nervously, and another displayed what they were seeing on the screen - a rendering of a heavy hangar door in front of them.

Alex placed a finger on a button next to the monitors, then silently pointed back in the direction they had come and upwards. Amy looked over her shoulder, then up again, to see two massive tanks that had been hidden by the large lights from the other side. She couldn't help gaping at the size of them - combined, they were almost as big as the chamber below. One was filled with orange liquid, the other with blue, and the pipes below them met in the middle to point straight down at the shuttle.

Amy glanced over at Tamara, who looked similarly impressed, and grinned back at Alex as he started the machine up. They watched the two girls jump as the shuttle juddered around them, their eyes on the screen as it showed the door opening and them moving off.

"How are you, girls?" Alex called into the microphone next to the screens. Coco glanced around, and gave a thumbs up sign, not knowing where to face. Sadie tapped her fingers on her arm of the chair and just nodded a little.

As the simulated flight continued, Amy kept looking up at the tanks above the gently weaving capsule. Suddenly it took a steeper dive than normal, and she looked back at the screen to see it showing that they were coming in to land again.

Sadie leaned over to Coco and whispered something inaudible in her ear as the video they were being shown slowed, the shuttle shuddering again as they watched themselves being guided through a wide corridor on a set of rails on-screen. As a corner approached, they both gaped as they saw a set of on-screen tanks identical to the ones that were really above them loom into view. Amy put her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggling as they both gasped and looked at each other, and they hugged a little more tightly as the machine ground to a halt.

A whine emerged from the shuttle, and a little more light illuminated the two of them as the ceiling of the capsule slid aside. They both looked up to see the tanks being exposed, and flinched again as a loud klaxon began sounding repeatedly. Sadie gripped the arm of the seat tightly as it continued, closing her eyes and slowly grinning, while Coco stared up at the tanks and bounced excitedly. Suddenly Amy heard a loud click sound from behind her, and whipped her head round to see a glutinous cascade of orange and blue gunge drop from the tanks towards the capsule.

Looking quickly back at the monitor, she watched as Coco closed her eyes and faced forwards, a grin on her face as she raised both her arms in the air. Suddenly the deluge slapped down on to Sadie's head, hiding her from view completely, splattering out crazily and covering the squirrel's side as she jerked away from the cold downpour.

Sadie's arm emerged from the messy dome as she raised it up, keeping her other hand around Coco as she wriggled from side to side. Slowly the slop played towards the squirrel, and splashed out from her head, revealing Sadie's expression briefly as she shrieked excitedly. Ducking down, she shook her hand and ran it over her head, opening her eyes again and giggling towards the camera in front of her, only for the gunge to come back and hide her from view again.

Coco shook her head, sending specks of slime flying out in all directions. Her head and shoulders were dripping with blue and orange gunge, mixing into green as it slithered down her. Suddenly she gasped as she felt the shuttle beginning to fill up, and looked down at the ground to see her ankles disappearing into the rising green pool.

Amy, still amazed by the amount of slime that was pouring down on to them, looked around to watch as it glooped out of the tank and down towards the opening, listening to the screams and whoops emerging from the hole in the ceiling. After a moment, she turned back to watch the chaos inside as the gunge level rose up to the girls' knees.

Sadie drummed her legs on the floor, splashing in the thick liquid as she arched her back away from the continuing downpour, a ticklish grin on her face as the slippery stuff slid down the fur on her back. Coco ran her hands through her heavy hair as the stuff oozed up to tummy level, her shocked smile being momentarily hidden by the gunge pouring back and forth across both of them.

Turning back again as it began to subside, Amy watched the flow slow to a drizzle as the two girls were slowly submerged up to their shoulders. Playfully, Sadie gripped Coco's arm a little tighter and pulled her towards her, making her squeak as the ooze dripped on to her head. The skunkette shivered, the slippery green stuff slowly dripping from her hair as she brought her other hand out of the gunge bath to push it behind her head.

