[Splat]

Finally done! And I'm so sorry it took so long!
These chapters are really sucking me dry, but when they're done things should hopefully go smoother for a long while. It will be sort of a milestone in the story when this part is over as it'll be the end of sections set before the RPG where these characters came from.
But we are not there yet!

Chapter 28

“And so the mud takes another bite and says, ‘Yup, this definitely tastes familiar’, and the last mud answers, ‘Oh, anyone I know?’”

The four sligs burst out laughing, “How do you remember these?” Twelve asked.

“Oh, I got the right sort of memory, I guess.” Chakke answered, leaning forwards against the safety rail to look down on the muds below. “Hey, does that look like trouble to you?”

Stivik leaned forward, and looked where Chakke was pointing, “Nothing serious.” A couple of the muds were yelling at each other; one of their bowls was upturned. “Got any more, Chakke?”

“Oh, so you like the jokes about muds?” Chill asked suddenly, accusatorily.

Stivik glanced at him and did the Sliggish gesture equivalent to rolling the eyes, “Odd, that stupid big-bro been talking again?”

Twelve and Chill where suddenly glaring. Chakke looked awkward.

“Yes, I stopped him shooting the black mud; only so he wouldn’t get shot himself by the boss. It’s not complicated. If I humiliated him it’s no more than he was humiliating himself.”

The whole thing would have been forgotten ages ago if some other rat of a slig hadn’t been hiding somewhere and watching; if he hadn’t said anything, the big-bro probably wouldn’t have had the courage to tell anyone what had happened, and now Stivik had the reputation of being a mud-lover, which was about as far from the truth as was possible.

“I heard you were talking to the mud afterwards,” Twelve put in.

“Only to tell it what I just told you. Tell me one other thing I’ve done that says I’m a mud-lover. Tell me how many times I’ve told you I hate their race; one of my friends was murdered by a bunch of them. You think I could pal up with them after that?”

“You’ve told us enough times, Stivik,” Chakke said quietly in a carefully reasonable tone that made Stivik snort a sliggish curse under his breath and turn away from them.

He found himself leaning on the handrail, looking down on the cafeteria. “Oh grhzz!”

During their argument the fight between the two muds had escalated into a significant brawl. As the other sligs turned to look he fired his gun into the air, hoping to get the muds’ attentions, but they were too excited to notice. “Let’s get down there!” He barked at the other sligs and ran down the stairs.

The two muds who had started the fight were wrestling on top of a table but half the other muds had either joined in or had gathered round to watch or cheer on their chosen champion. A moment later the four sligs were using their guns to batter their way through the spectators to get closer to the fighters.

Chakke was yelling, “Sit down! Sit ON THE FLOOR!” Though most of the muds didn’t respond, the biggest effect was that Chill tripped over one of the muds on the ground.

Stivik was ignoring most of this, though. He reached a mud who was throwing tin bowls into the fray and hit him on the side of the head so hard that he fell over and didn’t get up for several minutes.

As the other sligs battered there way through the crowd, he knocked a mud off of a chair it was standing on and scrambled onto it himself, using it as a stepping stone to climb up onto a table, while cursing the vykkers for failing to design decent pants for clambering over obstacles like this. The table was crowded with muds, some straining to watch the fight, others getting aside. He pushed a couple out of the way to get on and then started firing his gun at their feet to clear them away. They leapt off of the table, most on the side away from the fight, where there was more room to land. With space to stand still, Stivik aimed his gun at the two muds in the centre of the brawl.

Chakke was yelling at him, “Don’t try it! You’ll kill the wrong ones!”


“Why didn’t you tell me you could shoot like that?”
“Why, can’t everybody?”


He fired, twice.

* * *

Twelve’s hands were trembling as he grabbed the first-aid kit at the bottom of the stairs to the catwalk.

“I swear, no one on Oddworld could have made that shot!”

The muds had fallen back, making the second run to the centre of the cafeteria so much easier than the last. Level-headed Chakke was forcing them into seats or onto the grounds, picking out the fighters, the injured. He was pale, like he’d seen a corpse get up and walk around a room. Twelve knew he couldn’t look any better.

“I mean all of the muds were jumping all over the place; the two on the table were flying back and forth, and then bang; first one got it in the arm and bang, second in the side. I checked ‘em out myself; it looked grisly, but it was nothing but a torn muscle and a couple of cracked ribs.”

