[mainard]

and now for the introduction of three new, crucial characters. all of these characters were created so long ago... I'll post their backstories in a separate thread soon.

The whole compartment shook. Boxes, stacked loosely on the metallic floor, their towering, leaning forms barely lashed into place by the careless restraints of the baggage checkers tilted precariously, groaning with a disturbing tone and constantly threatening to collapse. Dust sifted down, clogging the already dank, stuffy air, the stink of petroleum almost rendering the air unbreathable.
The compartment shook again, rattling disturbingly. Boxes began to shift, leaning into a turn, as a faint gee begins it’s gentle, insistent tug.
With a faint whimper, one of the huddled, hidden figures in the dark recess of the compartment began to slide, the soft scrape of mudokon toenails against the floor almost unheard over the detritus of random sounds. The shadowy figure slipped out of the pool of darkness he had been huddled in, slipping slowly but helplessly across the floor, his toes splayed and scraping at the slippery metal. Cursing softly, he caught ineffectually at the ropes on a boxes stack, slipped once again, and continued his slide. Slipping in and out of shadows, the helpless figure slid a few more inches, sliding…
A form hit his chest, this one warm, organic and mudokon. Air whooshing from his lungs, his arms wrapped around it on reflex and he held on, clinging fiercely. As the gee began to ebb, his impromptu savior turned toward him, a glare in his dark, alien eyes. His voice came out a strained, almost silent hiss "Would you watch out what you’re doing? We’re trying not to get noticed here… get off me!" A hand struck him, not hard but rather callous. Testier than even his normal state, he turned, bristling towards his savior, antagonist and companion.
A harsh repartee on his tongue, he opened his mouth-
The voice was calm, and spoke directly into his mind. From the way his companion’s head rose, he knew they were both being spoken to. It wasn’t the Lady… that only left one voice he would be hearing…
~Now is not a time for fighting… now is a time for waiting. And patience. Even you two may understand that. So calm… relax… and simply wait~ Sympathetic, the voice continued, pouring like a balm over their minds ~I know you are testy. You are both on edge. That is an understandable reaction… just calm down and enjoy the ride…~
Staring upwards into the gloom, the two figures, huddled together, nodded contritely and peeled apart, shrugging slightly away from each other. Finally getting a grip on the floor, the first figure paused, leaning against a box and gently nursing his wrist. His claws dug into his skin slightly, beginning to scratch-
"Charley. Don’t do that."
Looking up was a reflex. His blind eyes, clouded with murky cataracts, blinked stupidly in the gloom, opening wide as if they could still see. He turned unerringly to the speaker, though he needn’t have even turned to gaze upon his subject. Seeing with a sight having nothing to do with eyes, he turned, reguarding his companion. Having long learned to get along without his eyes, he let an inner light guide him, finding the souls of others casting forth an illumination more revealing than anything light could conceive of, much less show. His companions shone more than enough to illuminate this small space. Had he been alone however, he would have been helplessly blind once again…
Mortified, Charley removed his hand from his wrist, disentangling his long, sharp nails from his skin. Or what was left of it. Ashamed, he wrapped his arms around his shaggy shoulders, the dry rustle of his affliction filling his ears. The clinging flakes and shreds of dead, white skin hung in tatters all over his body. The effect was almost pretty, in a gruesome sort of way, the dead and shredded skin hanging like disgusting, ruffled down. It overall made him look rickety, feathery and hideously ill. His ‘hair’ tassle hung in tatters, a grayed version of it’s former glory, laid against his ruined, snowy white skin. He had been scratching more recently. Though he could barely feel some things sometimes, recently his skin, deep beneath the layer of tough dead flakes, itched with a maddening fire, a fire that sometimes left him weeping with frustrated madness on the floor. He had been shedding enough recently. He knew he shouldn’t aggravate the already hopeless situation.
