The original reason I joined OWF was to post my stories. Since then, however, my writing basically died out here.
But the Splat is back!
And with an (in my opinion) awesome story! Members of W@RF may or may not recognise some characters, though anyone can read and enjoy (I hope)!
Also around the beginning the story runs somewhat parallel to the stories written by Sl'askia, who was a member of OWF long before I joined, but who wrote some pretty fantastic stories. Her website recently went down but her stories can be found in the Fan Corner Library.
Due to bad language in the prologue and some rather unpleasant-bordering on gory stuff later on I'm not recommending this story for anyone under the age of 13. I can't stop you reading it, but the warning is there.
And so here it is. The prologue contains one bit of very strong language that I didn't really want to put in but nothing else really seemed to work. So be warned and don't complain about it! It's not likely to ever happen again (and it basically fills up my entire swearing quota for this story so you should be safe from now on).
Are you all sitting comfortably? Good. Then I'll begin.
--------------
Prologue
“You! What are you doing helping
them?”
“Haven’t you figured this out, Tilic? We turned you in!” Dekas replied, bitterly.
“You… You traitors!”
“Us?” The third slig, Stivik, sounded vicious, “You help this scum breed an army to send against the Cartel and you call
us traitors?”
Tilic was a slig in trouble. The leader of a Magog Cartel scouting group, he had been drawn into the Agadon Project for the money, but the vykkers had turned him to their cause and told them of the army they were breeding to send against their glukkon oppressors. Tilic was a fair leader, and had told his group of the true nature of the project.
He was by no means the last person to make the mistake of putting their trust in Stivik. Now he stood at the gates of the Agadon research facility with a handful of vykkers and fellow sligs and about half of the successfully made creatures. The building itself was burning nearby, and a small army of sligs, flying sligs and big-bros surrounded them, among them the five members of Tilic’s pack. Armed mugs stood among the trees.
“Time for you guys to surrender,” Threatened one of the attackers, a big-bro.
It wasn’t a request, or a suggestion, but an order. The choice of a quick, sudden death now was not one of the options offered when surrender would result in a much more painful and most likely public execution later on, which was of course what the Cartel intended. A couple of them might be killed if they fought, but Tilic knew his men would make sure he at least wasn’t killed but went on to face punishment.
He was a little surprised when one of the vykkers suddenly shouted, “No!”
The big-bro slig replied, “We’re not giving you the option.” Whatever else he’d planned to say was stopped when the vykker suddenly lunged towards the edge of the gate and slammed his twiggy had against a button on the gate post. The action was not aggressive, but sudden enough after the defiant shout to shake up the sligs and several fired their guns. The vykker writhed as his torso was torn apart by bullets, and dropped to the ground in silence. The attackers snickered and made threatening gestures which came to an end when they saw the faces of their enemies. The sligs and vykkers at the gate were suddenly looking confident, even gleeful.
Suddenly from the forest to the left of the attackers there came a loud noise of metal grinding against rusty metal. “You guys are in trouuubllllle!” One of the threatened sligs taunted.
There was a crash from the forest and Stivik spun round to see a huge creature smashing through the trees towards them. It was 4 or 5 metres tall with rough grey skin that hung from it like a badly fitting leather suit, covering slabs of muscle. Its back had armour plates down it like a meech. It walked on two legs like tree stumps with sprawling, clawed feet, and had three arms: two ending in huge, blunt, boulder-like appendages and the third in a clawed hand with misshapen fingers, each thicker than a slig’s neck. While it was using two arms it kept a third on the ground as an extra leg. It was hunchbacked and had no head, but instead a teeth-lined hole opened at the top of its torso below where its neck should have been. Like many of Oddworld’s creatures, it had no eyes, which gave it the advantage of not having them as a weak spot. A genetic nightmare with five limbs.
Its emergence from the forest immediately sent many of the attacking sligs and mugs running for their lives. A couple of big-bros near to it were very quickly crushed beneath the bulk of its huge boulder-like hands and it swatted flying sligs out of the air like flies. Bombs and bullets seemed hardly to affect it. It flinched under their onslaught but didn’t stop its approach. The attacks didn’t seem to scratch its armoured back and did nothing but mark its skin. A very little amount of greyish pus oozed from the wounds. It was a creature made of lumps of muscle and think slabs of bone. Its club-like ‘fists’ obliterated half the attacking army in seconds.
Most of the treacherous vykkers and their smaller creations had taken the distraction to run back inside the compound. A few were sneaking away. Stivik, crouched behind a tree that would offer little protection from the great beast when it came towards him, spotted Tilic running along the outside of the fence. His gun was loaded with tranquilisers intended for his former leader. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and fired a shot that caught the fleeing slig between the shoulder blades and sending him to the ground. Stivik twisted round quickly and peered out from behind the tree to see the monster standing in the middle of what should have been a battle ground between the Cartel’s army and the small force of the renegade vykkers. Seven or eight Cartel sligs were hiding among the trees and shooting at it, trying to find a weakness but having little affect. It was picking them off easily with its huge fists, or, leaning on its fists, grabbing them in its claws and dropping them into its mouth, To his disgust, he realised most of their army had fled. Well, he would not do the same.
