I've been editing my first Oddworld fanfic in microsoft word to post here.
You might recognise some of my roleplaying characters in it.
I'm still trying (procastinating) to do that other story thing I posted, but oh well...
I made it a bit angstier since I was listening to angst music when I typed it.
Critiques plz.
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CHAPTER 1 INTRO
The story begins after Abe's, Munch's and the Stranger's adventures. It takes place in the more modern parts of the continent Mudos, away from the side Stranger is on, in whatever side Abe and Munch were on. It will progress to the more exotic "east side" way much later on, where more different and exotic species live, and more land is untouched by glukkons.
After the events of Munch’s Oddysee, the economy has collapsed – modokun slaves and fuzzle test subjects are in scarce supply, moolah isn’t enough where needed or wanted, research was lost in the exploded and crashed Vykkers Labs 13 (with Lulu to blame), crime has risen greatly as moolah is ever lusted after in robbing and stealing, food is scarce with most animals extinct, near extinct or just badly endangered and a slig’s treatment gets worse and worse. Glukkons and vykkers question and debate wherever they should just enslave and put queen Skillya on fertility drugs so her unwanted children can take the place of mudokons and fuzzles, or wait until Sam lays more eggs, more fuzzles are caught and the whole disaster situation blows over.
Vykkers Labs 13 wasn’t and isn’t the only research facility run by vykkers, in fact, some vykkers don’t make companies and just prefer to research by themselves or with partners. Because of two vykkers that worked like this, they made the story start. With much struggle, loss, suffering but finally a victory in the distant end.
-~.o0*0o.~-
Thunder roared and lightning thrashed around the polluted sky. In the distance, the lightning flashes could be seen making out the dark shape of a building, atop a high cliff. The square building, in this weather in the night, was like something from a horror movie, a madman’s laboratory, which it was. Home to two hermaphroditic madmen, conducting experiments on whatever they could find alive. That usually died painfully and was thrown out like trash. Being vykkers, they didn’t care about their test subjects feelings, and took delight in the animal’s suffering like the sickos they were.
A purple vykker with a badly stitched-up head, with a thick black series of stitches travelling around it like a bent equator passed a broken jagged window, walking through a dark corridor. It was nearly pitch black in there except for a flickering light bulb that hung on the ceiling by a damaged wire for dear life, but he didn’t care. He was used to the darkness, the ratz scurrying by, the cold lack of central heating and the general poverty in the old building. Into a room he went, as the the automatic metal doors shut behind him without silence. He walked past a table in the room with the ceiling high up, the roof, leaking water and acid rain with drafts flowing through the unattended torn holes in it. A newspaper lay still on the desk he passed, yellowed with age, the main headlines screaming "DR. BRAINWAVE STILL MISSING". He proceeded to walk into another room, which was darker and larger, the ceiling still the leaky damaged roof, with various machines and control panels along the right wall, gathering dust on long untouched buttons and bulbs and rusting from the dripping water. A glowing green glass pod was in the centre, with a strange figurine that seemed to float in the liquid inside, the centre of his attention, as he stopped abruptly beside another vykker, similar to him with black stitches on his head, but more neatly and professionally done. They both stood there in an eerie silence in the old scruffy room, before he spoke.
"Is it... Ready, Dr. Jekyll?" He asked nervously. The last tries at making this thing had been tough, and not all had gone according to plan. The other vykker stared at the pod in the awkward silence. "... Yes...” He answered him, after what felt like a long wait. After that, both of their hopes rose. “The breakthrough in vykker technology! Which will make us rich! Our glukkon-funded plan which will earn us billions of moolah! Is! Ready! Ready, Dr. Hyde!" There was excited girly screams between them like teenagers, as they held their four clawed hands and skipped in a circle together like children, laughing and shrieking in joy.
The intern in the next room, his room, with a scruffy grey insect-ridden bed he lay on, with just a broken window to let in whatever little light was outside, turned down his headphones briefly at the sound of the vykkers, then rolled his eyes as he heard what sounded like children playing, and turned them up again.
Dr. Hyde suddenly stopped the dance, looking less fulfilled and more serious. "We must test it to see if it will kill, if it doesn't, we might be doomed." Said Dr Hyde bluntly. "The last couple were too good and the only bad one is too screwed up. Now, release the experiment! The zrilufet!...” Dr. Jekyll was about to, but instead froze as he saw Dr. Hyde’s face. Gone was the serious look, and now his small beady eyes blazed, looking at him like he’d just punched him, like he was insane. His mouth quivered as his eyes darkened, as he grabbed his friend’s shoulders with his clawed hands. “WHY ARE YOU NOT PRESSING THE SHINY BUTTON?!?" He screamed manically, making Dr. Jekyll jump and shriek at the same time.
