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Awww. The ending is cute. Keep up the good work!
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Horay for cuteness....Well I reckon its shorter, but heres the next chapter! I hate to see my fic get bumped away...Bump....Bump
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CHAPTER FIVE: TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY
He shuffled his feet shyly at her question.
“Well…My name is Kico, I’m a mudokon…” He examined the green tail behind him in the dark.
“At least…I think I am…I changed…”
Fluffy purred in thought, still holding the wriggling bundle in her arms.
“You changed?” She croaked. She looked at his bare body, his tail with legs added, his strange hybrid head.
“What happened? You look like-”
She started coughing violently, scaring him. She kept on going for over a minute as he stood there in fear, not knowing what to do.
“Excuse me…As I was saying, you look like a mudokon and a slig combined…What happened?”
He thought about the sad memories for a moment. It pained him a little, but it had pained her too when she had spoken about hers, so he decided to give it a try.
“Well…I was a mudokon, but then stuff happened… And I kinda mixed up with a slig…” He replied, hoping it would be enough. She gave him a funny look.
“‘Kinda’? It ain’t something that happens everyday boy, care to go into more detail?” He watched the babies that had instantly fallen asleep in her arms.
“Well…I knew this slig and…” He choked his last words as the tears welled up in his eyes. The memories were bad and melancholy. Fluffy nodded her head in pity, closing her bunch of red eyes.
“We can talk about that later if you wish…So where are you from?”
He sniffled.
“I was a mudokon slave…I combined with a slig, I got fired, and they threw me here instead of with Skillya…”
There was a silence as he tried to block the sobs in his throat, and she felt sympathy for him. The next bunch of babies creaked louder under her torso, longing to be held. She shushed them, bent to put down the bundle of sleeping ones in her arms, and pick up the next bunch.
“They took me from the swamp where I lived…” She croaked sadly. “I have so many grown up kids there…” She choked, beginning to cry. “They all grow old and die in front of me, because I have a longer lifespan…” She sobbed pathetically, “And I’ll probably die soon…”
Kico had a hard blow when he heard those words. Here he was, trapped in a dark room with baby sligs that feared him too much to communicate with him, and the person he was going to inevitably be friends with said she was going to die. He felt his throat hurt and his eyes flood instantly.
“H-… How? Why?” He said, unable to block the crying tone in his voice. She growled, a low sad rumbling from her throat as the baby sligs wriggled their tentacles against hers in sympathy.
“I’m old boy, very old, I’m older than my mother once was…” She choked, the babies falling asleep slowly in her long arms. Kico walked closer, reaching out a four fingered slig hand towards the baby sligs. They recoiled and squirmed and whined at his touch, as Fluffy shushed them. “He won’t hurt you, its okay, shhhh…” After that, they trusted her and stopped.
“Yeah but…” Kico couldn’t block his sobs. “How do you…Know that-…” She looked at him, brushing a long thick tentacle across his face, wiping off a tear like he was one of her own children.
“When a queen is about to die, she produces another…” She croaked sadly in the dark, both of their eyes adjusted to it enough so that they could see each others faces. “They have some years left to teach them about how to be a mother to possibly thousands of offspring…” She coughed. “Then they die, and it’s up to their daughter to be the future queen…”
The two failed to hold back sobs as he hugged her arms, unnerving the maggot-like young held in them.
“So…You-you have a daughter?” He burbled, his voice shaky like the crying child he was. A whine escaped her voice box.
“She was one of the first ones they took when I was first brought here…” She answered. “I don’t even know if they know that she’s…A queen…”
Her robotic glowing red eyes swivelled to him, wanting questions answered.
“What does happen to them? The sligs, when those…” She chose her words carefully in front of someone child like. “Vile creatures, take them away into the industrial world… What do they do to them? Where do they go?”
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Kico woke with the rest at the sound of a loud horn echoing throughout the Slig Barracks. Panicking, he crawled towards the tent exit and froze in fear as he saw sligs wandering about. He saw Mudancha and Riko had fallen asleep, and shook them furiously.
