Hi, this is my first attempt at an Oddworld fiction and incidentally my first post on the forum, so I’d just like to get a few things said before I start.
Sorry if I make mistakes.
This fanfiction is vaguely an alternate universe.
$ are used for Dollars, and £ for Pounds, so I’m going to use ¥ for Moolah. Makes it easier for all of us.
Another thing, has anyone ever being just inspired and had to write? Well, this is what this is – in a nutshell. I don’t own an Xbox and I haven’t played Stranger’s Wrath (which I’m sorta annoyed over I can tell you) but I found out about it and saw a couple of pictures of Stranger.
And I got inspired.
And the travesty below is what I came up with… so I’m really, really sorry it sucks…
I would have put it on my usual fanfiction site but the archive for Oddworld is pretty poor, and if I want to know if I’ve written something worth the effort I suppose I should ask the experts on the subject right?
So here it is. Just please don’t be too harsh on me for it…
And just a
WARNING! Don't read if you can't take generous amounts of fluff...
If it’s too horrible I’ll take it off.
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath
Oddworld Just Got Stranger
By Lobo Diablo Lone Wolf
The Fluffy Author
Arachnophobia On Overdrive
Bailey sat on a mouldering log that was rotted all the way through and covered in bright green moss and glared intensely at the offending pieces of splintered wood in her hands. The vehemence of her stare did not and could not make the broken fibres fuse together, however fierce it was. The javelin was snapped into two pieces and there was nothing Bailey could do about it.
“Damn…” she muttered to herself, “That sucks.” Bailey tossed away the bottom half of the broken spear with a mildly annoyed sigh and defeated expression. For a moment she held the remaining fragment of the spear in both hands before her face and eyed the dull glimmer of the twilight on the roughly hewn Mudokon spearhead.
After a minute Bailey, still eyeing the blade reached back and delved in the back pocket of her pants. She brought out a pair of black fingerless gloves and pulled them on before taking hold of the spear blade and dislodging it from it’s groove in the broken javelin shaft. She tucked the actual spearhead into the pouch on her belt and got rid of the other half of the javelin. Finally she stood up, brushed off her pants and set off walking again.
The only problem was she didn’t have any idea whatsoever where she was going…
Bailey had wandered aimlessly for three days now. Three days since she had seen another sentient creature that didn’t want to eat and/or insult her, three days since she had seen a friendly or familiar face, three days since she’d had anything decent to eat (which was probably the worst thing as Bailey was
always hungry).
Because three days ago the Mudokons had opened a haphazard, wayward bird-portal in the middle of chaos for Bailey to escape through. Only it had dumped the teenager alone in Odd only knew where.
Bailey sighed as she trudged through the- well she didn’t know
what exactly she was walking through. The only comparison she could make was that it reminded her of the Amazon jungle. Complete with virtually impossible numbers of biting insectoids.
She slapped one that had landed on her arm.
The tree canopy overhead bathed everything in a translucent green hue and the air was close and humid making Bailey sweat and seeming to attract the biting insects even more.
She swatted another bug irritably with a little more violence then was really wise as now her arm sported a red hand mark that sort of stung.
Why didn’t she have the intelligence to wear something with full-length sleeves? Why did everything go from bad to worse? Why couldn’t anything just go normally for once? Why did everything she did come back to bite her in the butt?
And most importantly, why couldn’t she get anything to eat?
Bailey was contemplating these ‘mysteries of the universe’ when she blundered right into the ‘bad to worse’ situation that seemed to follow her around like a persistent tax collector.
She’d just ducked under a branch blocking her way and was heading through a hollow with a patch of brambly, rather violent plants when
something snapped around her leg, tightened and pulled said leg out from under her.
Before Bailey’s overheated brain had processed what was happening she was dangling, upside down, thirty feet from the forest floor.
“Brilliant.” She muttered sarcastically, “Just brilliant.”
For a moment or two Bailey just swung slightly from side to side, arms limp and hanging and the end tendrils of the green bandana around her forehead falling in front of her eyes. Bailey let out a sigh.
“What else could go wrong?” she asked herself as she listened to the creak and snap of the rope swinging above her head.
Wait a second…
Snap?
Bailey looked abruptly up (or should that be down) at the lash wrapped around her lower leg, her gaze slowly travelled up to the length of cord holding her up.
It was unravelling. Strand by strand the rope was snapping, unravelling and disintegrating, becoming thinner and thinner, and soon it would-
“Oh… that’s NOT GOOD!” she yelped.
She just
had to ask what could go wrong didn’t she! She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut!