Again, the intern turned down his headphones as he heard the two vykkers again. Only this time one was screaming in fear and another was yelling. Listening, he could hear Dr. Hyde screech about him wanting to kill Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Jekyll whining and shrieking about not wanting to be killed. Turning up his headphones, he acted like he didn’t hear it and lay down on his back to listen to his blaring headphones, closing his eyes. He hated the two for how they treated him, but put up with it because of a lack of self esteem. Even when they’d stitched his lips tight together, them proceeded to pointlessly remove his voice box so he couldn’t even mumble. He’d been raised by them, and if he disobeyed, he’d be thrown out into the cold, in the middle of nowhere, with no where to live and nobody to take him in. He didn’t see them as parents, just the source of his misery and his superiors. He half-wished that vykker would just go kill the other in his state of catatonic hyperactivity.
The vykker screamed as his friend gone mad chased him around the otherwise silent room, quickly opening a cabinet whilst being attacked and scratched on his back. He yanked out a large syringe, running around Dr. Hyde in a frantic circle like two dogs sniffing each other. He finally got behind him and grabbed two of his arms to keep him still, jabbing the needle in Dr. Hyde’s arm before pushing the back of it, injecting the green liquid. Dr. Hyde froze upon the chemical entering his blood, his gaze going from mad to dull and sleepy as he swayed slightly on the spot. "Odd damn it Norbert, you forgot to take your medication!" Dr. Jekyll scolded. He walked across the metal floor to return the syringe back to the cabinet. "Oh, sorry Frankenstein". He replied calmly, wincing at the bleeding hole in his purple wrinkled skin. “We still have to press that button to release the experiment for a test.” He spoke in a monotone voice. Dr. Jekyll looked at the large pod, the figure still floating in there slowly. “I ain’t touching that, what if it’s like the last one and tries to shred us?! I don’t wanna get an artery torn again, it hurt, I thought I was gonna bleed to death!” He whined, scared. Norbert examined the still creature in its case, then the large, dark room. A Mudosian bird flew by the window, black against a flash of lightning. He blinked as the after effects of his medication wore off suddenly, and grinned cruelly. "Well, if you won't press the button, and I won't press the button, then there’s only one solution!"
The intern was still listening to the blaring yelling dark song from his headphones. He head bopped in tune, ignoring the faded-out sound he barely heard. As it grew louder and more frequent, he turned them down slightly, hearing one of the vykkers he hated so much call on him. "Miiiike! Get over here, we need you to do something we don’t want to!" Hearing the voice, he turned the dark grey headphones off, rolled his red eyes, and exited his small, cramped and freezing cold room through the broken door. He walked through the automatic doors, as they clamped closed behind him, into the big, dark room, only briefly lit for less than a second at a time by the flashing lightning. He looked questionly at Norbert Hyde, unable to ask what he wanted, who sneered back at him with the other vykker. “Make yourself useful and press that red button right there, or we’ll surgically remove your kidneys without anaesthetic and wait for you to die from blood poisoning or pain.” Resisting the urge to stick up two fingers at them or glare in their direction, he kept his hateful look to the shiny floor and waddled over to the control panel. He pressed the hard button with a long bony finger, and then walked off to watch, behind his superiors. The cylindrical glass and the top of the pod came down like an automatic door, green liquid spilling all over the metal slippery floor.
The creature, now visible, fell limp and unconscious to the wet base of the container. Her soaking wet body, like a newborn baby from being in liquid so long, had two floppy meep ears at the sides of her head, and two purple rat ears on top. She had the torso of a scrab, with a fluffy head like a fuzzle, but albino white furred with pale pink closed eyes, with two more slurg eyes on stalks above them. She had the light brown shoulderless arms and legs of an elum, with two scrab legs hanging behind them. She had an inactive fleech head for a tail and light brown paramite mandibles around her pale pink fuzzle lips. She wore no clothes, with nothing reproductive to cover up anyway. Her body was sort of more delicate, younger and less muscular, and her eyes were closed. The two vykkers grinned to themselves. What would happen next?