“Guys! Its morning! Wake up!” He hissed, trying not to alert the sligs outside the tent. Upon hearing that, they woke instantly, and began waking up all of the other mudokons. Hurriedly and in a panic, the two older teen mudokons helped the children out of the crowded tent, half pushing them out. They were terrified of being seen but had no choice as they were rushed.
The sligs didn’t seem to notice as the crowd of mudokons slowly gathered outside of the tent. Some were walking by casually, others were gathered in a small crowd not too far from them and others were watching the commotion in the middle of it. Holding their buckets and rags as to not look suspicious and be shot, the children watched as the situation in the group of sligs became apparent.
The slig they had thrown out in the middle of the night was lying on his back, shaking on the dirty dusty earth ground with fear. The other sligs laughed at him, as an older one approached. He looked forty-ish in slig years, with ripped tentacles on his face, and a sneer in his electronic eyes. The mudokons shared the slig’s fear as the oldest one grabbed the lying slig by the tentacles, and hauled him up to his robotic feet hard, careless as to the pain he felt.
“Sleeping like a filthy mud today are we?” He laughed cruelly with his gang. Kico pitied the slig as he saw the fear in his red eyes, knowing that feeling of being belittled and hopelessness. The slig threw him to the dust and lifted his baton, as some of the children gasped and covered their eyes.
The slig whined and curled up as the bully lifted it over his head.
“I guess I’ll just have to treat you like a mud then!” He cackled.
Before he could throw the weapon down with full force on him, blue orbs chased up to him at great speed. As they went into his body and mind, he blabbered loudly in struggle as he shook wildly, almost dropping the baton. The mudokons and other sligs were silent in confusion, watching him for anything that might happen. The old slig looked around the Slig Barracks, like an animal brought into a new habitat, looking at the hard baton in his hand.
They all watched in silence, before he smirked and beat a slig over the head. Not the one who cowered on the ground, but one of his own friends. The beaten slig yelled in pain, before his attacker shook violently again, looking confused as his companion glared at him.
“What?”
“Why the f*** did you beat me?!” He cursed loudly, not caring if the mudokon children heard.
“What the f*** are you talking about?!” The older slig snapped back. Them mudokons tried to hide giggles as the two went on at each other. The victimized slig crawled out of the crowd, before getting to his feet and running off crying. Kico felt more pity for him, but couldn’t say anything as he left quickly, his head lowered to not catch eye contact with other sligs as he sobbed loudly.
The two teens led the children away as the two sligs started beating each other, a crowd of sligs gathering around them to watch. Once safely away, the mudokons went to work cleaning and talked, confident that there wasn’t any sligs around them. Kico listened as the two teenagers argued again and watched as Tiro came back, a huge grin on his face like he was wired.
“Why did you fall asleep?!” Mudancha snapped. “You could of gotten us killed back there, all of us!”
Riko scowled, his unstitched eye glaring at the sterile female mudokon.
“MY fault?! I thought you were watching!”
“I specifically remember telling you to watch for sligs while I slept!” She shouted.
Scared and unnerved, Kico decided to go and see Tiro as the crowd of mudokon kids gathered around him. He had something to brag about.
“I controlled him with my mind!” He beamed, as the other kids listened. Some were amazed, some were in doubt and most of them just wanted to listen to something positive, in a world filled with negatives.
“No way! How could of you done that?” A mudokon child spoke up.
“Yeah, you’re just being crazy! That’s impossible!” Another cried out.
“Could I do that too?” A shy one asked quietly.
Tiro carried on smiling like the cat that got the cream.
“I’ll show you guys me doing that later on another sliggy, if you want me to…”
Speaking up in agreement, they all walked off and began scrubbing in the rusty scrappy scruffy industrial barracks, while the two teenagers eventually settled their argument and began cleaning too.