He couldn’t help remembering the treatment that had plunged him into his state of artificial leprosy; the overenthusiastic application of the torture serum. It was designed to heighten the sensitivity of the skin, rendering a single claw dragged down the chest an unbearable agony. A normal dose was about a tenth of a bottle, more than enough to work. At the end, fourteen bottles had been used up, for no other reason than to hear him scream. His skin had died, his nerves rotting from the inside out from the OD’d serum. So little he could touch now, so little he could feel…
His Lady Senhsamelle never hesitated to tell him how ugly he was.
Pulling out of his memories, he hung his head, the expression on his blind face contrite. His companion studied him, wanting to be satisfied of the truth. Seeing him honestly willing to avoid his self destructive habit, he nodded his head.
"I’m sorry Dirk."
His companion smiled. "It’s okay. I know it itches…"
Dirk, running a hand along his arm self consciously, dragged his fingertips through a slick of oil, his hand gently spreading the black liquid across his skin. Damp, black and oily, his skin was dark, dark as Charlie’s was a corrupted white, lying beneath the layer of crude, black oil. It shone on his skin, a beautiful, soiled rippling prism of colors spreading across his flesh. Charley’s eyes were a cloudy white, the swirling cataracts rendering him blind. Dirk’s were dark. And haunting. Oil permeated him everywhere. It oozed from his skin, ran in his veins. It saturated every muscle and lay in every organ, between every organ, everywhere. Even in his eyes. His eyes were a jet black, shiny… only an eerie, disconcerting halo of pure white surrounded the pupil. As he ran a finger through the slick black liquid, it sang to him, in his mind, his Odd thanking him for the caress in his own, wordless way.
The two avatars sat uncomfortably in the ugly surroundings. Turning as one, they gazed upwards in the faint gloom, to the faint, barely discernible form of their third companion and member of their team. The shadowy shape sat easily on a shelf in the uppermost boxes, quite unconcerned by the compartment’s frequent lurches. It was kind of odd. Although one avatar looked half dead and the other soaked in toxin, both avatars were still living, still qualified as being alive. Their third member could never be mistaken for living, even in the most forgiving shadows. Light, he sat back on the boxes, comfortable. His legs were crossed, as were his arms, and a grin was spread across his face. His lips cracked, the mummified flesh broken in small, wrinkled lines, dust drifting down with every slight movement. Thin, brown and dried, the softly smiling, animated corpse sat easily, the ancient railroad tie that had been driven through his torso, right below his ribs which had originally held him pinned to the wall where he had died he had wedged securely between two boxes, holding himself in place with this rather gruesome, unorthodox method. He grinned, lips sifting sand again and checked his hands, readjusting the long, rusted nails piercing the palms. Checking the companion nails on his feet with his toes, he raised one hand, the nails long and sharp, having grown long after he was dead, and softly and purposefully pressed the twin hilts of the utility knives, jutting from his empty sockets. His eyelids hugged the metal that had robbed his dying sight, securing the blades where they has been thrust at the time of his murder. Having committed no crime but being at the wrong place at the wrong time, he had been murdered pointlessly, merely to keep the slave population of his factory in line. Having dried in the arid sun above the front entrance to his factory, he had been awakened when Charley had inadvertently summoned him with his sorrow. Now well and truly dead, he sat, swinging his brown, stick thin legs impishly. His hand caressed his neck, where his throat had been slit.
Dirk shook a finger at him, the talon unnaturally long. "speaking of not scratching anything, you shouldn’t mess with that. You’ll tear your own head off."
The laugher was within his mind. ~Rest well fellahs. We have a long road ahead of us. and then…"
Dirk’s eyes blazed. "Then… the destination." His eyes were far away, watching and listening to something only he could hear. His mouth moved slowly, his voice a breath. "Don’t worry master… I’m coming. We’ll save you master. You’ll see. We’ll murder that glukkon… and then you’ll be free…"
The other mudokon avatars smiled, leaning back for the long hours ahead, as the train roared on, thundering across the rough mountains of Oddworld, towards the isolated fortress/factory that was the Dark Seas Oil Refinery.