[Gretin]

To the peoples who have actually been reading this, sorry this has been such a long time coming, but here is chapter 12 at last. It's been a very slow process putting this one together, but I think it's about ready now. But, I do want you commenters to tell me this: do you think this chapter ended a bit too abruptly? Just a thought I had...

Chapter 12: Refinery Wanderings

Shortly after Sefon arrived at the village of Haupet, Scorp was awakening at the Refinery. He came round to find himself in one of those generic prison rooms that all industrial facilities seem to have, except for one small difference - he was hanging upside down from his feet. "Well, of all the undignified..." Scorp said aloud. He looked around the room for some way to get out, he knew the shackles wouldn't be much trouble, but that wouldn't be a lot of use unless he could get out of the room.

He eventually found what he was looking for; a crack under the door. It wasn't much, but it was enough. He bent upwards towards his shackles and held a glowing hand up towards them. A few seconds passed, then the shackles suddenly opened, dumping Scorp ungracefully on the floor, head first. Jumping to his feet, he made his way, a little unsteady, to the door, and put his hands down to the crack. He tried to put his fingers underneath the door, but they wouldn't fit. He tried kicking at the bottom of the door, "Ow!" Not a good idea. Okay, this was going to need a bit of thought. He stepped back away from the door and put his hand up to his chin.

He remembered hearing the chief saying something along the lines of, "Don't always expect to get what you want through force, try a little persuasion sometimes." Pondering this, he sat down and began concentrating all his energy on that door, trying to work the mechanism and open it normally. Closing his eyes, he could, in essence, see all the cogs, switches and even just bits of random junk all working to hold that door shut until someone pulled the switch. He tried to "lift" the door by the mechanism, but somewhere, somehow, something was locking it all in place. Finally, losing his temper, he jumped up and bashed the door with a red glowing hand. This succeeded in making a rather large dent, so he slashed at it again and again until he had made a hole in it big enough to climb through.

He grinned, "Ah, Chief, maybe so, but sometimes a bit of brute force gets the job done just fine!" His grin faded as his ears picked up the distant mechanical sound of slig's pants and the pattering sound of glukkon's feet. He looked around for a hiding place, but there wasn't much chance of finding one; the prison cell he had been in was at the end of a passage, and the passage itself was pretty plain. Listening again, he was sure the footsteps were heading this way.

________________________

Heading down the curving passage towards Scorp's cell was Groll the slig, carrying his newly built custom sniper rifle, the connection from scope to mask allowing him to see through it without even looking at it. Beside him was Rector's Refinery's junior executive, Patrick, second in command of the Refinery. Everyone who knew anything about the Refinery knew that Patrick was a complete wimp and pushover; his only source of respect and power was Rector. The pair had a shock when they reached the end of the hallway, a hole was smashed through the door and Scorp was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is he?" asked Patrick, bewildered.

"How should I know?" answered Groll, irritatedly.

"Well, you had better look for him, or I wouldn't want to be in your pants when Rector finds out!"

"Huh! You'll be in as much trouble as me, Patsy!" Groll ran back along the passage to begin searching.

"What did you call me?" Patrick tried his best to look stern and menacing, but he didn't do a very good job. Not that it mattered, Groll wasn't looking anyway.

________________________

Like some sort of four-legged insect, Scorp was slowly but surely climbing his away along the roof of the hallway. He had seen Patrick and Groll coming in and had barely contained a laugh when he saw them walk right underneath him. He had nearly reached the door when he heard a shout, "Hey! What's that up there?" Groll's gun had happened to point up towards him while Groll was running, and he'd been spotted! "The mud's on the roof!" shouted Groll.

Cursing, Scorp quickly let go of the roof and dropped neatly down on top of Groll's head, knocking him to the ground. The shot that had been intended to put an end to Scorp went flying past and richocheted off the walls. Scorp jumped off Groll and turned for the door.

"Hey, stop! I demand you to stop!" Patrick was hopping pathetically after him. Scorp turned and held up his hand, palm towards the glukkon. Patrick fell backwards to the floor as if he had jumped into an invisible wall. Scorp turned to run again, but then he saw that Groll was scrambling to his feet and getting ready to take another shot at him. Holding his hand up in the same manner as he had done to Patrick, he watched in satisfaction as Groll's pants malfunctioned, dumping him headlong on the floor again. Then, as he focused on Groll's rifle, the red light showing in the scope slowly faded to black, effectively blinding Groll's "third eye," for now at least.

Scorp turned quickly, and ran to the end of the corridor. Then, as he saw the lever by the door it controlled, he stopped running and thought for a moment. He grinned, then, using his glowing hand of power trick again, he swiped horizontally at the bottom of the switch and cut most of it off. That slig would find that pretty hard to pull! He walked out of the door and turned to look for another door control. Sure enough, there was another switch on this side of the door as well, so he casually walked over and pulled the switch, shutting the door down. "That ought to hold them long enough for me to get out of here without an alarm," he thought, and leapt up to the roof to start climbing along it again.

He soon found what he was looking for, there on the roof was a ventilation shaft, plenty big enough for him to fit in. As for the cover, he could take care of it easily enough. Moving up close to the vent, he grabbed hold of the cover and started pulling on it. After a few yanks it gave way and came out. He looked around for a moment and then just decided to drop it. As he clambered through the entrance into the shaft, he heard the resounding clang of metal hitting metal. "If anyone's down there, they'll have a hard time working out how that got down there!" he thought. He turned the way that seemed closest to the direction of the nearest exit and started crawling through the shafts.

After some time of crawling through what seemed to be endlessly repetitive tunnels Scorp found himself up against a dead end. He thought for a moment, then decided that it would be better to go through the vent at this end, rather than turning around and going back to the last vent. He was about to smash through the cover when he heard sligs talking below:

"Hey, you, are you coming with me or what?"

"Screw you, Verd, I'm outta here!"

"What? Wait, where are you going? Gah, whatever, man, I can make it on my own!"

Scorp heard the mechanical sound of a slig walking and, looking through the vent, he could just make out where the slig was. By the look of it, he seemed to be heading roughly in the direction of the shaft. Scorp started calculating when he needed to make his move, it would work if he did it right about.... NOW!

He smashed down through the vent and landed directly on top of the unsuspecting slig who had been walking underneath. But before Scorp was able to silence him, the slig let out a loud "Help!" and Scorp soon heard the sound of a slig running back towards this room. He cursed and stomped his foot down firmly on the slig's head. Verd let out a yelp, then spoke no more. But the damage was already done, before long the other slig would be here!

Scorp looked around and, seeing another passage leading the opposite way, he ran through it; he didn't want to kill any more sligs than necessary. By now the other slig had reached the room Scorp had been in before and he could hear the slig talking:

"Verd! Verd? Talk to me, Verd!"

Scorp didn't wait to hear more, he ran to the end of the passage and found himself in front of another door. This one also had a lever next to it, so he walked to and pulled it, then walked back in front of the door to wait for it to open. The door slid slowly downward, and there, standing in the doorway was one rather large looking big bro slig, gun in hand! It responded instantly by swiping upward with it's arm that had the gun in it, catching Scorp smartly on the chin and throwing him backwards to the floor.

End of Chapter 12