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CHAPTER TWO THE ESCAPE
(Warning: Some violence and angst)
She gained her senses and life in her body. She felt too weak to even open her eyes or lift an elum finger. Just in darkness with no thought in her mind. Her eyes slowly opened voluntarily, gaining strength and seeing just the slightest bit of light and more, as the storm in the sky flashed at the dirty dusty window.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a panting smiling slog rode past her on a unicycle. Shocked and surprised, she darted up onto her elum hands and feet in a leaping bound, quickly falling back on her belly from lack of strength and balance. She gazed around weakly, having wasted some of her energy, but it had vanished. Her eyes swivelled in front of her, seeing about ten slig valets linked arm in arm doing what looked like the can-can. In more shock and fear, she suddenly leapt up and fell back on the floor, lying on her side. She looked up after two seconds of groaning from minor pain, and they were gone. Wary of her unpredictable surroundings, she slowly got up like a newborn deer, carefully and weakly looking around the huge dark room. She jumped again when she saw a huge scrab cake and a paramite pie floating in front of her, a couple of yards away.
"Careful Norbert." said the pie. "She might be a bit delusional."
She stared at them in shock, then heard a rumbling behind her as the pie pressed a button on the rusty control panel. She turned around quickly to see a long dusty metal pipe that came winding down the wall and onto the floor, and a small light brown blur roll out. She tried to focus on it, straining her electric magenta pink eyes, then it came into much clearer focus. It was a fuzzle. It looked up at her, bewildered, as she warily walked closer to it, kneeling down on her paws and legs so her face was as close to it as possible. She nervously reached out a brown bony paramite mandible to the paranoid fuzzle. It sniffed her outstretched mandible cautiously, looking up at her. “Meenimee…” The fuzzle squeaked. She looked delighted before squeaking a high-pitched “Meeeee meee mee!” After that, the two appeared to be in a squeaky conversation.
"WHAT ON ODDWORLD!?!?" Screeched Dr. Jekyll. Mike smirked in his eyes as the vykker ran around in a circle around Norbert yelling in a panic, as the fuzzle and the zrilufet played together. "What are we gonna do Norbert!? We have a due date for these things Odd damn it! You said it yourself, if this thing can't kill, we're doomed! What are we gonna do?! We’re so screwed!" He whined. Norbert watched Frankenstein run around, completely unconcerned as he thought for a moment. “Hmm.” “‘Hmm’ what?!” Frankenstein snapped as more lightning outside flashed. “Do you have any ideas right now?! Because I don’t! You said it yourself, if this thing doesn’t kill on sight, we’re probably doomed!” "I said we might be doomed.” He corrected, his face lighting up in the flash of lightning and evil glee. Mike shook his head sadly upon seeing this. He had an idea, that meant the experiment was going to suffer like the others had, and he’d be forced to take part in the torture again. “We can clone her, and make more advanced zrilufets and tefulirz! We'll have an army!" Norbert announced happily, voice raised and madness in his yellow eyes. "YES! It's a brilliant plan! It'll work for sure!" Jekyll shrieked back in joy. They held hands, and skipped around in a circle again, cheering and shrieking with pure excitement.
The fuzzle was sucked away back through the old pipe, as Mike pressed a button on the control panel on command, leaving a disappointed and lonely zrilufet. Norbert gave a slight evil laugh, sneering in Mike’s direction. "Mike, take her to the DNA extractor!" Dr. Hyde ordered. “Or you won’t get fed a dead rat like you normally do, ya useless lump of flesh!” Frankenstein cut in. They both laughed cruelly as Mike’s face said hurt and looked disappointed, like he was sighing sadly silently. He carefully approached the zrilufet, watching it in case it went psycho on him like the last few had. She looked nervously at him, walking close enough to him as he froze in fear to sniff him. Deciding he wasn't a threat and meant no harm to her, she squealed happily. He, on the other hand, looked guilty, knowing he did. Nervous. Squeamish even. He took her by her small right arm, and lead her like a horse by the reins through the room, ignoring requests to play or chat as he entered the other dark room with a block table in the middle, fixed to the floor, and various complex machinery around it.
Dr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll followed behind him as he stood there, still with the curious Zrilufet, and looked at Mike. “Get her on the table Mike…” He commanded bluntly. He was furious as the intern slave just stood there, too scared and guilt ridden to move. Reaching over a desk, Frankenstein watched casually, chewing a sharp grey claw as he took a sharp scalpel, caked in dried blood with a glinting blade. Mike was nervous as Norbert approached him with that weapon without hesitation, clutching the Zrilufet’s paw in his bony grey thumbless hand for comfort. She didn’t mind as Norbert stood close to the intern, letting him see the anger and madness in his eyes. He threw his arm back with the scalpel in it, and then forward and sideways as he slashed it across Mike’s face. The Zrilufet squeaked a high pitched squeak in fear, running to the back of the room as Mike turned his head from the pain and shock of it. He reached a long hand to his painful face that felt like it was burning across his mouth and cheek. Moving his hand, he could see blood running down his palm and fingers. He looked in shock at the two vykkers. They didn’t even laugh at him about it. Their faces were cold and serious, as the lightning lit them up briefly with a roar of thunder.