"You all right?" laughed Alex as he spoke into the intercom again. A duet of whoops emerged from the capsule as the girls looked at each other's faces. Coco squirmed around in the gloop as she looked around the messy chamber, and Sadie held her gungy hands just above the surface in front of her, her fingers spread to let the slime drip off them. Slowly, she raised one arm over Coco's head and put it around her shoulder to cuddle her again.

"All right - you've more than earned your sixty points! We'll get you back here and cleaned up a bit, then we'll see how you do in the final."

---

Amy stepped into the large cylindrical tank and looked up as she walked forward, examining the cluster of pipes on the ceiling pointed down towards her. She turned back to face the rest of her teammates as the clear door hummed closed behind her, and watched as Alex led them to their positions.  
   
The room that contained the game's final challenge was mostly taken up by a pool of translucent green liquid that stretched about twenty metres from one side of the room to the other. At the opposite end of the pool from the cylindrical tank Amy was standing in, an inflatable raft was hooked to the narrow ledge the rest of the team were standing on. Holding on to Alex's hand, Tamara tentatively stepped on to it and flopped down on to her hands and knees as it wobbled underneath her. Picking herself up, she shuffled to the edge on her bottom and dipped her toes into the green water.

The other two team members were being led into a pair of cubicles at the far end of the room, one at each side. Above each of them was a tank of water, and a set of obstacles stretched out ahead of both of them. These obstacle courses ended with a slide into a foam pit each, with inflatable barriers separating them both from the main pool. After Coco and Sadie had been shut in the cubicles, she watched as the host dashed back towards her end of the room, jumping across to a small platform right beside the large tank.

"Welcome to the final, team! That last 60 points brought you up to a total of..." Alex turned to a counter above Amy's tank, which she heard beeping into life, "seven hundred and twenty-five, which translates into a time of just over three minutes to complete the last challenge. And here's what you have to do in that time..."

He pointed a finger at Tamara, tracing the route she was going to follow as he spoke. "Tamara's going to start - once she's in the water, she'll have twenty seconds to get to the button here to release you two." He pointed down at the front of the cylinder, where a small console flashed just above the water's surface. "If she doesn't make it in twenty seconds, the tanks above you will open..." Amy watched them both look up, Coco shivering at the thought of being sprayed with the cold water. Tamara pushed her hair behind her head, looking back at the host as he continued.

"Once you're released, you'll have to get past the obstacles ahead of you. Watch out for the yellow panels like this one," he gestured towards a glowing floor tile near the end of the course, "because if you step on any of those, your team leader's going to get a bit messy."

This time, Amy looked up to the pipes again, and shuffled a little to the left to position herself under the central one.

"When you get to the end, slide down into the foam pit and find the keycard hidden somewhere in it - once you've got that, get into the water and put it in the right slot here," he continued, pointing down to the console again. "Once they're both in, it's over to Tamara again - a rope ladder's going to fall from the ceiling above the raft there, and she's got to climb up to get the final key. After that, it's just a short swim back to the console, she's got to put it in with the others, and that's it!"

He stepped back a pace, looking round to see if they'd understood. "Think you're going to make it?" he asked, and laughed as he was greeted by a huge cheer from the three girls at the other end of the room. "Just as well, because if you don't, I'm going to have to put you all in here to share the consequences with your team leader!"

He produced a whistle from his pocket. "Good luck, everyone," he said, then paused for a moment before blowing through it, starting the timer.

Tamara immediately slipped into the water and launched herself forward into a powerful front crawl. Even though she had said so earlier, Amy was surprised at what a strong swimmer she was, and she pressed the button easily after only about ten seconds had gone past. She turned around to watch the other two climb down from the opened cubicles, and cheered them on as they started on the obstacle courses.

Amy jumped as a buzzer sounded, and she looked up to see a yellow gunge stream spurt out of one of the pipes. She quickly jerked her head away, but smiled a little as the cold stuff splattered on to her shoulder. Another two buzzers sounded as the girls touched the pressure tiles, and closing her eyes, she squeaked as another couple of slime streams started up to slap against her head.