He reached the two muds, lying, bleeding on the tabletop. A moment later his fingers were feeling in the bloody wound on one of the mudokons. His other hand was fiddling with the clasp on the first-aid kit even as he checked the other mud.

“And Stivik was standing up there barking orders like he did this every day, as if making impossible shots were as natural as breathing.”

* * *

Stivik had been in his fair share of glukkons’ offices over the years and he had no problems keeping his cool in this one. There were no windows but a pair of fake candelabra sitting on the mantelpiece behind the desk cast orange-yellow light around the room. A mirror hung between them, reflecting the back of Bescher’s head as he sat in his chair. The desk had a look of barely contained chaos and the floor was carpeted.

“You handled yourself well today, Stivik.”

Stivik kept his mouth shut.

“What made you take charge of the situation? There were two other sligs down there of a higher position than you.”

“I was first down there, sir. I was closer to the action sooner.”

“And you decided to take a risky shot at the mudokons that could easily have resulted in casualties, panic, even rebellion against the four of you there?”

‘Grhzz.’ “I didn’t intend on missing, sir.”

Bescher was silent for nearly a minute. “I’ll be reassigning some of your shifts. Expect a new schedule tomorrow. You can leave, now.”
Stivik left the office.

Was this a good or a bad result, he wondered as he walked away towards the slig’s bunks. Was he being rewarded for his action or punished for his daring? Bescher had been deliberately vague, probably hadn’t made his own mind up yet. Odd, glukkons made his head ache!

Either way he’d put off reporting to the Cartel till he knew. Hell, if he was in trouble he’d put off reporting till Judgement Day!

The bunks were almost empty, save a couple of sligs sleeping off their late shifts. Stivik slipped onto his bed, pulled a folded sheet of paper out from under the mattress flattened it out in front of him, lying down to mask it with his body, so anyone seeing him would think he was napping. He’d received it this morning, hadn’t had a chance to read it before now.
Dr William Krik.

(A)
.......Species: _Vykker
...........Age: _73
..Certificates: _Qualified biologist, geneticist, surgeon grade 2
(B)
.Past offences: _Conspiracy against slig Queen
.......Details: _[Date] Convicted after being caught taking blood samples from Queen Skillya[c], and injecting same with manufactured chemical injection(F). Punishment administered by Vykkers Council, ongoing.

* * *

“After the incident I was interviewed by Bescher. He seems to have been impressed by the performance as he’s reassigned me to several, more important shifts; busier times in more dangerous areas of the factory. Hopefully this will allow me to work closer into his trust. I-”

Stivik stopped his message abruptly when the door at the end of the room clanked open and a couple of muds walked in, followed by a slig. Stivik didn’t stick around but wandered out of the room into the production line beyond.

It was a small room, one of several that he and another slig were guarding. At the moment there was no one else on the catwalk. The muds below were guarded by greeters so they were unlikely to start anything. Certainly they had learnt by now not to look up and see if there were any guards above. Bad things happened to those who did.

He leant over the rail and lit a cigarette automatically. Greeters chattered in their high-pitched voices and giggled at one another; the machinery growled incessantly and the muds kept quiet. Odd, he longed for silence. People in factories seemed to catch noise from the machinery; no one knew how to shut up. No one knew what real quiet was like.

“Hey, hero.” He almost groaned at the voice.

“You know if any other sligs come in here I’ll have to chase you off.”

Dionysia gave a contemptuous snort, sauntered over and leant on the rail beside him. He looked the other way.

“I heard about the awesome victory you won over the rebelling slaves in the cafeteria.”

Odd, she was talking like a slig again. He wasn’t in the mood for her; the way she acted made him feel sick.

“The glukkon was impressed if no one else.”

“It was nothing unusual,” He answered drily.

“Right, you live in a world where shooting moving targets across a room full of seething muds is a daily chore.”

Stivik swore aggressively and flicked away his cigarette. It joined the rest of the trash on the production-lines floor. He turned away from her.

“Odd Stivik, what’s wrong with you?” She demanded and grabbed his shoulder.

He reacted almost (almost) without thinking; he twisted, raising his gun and brought it smacking down on the side of her head. She shrieked as the power of the blow sent her reeling sideways, flying into the handrail. She threw out a hand to stop herself overbalancing a dropping over the wrong side, and then latched a hand to the side of her head. Blood was running from where he had hit her.