“Get her on the table Mike. Now.” He ordered, in a monotone voice. Still in agony and upset, Mike walked over to the creature that cowered away from the vykker. She spoke to him in a faint squeak he paid no attention to, tears welling up in his eyes that kept themselves to the floor. He struggled to lift her onto the table, moving her body so she lay down on her back, squeaking quietly and staring up at the ceiling. Taking the ropes he’d used numerous times before, he tied her there around her arms, legs and waist in silence, refusing to look at her or anyone as the thunder rumbled, the rain starting to fall like his tears, feeling it on his body as it leaked and fell through the ceiling. Stepping back, he watched in silent, crying, bleeding guilt and sadness as Frankenstein went to the control panel. Seeing a robotic arm reach out towards the zrilufet, with a large needle and syringe on the end, he adverted his gaze to the floor, as it pierced her arm, draining blood through a vein. Her screams and wails of the creatures she was made out of broke the silence in the room as the climax of the guilt struck him after the long wait. Unable to sob, his red eyes just cried harder and closed themselves, not escaping the harsh reality. “Make sure she doesn't escape. Me and Frankenstein have to discuss matters." Norbert said calmly, like nothing had happened. He left the room, as the automatic doors shut behind the two vykkers.
Mike finally looked at the zrilufet howling and screeching in pain. His face was that of shock and horror as he looked on unwillingly. She continued to yell, ending in a yowling shriek. The needle had withdrawn from her arm, spilling excess blood across her and the surgical steel table as she cried like a hurt child. She looked over, still sobbing uncontrollably, to see the intern that had let her suffer, leaning his arm against a rusty lever beside the metal wall. Wiping more blood from his face, he walked over to begin working on the ropes that bound her to the table, struggling with the tight knots he’d made. She whimpered in pain, the two crying quietly, as Mike threw the rough ropes away. Helping her off the table, Mike led her out of the room silently, looking around the hallway for those sick vykkers. If they caught him doing this, he could be dead, experimented on or stabbed for all he cared, they’d been working on the new zrilufet experiment for weeks. If it went well, it would get them moolah, and everyone was crazy for moolah right now. It was scarce with a ruined economy. Looking around the hallway nervously, and trying to block the blood flow on her arm with his long fingers, he looked at the windows as rain continued to flow through that roof and ceiling that needed fixing. He had no idea what he was going to do. He couldn’t hide her, he couldn’t run away, the doors to outside were all locked, and the windows weren’t the kind of windows that opened.
Out of ideas, he went through a neglected door, into to a dark unused room. Some ratz looked at him from a corner in the room and scattered out of the open door as lightning flashed light through and thunder rumbled outside. She was nervous as her paw clutched his hand tight, still bleeding at the wrist, but felt relief when there was no apparently dangerous machinery around. Just some unused things and something that looked like a container with icy thick air in it against the wall. He took an old cloth, wrapping it around her wrist tightly, before going to get one for himself, wrapping it around his bleeding face like a surgeon’s mask. He signalled to her to be quiet, hoping she’d understand what he meant, whilst he looked for a possible means of escape. He picked up a dusty spanner, examining it, and looked at the large window, spherical, with thick metal frames holding the numerous slides of glass together. He knocked it hard, testing the glass’s strength, whilst trying to bash it hard as quiet as possible, not wanting to alert those vykkers. The zrilufet jumped as a strong cold draft blew the door shut and lightning flashed, trying to hug her cold, bare body
Bored, she looked around for some ratz to play with, seeing none. Knowing Mike was busy, she waddled over to the strange machine container that gathered dust. There was some complex buttons on the side of the front, none that she understood, as she poked at one with a mandible. The doors suddenly shot open with a creak, spilling out icy thick air, before a frozen, limp and lifeless vykker body flopped out and to the floor. Mike whisked around from beating the window senseless to see what happened as he heard her scream like a scrab. He'd only been away for a moment, and she'd already found herself a dead cytogenetically frozen body! Rolling his red eyes after overcoming the fear of seeing that corpse, and hoping the vykkers hadn’t heard, he went back to bashing the window as she calmed down and walked over to watch him curiously. He thrashed hopelessly at the glass as the lightning and thunder continued to tear at the dark sky and the rain fell, dripping through the roof. The body moved, jerking a hand slightly. The zrilufet and Mike were oblivious to its presence as it straightened out an arm with a crack of its elbow, reaching out in their direction and straightening out its clawed hand with another crack of bones. Mike thrashed on hopelessly and afraid with the spanner, then stopped abruptly as he saw a shadow cast over his. The lightning flashed, pushing it away for a moment, before the two turned around to see it.