She opened her eyes, seeing the mixed colours of slime dripping off her head, then flicked her hair back and watched as Sadie emerged from a low crawl tunnel at the end of her section. Without getting up, she crawled over to the slide into the foam pit and slithered down into it face first, sending specks of white foam up into the air.

She emerged from the pile, her face plastered with the thick white stuff, and began hunting around for the hidden key. Amy flinched again at the sound of another buzzer, and closed her eyes in preparation for the gunge wave that glooped on to her head. Looking back at Coco after the brief shower, she saw her jump into the pit at her end too.

Tamara looked back at Amy for a moment, then began wading back through the water towards the raft again to be ready for her next section of the challenge. As she moved, she cheered on the two girls who were hunting around and getting increasingly covered in foam.

There was a shout from Coco, and she held up the key card that she'd found. She slipped towards the inflatable barrier that separated the foam from the water and clambered over it with difficulty, wiggling her hips to get over as she clawed at the other side. Hauling herself over, she tumbled into the green water with a splash.

As she waded towards the card slots, Sadie scrambled into the water as well, slipping in backwards and turning around quickly to bob over to join Coco. They inserted their keys, and turned to watch as a rope ladder fell from the ceiling above the raft that Tamara was approaching.

The bunny girl clambered back on to the raft with difficulty, scrabbling at the surface with her fingers and toes and eventually hauling herself on to its surface. As she looked upwards into the ceiling, a hissing noise started up, and she ducked down as a cascade of white foam spurted on to her from the top of the ladder.

Amy bounced on her heels, joining the other girls' cheers of encouragement as Tamara shimmied up the rope ladder, her face turned to avoid the foam spraying down on to her. Reaching the top, she stretched one arm out and plucked the last card from the top of the hole in the ceiling, then with a quick look down, she let go of the ladder and flopped back down on to the inflatable surface below.

Rolling over as she bounced on the blowup raft, she tumbled awkwardly back into the water with a large splash, the foam on her coming off and floating on the surface. Amy, who was almost jumping up and down with excitement, tried to look up to the timer that she knew was above her but couldn't see it from the inside of the tank. She turned down to the others, who were looking anxiously between it and the struggling bunny girl.

"How long?" Amy mouthed to them, but at that moment they turned away to watch as Tamara broke through the surface again, spitting out water. Lunging forward, she got back into her strong swimming stroke as the other two clapped for her, stepping aside as she approached, the final card in her outstretched hand. With a last leap forward, she stabbed at the keycard slot and jammed it into place.

Amy's mouth fell open as the lights in the room flickered into darkness, a humming noise spinning down to represent the electronics in the room shutting off. Suddenly she shielded her eyes as a strobe light started up and a pair of foam sprayers erupted from either side of the front of the cylinder, spraying from side to side and shooting multicoloured froth into the air that drifted down and settled on the three girls in the water. Tamara raised her hands in the air with a loud whoop, shaking her head as the foam blobs landed on her face, and slowly fell backwards happily into the water. 

Amy grinned happily as the other two girls hugged each other ecstatically, and waved at them as they jumped up and down together in the water. Turning to her, they both waved back, Coco running a hand through her hair to clear up the foam that was still raining down on to them as she cheered loudly. Sadie, still breathless, hung on to her and smiled back.

As the lights above them faded in gradually, Alex stepped out of the dark area he'd been watching from and walked slowly to the edge of the water. He applauded as he moved towards them.

"You've done it, girls! You got the three keys and shut him down with just over ten seconds left on your timer," he pointed up to the unseen counter above Amy's head, "and that makes you our only winners of the series!"

He raised his voice at the end of the sentence to keep it above the loud whoop that Tamara gave as she bounced on her feet, turning to the others and pumping her hands in the air again. The others joined in as Alex opened the sliding door of the cylindrical tank, and Amy ducked out of it to join him on the platform, wiping the remains of the gunge that had fallen on her from her shoulders. The host crouched down and offered his hand to help the other three out of the water, and she stepped back and leaned on the wall, exhausted from the excitement, as he pulled them out one by one.

