Hah! Prepare for the most creative, most funny and most daring story twist in Oddworld Fan Fic history! Read on and be stunned... Don't worry if there are bits in this and future chapters that don't seem to make sence. It will all be explained at some point. So don't go
on me. Enjoy!
Chapter 2: What's in the past, is in the past
The invasion... for some the opportunity of a lifetime. For some a salvation. But for most nothing more then a bad memory. Even though it was such a long time ago. Twelve and a half years, to be exact. According to their calendar anyway.
The invaders caught entire Oddworld by surprise, striking at multiple points and multiple continents, even though Mudos had their primary interest for whatever reason. They attacked with state of the art weaponry. In a desperate attempt to fight of the intruders, security from every possible factory was scrambled. Sligs were given everything from firearms to pots and pans. Mudokons were equipped with weapons, rocks, sticks, explosives. Meat factory stockyards were emptied, hoping the wildlife would put up a good fight as well. But Oddworld could hardly stand up to the enemy and in less then a day the invasion was over, leaving nothing more then destroyed cities, smoking factories and an awful lot of casualties. The very same day, the intruders gained control over the entire planet, over every city, over every street. From that day onward, the Oddworld as everyone knew it would be changed forever. New rules were enforced. New things introduced. Old habits and laws eliminated. The 36-hour days were suddenly cut down to 24 and entirely new understandings such as weeks, months and years were suddenly introduced. The invaders formed Oddworld to their liking, not caring about how it affected any of the original inhabitants.
So from that day, everyone suddenly had to settle with a new species on the planet. Humans...
And, well... it certainly changed a lot.
Now, twelve and a half years later, Oddworld was still under human control. As was the place Danny worked at. It wasn't that bad though. Twelve years is a long time, and everyone pretty much accepted the take over and had moved on. Oddworld lived it's life as if it was never any different.
Danny worked at the Norfolk naval base, located just outside the city, north of the riverbank, as a security guard. The job was actually way below what he could be doing. He finished a level 4 study program, he could be working as a mechanic, or even a captain, on the naval base. Instead he was stuck in a stupid security booth. But who was he to complain, at least it paid the rent.
'Morning' Danny grunted as he entered. He went over to his locker and typed in his clearance code on the keypad. A beep, a buzz and the clicking sound of an unlocking locker door. Inside were a security uniform and an assault rifle, Danny grabbed the uniform, but as he put it on and glanced at the rifle, his mask suddenly went haywire. A message popped up on his overhead display.
Warning! Dangerous weaponry detected! Weapon identification type: HK G36 assault rifle.
A glowing line outlined the gun in question with a big fat exclamation mark right in the middle. Danny startled at the sudden message. Didn't he turn the damn thing off back at the garage?
The side of the mask had two rows of five small buttons, used to operate the various options the thing had. He navigated his way trough the menu's, eventually finding an option to turn the damn thing off. After the initial morning rush-hour at the security gate he would have to take some time to fine tune it and explore the endless options.
'You're late!' a buzzing slig voice came from behind him as he buttoned up his security uniform. Danny looked up at the clock over the door.
'Just five minutes, Greg. Go fuss a scrab...'
Danny walked up to the booth's windows and came to a halt in front of a control panel, used to operate the gates and cameras. Then he turned off his pants. When not operational, a slig's pants functioned as a chair. It wasn't originally intended that way, as sligs weren’t supposed to slack of in the first place back in the old days, but especially for jobs like this it came in rather handy.
'Anything happened here last night?' Danny asked while going trough the log books they were obligated to keep during working hours.
'Not really,' Greg responded behind him. He had just locked his locker and was now prepared to go home. 'The arms transport arrived right on time, and we had some ratz activate the motion sensors at the south east fence.'
'Hmhmm,' Danny nodded while skimming over the pages. 'Okay, thanks Greg. Have a good day.'
He rose a hand as a good bye wave.
'You too, Danny. Catch ya tomorrow.'
The sound of a door slamming shut confirmed Greg's leaving the building a few seconds later while Danny was still going trough the log. But as his colleague had said, nothing interesting had happened.
He entered his employment information in the log, then put it away in a dark blue file cabinet next to the lockers. It didn't seem as if anyone would be showing up soon. Rush hour seemed to start late today for some reason. So Danny spend some time messing with his new mask.
As he went trough all the options and menu's, he was astounded to see how many stuff this thing could do. Anything from the automatic weapon recognition system he just had a taste off, to an auto pilot and even an X-ray option. He navigated over to the weapon system. Apparently it could identify every type of weapon and the user was allowed to set types of weapons to accepted or unaccepted. The mask had stored the weapon it had just identified in it's memory, and the HK G36 now showed up as the only identified weapon type. As it was the standard issue weapon of all the security forces on the base, Danny put it to accepted, to avoid getting a warning every time he grabbed his weapon or ran in to a fellow security worker.
Not much later, the first base employees started to arrive and Danny could get to work. Checking in everyone, writing it down in the log and making sure no-one had any forbidden items with them.
The base employed mostly humans. The entire thing was founded by humans, build by humans and thus operated by humans. Although mudokons, sligs and glukkons had their share of work opportunity at the base, there was still a fairly large gap between humans and the Oddworld natives. A gap that even twelve and a half years of integration didn't manage to close.