He threw his gun into the bushes. If his tranks even pierced its skin it would take more than he would like to guess at to knock it out. Unarmed except for the small penknife he carried, he crept forwards through the trees towards where it had been fighting and the crushed remains of sligs would produce better weapons.
The thing had turned its back to him and was swinging at one of its assailants. There was a dead slig on the ground behind it, and its gun seemed to be undamaged. While it was distracted, Stivik ran into the open and up behind it and, as quietly as he could, picked up the slig, its broken body sliding easily out of its pants, and detached the cable that ran from its mask to its gun, and fitted it into his own mask. He looked up in time to see the creature half turned towards him, a boulder-ended arm swinging at him with lethal speed. The moment that huge lump of bone came swinging towards him seemed to stretch out into hours as he admonished himself,
Idiot. All these years you’ve been a scout and you forgot… Meeches see by sonar, so they know when you’re coming up behind them. At the last moment he threw himself back. The thing struck his upper left arm, snapping the bone like a twig and sending him spinning as he fell.
He landed on his stomach in the dust, gasping with shock and pain. He was vaguely aware of seeing the grey-yellow bone poking through the skin of his arm. Fighting back nausea and the temptation to pass out, he twisted onto his left side with a grunt and raised the gun unsteadily. He fired a rain of bullets at its chest as it advanced on him, reaching out with its claw, snatching the gun away from him and tugging on it, snapping the cable. He grabbed the knife hanging at his belt and then threw up his arm as the claw closed around his mechanical pants, crushing the legs and the cradle and trapping his tail inside, stopping him from slipping out. He wouldn’t have crawled far anyway, with a broken arm.
He was half in a trance as it lifted him towards its mouth, his blood running over its fingers. Time passed oh so slowly and he saw the soft red flesh of its gums under the grisly grey lips. He realised its weakness at last and drew back his right arm, his fingers clenched around the penknife. Then as he was pushed towards the fetid opening, he plunged the metal blade into its gums: the blade he’d grumbled to find so blunt when he’d bought it and had spent so many boring hours sharpening, simply because he’d had nothing else to do.
The creature let out a roar as the metal twisted in the flesh between its teeth. Its grip on Stivik relaxed and the slig dropped to the ground and landed on his right side, the weight of his pants crushing down on him as he yelled hoarsely, “Its gums! Shoot at its mouth!”
He didn’t know if there were any sligs left to hear him. The creature recovered from its shock quickly and raised one of its huge bone fists, drawing back for a blow that could flatten a ball car. And then a spray of bullets struck it in the mouth. Stivik never found out who fired them, who saved his life. As the creature stumbled back away from him and blood at last began flowing from the wounds to its gums and jaws, he was aware of the grey yellow stub of bone sticking out of the skin of his arm obscenely, of the blood covering his skin.
Blackness swept over him.
* * *
Six days later, with his arm bound thickly in plaster and resting in a sling, Stivik approached the cell where they were holding Tilic and stared at him silently through the bars of the cell. Minutes passed before Tilic eventually spoke. “They said you were crippled, and wouldn’t be able to use pants for years.”
Stivik’s answer was flat. “I didn’t ask them to. When I woke up they told me they needed an excuse to get me out of scouting.”
“Why? They don’t want their hero getting killed?” Tilic was sarcastic, but sounded defeated. The reply he got was equally hollow.
“They want me to become a spy for the Magog Cartel. They’ll send me off to watch any glukkons they think are causing trouble to report on them.”
Silence fell between them again. Tilic was resting on a narrow bunk, his pants and mask taken from him. His arms were crossed in front of him and he was resting his head on them as he looked up at his ex pack-mate. “I always said you were destined for higher things. I can almost say I’m proud.”
“You were always a soft bugger, Tilic.” It was nearly a joke, but neither smiled.
“I thought you’d be pleased, after how much you hated being out doors. You always told us that you’d dance with glee if you found out you’d never have to see another filthy savage village again-”
“F**k it.” Stivik interrupted him and strode from the room. It was the last thing he ever said to Tilic. It would be the last time they met.
Two weeks later, Tilic was executed. He was surprised to learn that it would not be the slow, painful death he’d expected, and that it would not be carried out by Skillya. He was killed by lethal injection in a small laboratory, watched only by a couple of vykkers and a glukkon who was there as a witness. He was told that it was done so because of a special request, made by the slig who had organised his capture.
-------------------
And there you have it. Comments and criticism are very much welcome. I'll try and update this once a week as long as I've got the chapters to post, and might post more frequently if things go well (in other words, if you want more, reply more!)
To avoid trouble with formatting i have to put all the stuff in itallics and put in the double-spacing between paragraphs after I've uploaded it, so if I've missed anything let me know and I'll edit.