*blows the dust off of the topic* yeah i know its been awhile, but the good news is that this fic is finally finished, i just need to type it into Word. So for all my fans out there...here are two chaps today *grin*.
Chapter 6
The new sliglet, who Spider has named Tok, was completely healed physically, but mentally a lot of work was still needed. The only ones Tok would allow near him was Spider, his brood, and mudokons. He fled from any grown sligs, even Hak. Whenever Spider was walking about through the village with them, Tok would stay right under him the whole time. Several times Spider tried to coax him onto his back with the others, but most of the time he would refuse. When he did comply, he would flatten himself against Spider’s body as close as he could, and not budge until Spider said for him to get off. He still snapped at the other sliglets once in a while, but for the most part tolerated them. It did take a while for Spider to get him to sleep in the same bed as the rest of his brood, but he managed. Now he often found Tok at the bottom of the ‘sliglet pile’ when he went to wake them up every morning.
One day, Bea offered to watch over the brood for him so he could take the day off. Spider agreed and went for a walk.
As he was walking along the bank to a dry riverbed (a very familiar river bed in fact), he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. There was something in the riverbed, something metallic. He made sure there wasn’t any floods approaching before sliding down the bank and walking over to it. All he could see was a faint circle. Curious he started digging around it, revealing more of the object. As he dug it started to look familiar to him and he started digging more eagerly. Eventually, he managed to out what was once his pants. It wasn’t in very good shape; water had rusted many areas and dirt and sand was in every nook and cranny. He dragged it back up the bank, took some vines, and managed to strap it onto his back. He then trotted back to the village.
“Spider…what on Oddworld is that?” Bea asked when she saw Spider return with his pants strapped to his back.
“It’s my pants.” Spider said as he shrugged them off and set them on the ground in front of him, “Well, what’s left of ‘em…”
“They do look like they are in pretty bad shape.”
“Yeah…hopefully I can get ‘em working again…” Spider started poking around the pants, “Now where was that…ah there it is.” He found and opened a small compartment, and took out several tools, “Looks like these made it ok…How was my brood today?” he asked as he started cleaning out the sand the best he could.
“They were fine. They are asleep now.” Bea smiled, “Tok looks like he is getting better.”
“He does?” Spider looked up, smile on his face.
“He seems to be getting used to having grown sligs around him. He still acts apprehensive, but he doesn’t flat out flee from them. He even played with the others a bit as well.”
“That’s good…that’s really good. I hope this improvement continues…” Spider rumbled happily.
Chapter 7
Spider looked up from working on his pants to see Ner staring at him right in the face.
“What is it Ner?” he asked.
The sliglet just squeaked and started climbing all over the pants, looking it over curiously.
“Curious little bugger.” Spider chuckled as he shooed the sliglet away, “Go play with the others.”
Ner squawked in disappointment, but complied. Spider watched as Ner rejoined Bas, Rik, and Tok in a game of tag. He smiled as he watched them, happy that Tok was starting to act like a normal slig.
Confident that they will be all right for the time being, Spider turned his attention back to his pants. Over the past few days he had been able to clean out most of the dirt and sand and was now checking to see how bad off the electronics were. So far it looked like he only needed to replace a few parts and those he could easily scrounge off of spare slig pants. From the looks of it, he will be able to get them fully functional again, still this was the biggest maintance job he ever had to do on them.
Suddenly he heard Bas call to him and he looked up to see what was wrong. He saw Bas, Ner, and Rik all standing next to each other squawking and honking angrily at someone or something. He couldn’t see who or what it was as there was a tree in the way.
Where’s Tok? he thought.
He got his answer a few seconds later when he saw Tok suddenly flew out from behind the tree and landed with a hard thud not far from the rest of the brood. Then he saw a grown slig approach Tok; a look of hate was on his face. The slig reached down to grab Tok again and with an angry howl Spider charged….
|