another chapter here, my beautiful people! this one is about Grozit Jr, whom is the favourite character of a couple of people i've spoken to... i had been planning this fic ahead, but then i realised i hadn't left a place for the Grozits, so i wrote this, to open up the possibilities. most of what will happen will have been planned ahead, but anything involving these two will be totally improvised...
oh yeah, i noticed that, by accident, i referred to Int as Jal during the last few paragraphs of the last chapter... i'm quite miffed off that no-one spotted that...
CHAPTER 55
“Unk…” Grozit Senior sat up. “What… Where… Oh, shit, I’m in a cell, aren’t I?”
Groz nodded. “Yup.”
Grozit sagged back down again. “Oh, ****…” He lifted his handfeet to cover his face, and lay there for a while, unmoving except for the rhythmic up-and-down movement of his chest. Then he sat up, and rested his head in his hands, dejectedly. “I should never have let Snikkit take control.”
Groz rolled his eyes, and lay down. “Have you only just realised?”
“That idiot isn’t as clever as he thinks he is, you know!” Grozit stood up. “He only convinced… I mean, he only took control because I don’t have a good head for figures, but that isn’t important! I still ran the ****ing factory!”
“Yeah, of course you did, dad…”
“Not just the factory, but the whole ****ing operation, I mean, I had Supervisor Dran and the Director to look after their own sections, but I was overseeing the whole thing! Snikkit may have experience in looking after the factory, but I’d like to see how he manages MY job!” Grozit began pacing the cell. “I bet he’s screwing the whole thing up already…” Pausing, he lifted the food bowl from the floor. “Look at this! Soup!” Angrily, he threw the bowl to the ground, splashing the soup across the floor of the cell, and making Groz rise from his bunk in concern. “Who does he think he is? Who does he think I am? Soup? What kind of food is that for someone whose little toe probably has more business experience than Snikkit will ever have?” His anger spent, Grozit sat back down on his bunk. After a pause, Groz followed suit, looking at his father with concern in his eyes.
“Look, dad, you couldn’t have helped it, he had those drones programmed to obey him, what could you have done?”
Grozit didn’t answer; his gaze was directed to the floor. After a brief pause, Groz realised that his father was looking at a specific point. Following his gaze, Groz found himself looking at the fallen soup bowl, now empty, lying upside down on the carpet.
“Junior?”
“Dad?”
“How did that happen?”
“I don’t know what you mean, dad…”
“Like **** you don’t know!” Grozit stood, and walked towards the bowl. “How the **** did that soup bowl I threw end up
outside the forcefield?”
“Look, I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d – Don’t do that!”
Grozit withdrew his handfoot, since a small laser blast from the drone melted the bowl the moment his hand left the forcefield.
“It’ll zap anything that goes outside where the forcefield should be!”
Grozit stared at the Drone, suspiciously. “But the forcefield isn’t there any more, right?”
Groz nodded. “Yeah, but that won’t be much use to us right now.”
Grozit crouched for a moment, thinking, then he reached over for the tray that had held the bowl of soup. Before Groz realised what he had planned, Grozit had thrown it out of the cell, in the opposite direction to the door. The Drone chased it, its laser-sight dancing over the polished wooden surface.
“What are you-”
Before Groz could get any further, Grozit was already at the doorway and accelerating down the corridor. Making a split-second decision, Groz followed his father through the door, just as the Drone vaporised the tray and turned back to watch the cell…