"So that means I finally get to give these to someone!" Alex moved to the wall beside Amy and slid a dark hatch aside. The girls gathered around to watch as he opened it, and looked at each other excitedly as they saw the four IZ logo trophies that were given to winners of the programme.

Alex reached in and began handing them out, starting with Tamara on his right. "That means you get to go home with this little token, along with your souvenir IZ swimwear and all that other stuff just for being here..." Coco and Sadie grinned down at their awards as he turned to hand the last one to Amy. "And one for the team leader - we couldn't have done it without you!"

Amy looked at the plastic trophy happily, made in the shape of the gear-like IZ logo and with the words "I beat the Industrial Zone" engraved across the base. It wasn't a large reward, but it was the idea of having beaten the challenge that was the real prize. She looked up as Alex turned to face the opposite wall, putting one hand on her shoulder and getting her to turn around with him. One of the wall screens was now displaying the scoreboard for the series, with them at the top.

"And with your total of 725 points, you're..."

"Alex!" Suddenly the electronic voice boomed out angrily across the room, making the girls jump and turn to face the source of the noise as a red light shone from inside the cylinder. Slowly, its door opened automatically. "Come here."

Amy glanced over her shoulders at the others, who like her were just remembering what happened the last time a team had won on the programme. Tamara's expression, still shocked at the loud sound of the voice, slowly turned into a grin as Alex hesitated.

"Do I have to?" he asked, looking vaguely at the roof with the speaker. "They beat you, you've got to be fair about that." There was no response.

"Well, team, it looks like I don't have a choice." Alex stepped towards the open door, acting reluctant as he leaned forward to look up at the pipes above its floor. With his hand on the tank's frame and one foot inside, he looked back over his shoulder and grinned at them. "Unless any of you want to come in here with me?" he asked.

Tamara immediately put her trophy back down, and with another loud whoop, skipped towards him and squeezed into the large tank underneath his arm. The others exchanged glances, then did the same, climbing into the cylinder as the bunny girl tugged at Alex's arm to pull him right into the centre of the gunge tank.

"All right, Tamara, I know..." he chuckled as he turned to watch the others come in. "Can someone get that door for me?" he asked. Coco turned and pulled it closed with a click, then scampered over to join the others as they clustered around the host.

"Now, normally I would have to be outside pulling the lever to slime you all, but I'm sure the computer has a way to..."

He was cut off by the loud ringing of an alarm, and Amy looked up to see a massive torrent of green stuff being released from the wide pipe above them all. Closing her eyes, she felt Alex flinch down as the gunge slapped noisily against his head, and a moment later shivered at the feeling of the slippery stuff splattering on to her fur.

Keeping her eyes closed as she heard the other pipes starting up, she stepped back from the group and turned away, letting the slime splash across her back. Turning around and carefully blinking her eyes open, she giggled at the sight of Tamara pushing against the host to keep his head under the gunge flow, with the dark and light colours mingling as they splattered crazily off his head. Sadie and Coco had stepped back as well, and were exchanging glances as the tank filled up with mixed green gunge around them.

Alex jerked forward suddenly, and Amy laughed out loud as she saw his shocked expression, the thick green slime on his head and face slowly dripping from his chin. He stumbled forwards a little out of the main flow, wading unsteadily in the knee-deep pool, and turning back to Tamara, gently but firmly pushed her sideways into it.

The bunny girl gave a squeal that became muffled as she was enveloped by the gunge flow, and she lost her balance and sat down heavily as she fell over. The host grinned as she rolled away and got up into a kneeling position, her ears and ponytail hanging heavy with thick green slime.

As the alarm sounded again, Amy felt the level rising to her hips, and dipped her hands into it to scoop slime out her way so she could move towards him. Suddenly, Coco and Sadie called his name and together splashed a wave of gunge towards him, which splatted against his front as he turned around to face them.