The zrilufet screeched and Mike jumped as they saw the vykker standing there like a zombie, his eyes cold and dull, his skin even looking cold. It wasn’t dead, it was alive, and had awoken from being frozen. Lightning flashed through the window, highlighting its still and emotionless face as its icy purple skin warmed in the new temperature, and his frozen yellow eyes thawed, leaking bodily liquids. He turned his neck suddenly, back and forth, making loud snaps of joints, before he stared coldly back at them, his pale skin gaining colour as he stretched his long unused body, with more snaps and cracks that could make a squeamish person sick. They stood there in silent eerie fear as his face slowly bended to a smile, looking at them both like a child to an amazing creature. "...Ooooooh! Eeedeebooooo!"
The zrilufet jumped in fright, and Mike slapped his head, being careful to avoid his wound, at the vykker’s first words. He was brain damaged, and badly, his childish happiness, nonsense words and black stitches on his head said it all. They all suddenly froze, upon hearing footsteps come down the corridor and a familiar whiny angry voice. “Miiiiiike! What the Hell is going on?! Where is that Zrilufet?!” “If we find it hasn’t eaten you already, we’ll just butcher you ourselves and feed you to the ratz!” Terrified like he’d heard a cry in the dark, Mike panicked and kept on battering the window at the sound of his superior’s voice, hearing them come closer and closer down the hall. The storm raged on in the climax as the glass only cracked from his frantic efforts. Realising that they were in danger, the vykker’s face lit up. He had an idea. "Dah!" He babbled, approaching the Zrilufet, wobbling like a zombie from his numbness. She backed away, afraid of the strange man, her scrab legs brushing against the corner of the walls, making a rat scuttle away to the other side of the room. Facing his back to her, he hoisted the zrilufet onto his back with his scrawny arms, as she squealed and held on tight with her paws. Afraid of falling, she clung on, as he snuck up behind the panicked and frustrated Mike, still thrashing at the window in the storm. He grabbed Mike, holding his legs and neck with his four arms as he struggled defiantly, and positioned him so the top of his head faced the wall. Mike looked on in horror as the vykker ran as fast as he could whilst bearing all that weight, to the other side of the dark dusty room, as Norbert and Frankenstein’s fast footsteps grew closer and closer to the shut door. That vykker was going to use him like a battering ram against the window!
"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The vykker cried pointlessly as the zrilufet screamed and Mike ducked his head, not wanting to smack his face against hard glass. Upon contact with his head and the cracked glass he had battered, the glass shattered everywhere like a swarm of flying insects, hurling outside, as they too all went flying out of the building. She smiled thankfully at the two as they soared. There was a return of good feeling in their eyes, before gravity struck and they all came down.
They crashed on the mountainside the building stood atop on. The force of impact cracked the vykker’s right leg, denting it, as the intern and vykker were thrown helplessly away from her. She bounced, rolled, smacked and bruised herself badly as she fell down the cliff as the storm raged on, rain pouring down from the black thundering flashing sky. She was tossed over a cliff edge, waving her arms and legs helplessly against gravity as she dropped into a raging river that passed by, and was dragged underwater.... She thrashed madly against a powerful current, screaming and wasting her breath under the river, before she tossed her fluffy head above the white water, lungs burning and gasping for air. Thrashing around in a panic, she grabbed a piece of passing driftwood, and clung on for dear life, slipping with her elum legs and paws. The vicious flow of the water got faster and faster, as she strained her neck and saw an end to the river ahead. She screamed, howled and shrieked madly at the top of her voice as she was hurled off the edge of the waterfall, falling faster and faster towards the water far below whilst still holding onto that wet wood that slipped from her fingers. Upon crashing to the continued river, the force of impact pulled her under the water, then shot her up like an inflatable toy again. She clung on to the driftwood and yowled as it continued to make its way downstream, the water merciless and faster.
Hours later, the driftwood floated through shallow muddy water, and onto a muddy bank. She coughed and threw up river water weakly on the mud she lay on, looking over with half-closed eyes to the distance. A big pile of buildings and junk was in the distance, black with lights dotted on it like a city and barbed wire surrounding it. It looked like a barracks type place, not that she cared. She rolled off the soggy driftwood, and onto the bank. It was dark, wet, cold and muddy, but she was too tired and weak to care. She was exhausted from fighting with a river, and went to sleep...