“IDIOT!” she yelled to no one in particular, “Stupid, stupid, STUPID!” but all she could do was watch, completely helpless as the strands of woven plant fibre strained, snapped and curled up like a shrivelled vine,
“Which is kinda what it is…” mused Bailey before rationality crashed on top of her, “Who CARES!? I’m gonna DIE!”
Just as she said this, the last strand snapped and for one stomach-turning, churning second Bailey was plunging towards the jungle leaf-mould far, far below, before the trailing lead line snagged on something and Bailey was jolted out of her descent and swung around wildly for a second.
“What the-!?” Bailey looked up again and what she was going to say died on her tongue as she stared into the eight, red eyes of a blue-green quadruped arachnid whose body was bigger then her whole head…
Unfortunately, Bailey was a complete arachnophobic.
It was therefore unsurprising – and exceptionally stupid - when she started screeching blue murder and woke up every one of the spider-ish critters in the immediate vicinity. Saying that Bailey had come on a communal nest of all places, that was a lot of spider-ish critters about.
The arachnids began swarming across their webs towards the very vocal creature caught in their midst, if not to eat her, then just to shut up that Odd-awful racket.
Bailey, meanwhile was beside herself in panic. But she still gave the giant spider creature coming down the lead line of the rope, a good kick in the head with her free leg. Whether this was good sense or otherwise remained to be seen…
Some of the smaller critters had reached her now and one of the cockier little monsters took a flying leap from some webbing and landed on Bailey’s hand, sinking it’s poisonous little fangs into her forearm.
“OW!” Bailey yelled and ripping the spider off her arm she flung it from her person. But as always for someone with the worst luck ever, it didn’t make much difference as another of the little monstrosities replaced the one she’d managed to get rid of. And nothing she did could dislodge the giant animal inching it’s way across her stomach, down to her face…
Bailey shrieked again;
“GERROFF ME YOU OVERGROWN TARANTULA!” and struggled but the arachnid was not discouraged and kept coming…
Bailey would probably have been eaten alive if not just then (and in the nick of time too) a flaming brand impaled the huge arachnid that was moving ever closer to her neck. The spider thing squealed and fell past her eyes in a flurry of twitching legs. Another fagot of wood, this one also burning flew past Bailey’s eye line and ignited the mass of sticky white thread to one side of the huge communal web.
The creatures scattered making high-pitched sounds of distress that grated on Bailey’s ears like nails drawn down a chalkboard.
Acrid smelling smoke from the webs going up in flames made Bailey cough and her eyes streamed. But even with streaming eyes Bailey couldn’t ignore the tongue of flame eating at the remaining threads of the cord bearing her up. Bailey coughed again.
“That’s it. I hate my life.” She thought before she blacked out from smoke inhalation.
She was only unconscious for a few minutes and when she came round she groggily realised she wasn’t upside down anymore and someone, or some
thing was holding her up by the back of her jersey.
Bailey looked down towards the mass of smoke and dying flames that made up the remains of the arachnid web while she mustered enough energy to look round.
When she did, she just stared in blank surprise, her mind arguing with itself whether to class her rescuer as a ‘someone’ or a ‘something’.
He, well really it could have been a she for all Bailey knew. She therefore decided on ‘it’ for the time being, her mind too fogged to care about political correctedness. But she was digressing and the It was staring at her curiously as if it had never seen a human before, but then again, Bailey had never seen anything like the It before either…
It was crouched on a thick tree limb above her but it was still obvious that the It was tall, easily with over two feet on Bailey’s 5’1’’ and broad and covered with pale brown hair, or fur, whichever, (Bailey didn’t feel like debating over it at the moment) that was longer on it’s face. The It had huge hands, or paws, Bailey wasn’t sure, but it had claws, sharp ones and a musculature that gave Bailey the acute feeling that the It could probably rip her in half. Which wasn’t too comforting…
It wore a vaguely triangular shaped poncho-vest thing made from lots of brown patterned patches sewn together, boots that looked like it had come straight out of a western movie and a huge hat with a wide brim with what look like darts in the band. Small ears stuck out from it…
Wait…
Ears?
For some bizarre reason Bailey found this not right.
Bailey blinked at the It and the It blinked back. It had luminous, iridescently green eyes, bordering on neon and they had a disturbingly feral glow that made Bailey slightly nervous. She felt like she was being sucked into those eyes, they were too bright and too green, unnaturally green. Scarily green…
She blinked slowly at the It again, not sure what to do, she opened her mouth to say something,
anything, but her brain had other ideas and decided that it was high time Bailey’s body shut down for a while to recuperate.
Which is exactly what it did and Bailey went limp.