Amy covered her mouth to stop herself from giggling as Alex slowly brought his hands up to wipe at his eyes. The main gunge flow was easing off now, leaving them all in a waist-deep slime pool, but his top half was still plastered with bright merging colours. Opening his eyes as he flicked the slime off his hands into the pool, he turned towards Amy and pointed at the two girls. With a grin, she joined in splashing them back, laughing as they squeaked and turned away from the waves of slime slapping against them.

Alex turned away from them, wading towards the front of the tank as he wiped the gunge off his face and shoulders. "All right, I've got to..." he spluttered and laughed as Tamara leapt up and clung on to his side, smearing more slime over him with her hands. "I've got to finish the show now!" he protested, gently prizing her off him and depositing her back in the pool.

Amy looked over at the bunny girl as the host made it to the front of the cylinder. He leaned forward against it exhaustedly and was hardly able to stop laughing as he did the final speech to the camera. Tamara re-emerged from the slime, heavy curtains of gunge sliding away from her as she straightened up. She was totally covered in the green stuff, her yellow fur completely hidden, and she shivered as it slowly dripped and slid down her.

Putting a slippery arm around Amy, Tamara brought her over to join the other two giggling girls in the middle of the tank, forming a group hug. Sadie's hair was heavy with the mixture of slime and was dangling messily over her face.

"Enjoyed yourself, girls?" the host said over his shoulder.

Amy joined in the cheer and closed her eyes, knowing what was coming. Another gunge spray sputtered into life, and she giggled and squeaked as it rained down on the four of them, a muddy spattering noise being made as the drops glooped on to the surface.

The hug broke off, and Amy ran her hands over her head again, wiping at her eyes and slowly opening them to look around at the scene around her. The tank was filled waist-deep with the green gunge mixture, with streaks of it clinging to the walls and window at the front. The other three girls, like her, had been absolutely coated in it and were visible as little more than dripping green blobs above the surface. As she watched, Sadie lifted her heavy hair up out of her face and, giggling helplessly, flicked it behind her head.

She looked to see where Tamara had gone, and saw her wading forward towards the host as he struggled to the end of the section about applying to be on the programme. Breathlessly coming to the conclusion, he turned towards the girls and beckoned them to join him as he raised an arm up to wave, but yelped as the bunny girl suddenly jumped up and put her arms around him from behind. Toppling back, he lost his balance, and Tamara dodged out of the way in the same trip she'd used on Amy earlier, sending Alex splashing backwards under the gungy surface.

Amy, her face frozen in delighted shock, looked around at the others as the host's arm broke through the surface, sending specks of green stuff flying up as he struggled to steady himself. Slowly, his head emerged, and he got up, eyes firmly closed as the ooze slid around and off him. He moved his hands up in front of him, shook them to get rid of some of the slime, and flicked the stuff out of his eyes, his face breaking into a grin as he shook his head.

"You..." he said, pointing a finger at Tamara again and shuddering as the gunge dripped from his arm. He was as completely coated as the girls now, with the thick slime covering his fur from head to toe. "I think this is a fight that I just can't win," he laughed as he turned back to the window.

A couple of stage crew members were approaching to let them out, and suddenly Amy saw they were accompanied by Dexter. She waved at him as they watched from the other side of the perspex barrier, exchanging amused glances.

"Want to let us out of here, Blue?" Alex asked, shivering as he raised his head to talk to one of them.

The reptilian girl he had addressed looked him up and down again. "I don't know, I think that we should leave you in there a while - you had it coming to you after all that time!"

Amy grinned up at him as he put a hand into the slime and flicked a wave against the front of the tank. It hit it with a wet slapping noise and slowly slithered down it, leaving a gooey film behind. Laughing, she moved over to the switch beside the cylinder and tugged it upwards.

As Amy felt the level of slime in the tank slowly falling, she looked back up at the gunge-coated red wolf again. When she'd come in she had never expected the team to win, but seeing him like that would definitely be the highlight of an experience she'd never forget.

If you want a character of yours to appear on Industrial Zone, leave a comment on my FA account (~iron-k) with any suggestions!