“YOU BASTARD!” She screamed; Stivik was storming away from her, ignoring her shouts, “YOU GTRZ, I’LL-”

It was too much to hear her curse in his language, “STOP ACTING LIKE YOU’RE ONE OF US!” He roared, spinning around to face her, “GET IT THROUGH YOU’RE HEAD; YOU’RE MUD, YOU’RE NOTHING, YOU’RE FILTHY, MINDLESS, SAVAGE! STOP PRETENDING YOU’RE NOT ONE OF THEM!”

Blood was roaring through his head as he ran from the room. She had fallen silent.

* * *

It was dark, several days later. His new night shift had just begun and he had convinced someone with the next day off to buy him a beer before he had begun his patrol. The bottle hung half-empty in his hand as he slouched his way through corridors.

He had surprised everyone with his bad mood these last few days; they had expected him to be happy after his unofficial promotion. Naturally none of them knew what had caused his ill temper.

He ran into her that night, for the first time since the argument. He saw her coming towards him slowly and gripped his gun. He couldn’t make out her expression in the poor light, and the tone of her voice was lifeless, “I’m not one of them. I look like one maybe, but I’m different.”

She hurried away without another word. He made no effort to follow.

* * *

The catwalks over most of the production rooms in the factory served three purposes; to allow people to walk through the rooms without having to pass close to the stinking, sometimes dangerous machinery, to allow guards a better position to observe the areas below, and to create a physical barrier between sligs and mudokons to deter the sligs from beating them, which was a discouraged pastime in the current climate.

Today, it wasn’t working.

“Clean it up, Mud!” Roared Stivik angrily and struck the mudokon so hard that he was thrown across the wet floor, knocking over his bucket and increasing the mess. Stivik hit him again and again, the heat of the machines and the physical exertion making sweat run down his neck, his muscles aching from the repetitive motions.

Eventually he walked away, leaving the battered slave to mop up the oily water. “You ghrzz better be done when I get back.”

Down here, the noises of the machines combined into an unending roar that pounded the ears and drove out most other sounds, drove out most thoughts. Stivik was ready to let his pent-up anger steer him for a while longer when he happened to glance up.

She was standing up there, on the catwalk, yelling at someone he couldn’t see for the machinery, but it was probably Chakke as the two of them were patrolling the same area. Every few seconds her eyes glanced back down at Stivik, however. He felt rage build up in his chest and his hand clamp around the end of his gun and with some difficulty resisted the urge to shoot her down. He stormed out of the production lines.

* * *

Dionysia sent a last scything remark at the stupid slig who was yelling at her and swaggered away. Her heart was beating fast, but not entirely from anger.

A few hours later, she sat alone in her own tiny room that Mehler had demanded Bescher grant her. She was on her bed, the back to the wall and her knees pulled up. Her expression was somewhere between anger and misery. In her hands were two beautiful silver rings which she was toying with broodingly.

It was strange how you never missed anything until after you’d had it. She had always been reasonably content in the factories, at least after she had gotten over the first shock of being let alone, and as long as the vykkers kept coming to check up on her. The last had been Dachau, which was annoying; he had barely looked at her since his gift of the rings had failed to win her over. They shared a mutual hatred.

As for sligs, she didn’t particularly like them; they were stupid, annoying and the only pleasure they gave her was what she achieved from tormenting them.

But still, she had valued Stivik’s friendship, not liked se valued the vykkers but something else, something she didn’t know the words for. He was, she guessed, like her, even if he’d refused to recognise it himself.

“Gtrz, better to never have had something than to have lost it,” She muttered to herself, bitterly, wishing the crushing feeling in her stomach would go away. She recognised loneliness at least; it was when Dachau had stitched her lips, and when Krik had made her take those horrible aging drugs that had made the world seem sharper and her head seem full of mist. It was when Mehler had first left her alone in a factory, and it was every time Stivik had looked at her and cringed or winced or pulled away like she was some poisonous worm and the sight of her made her sick.

She flattened her face against her mattress and tried to stop her shoulders from shaking. The rings were clenched so hard in her right hand that it hurt.

When she managed to control herself, she sat up and pressed her forehead against the cool metal wall. She thought of what she had seen today, and before.

All the sligs beat muds; it was a part of life. They did it for fun, she guessed; it certainly wasn’t only when they deserved it. Except for Stivik though; he beat the muds as if they owed him something, as if they had all done him some personal wrong. The look on his face when he dug into them was almost scary. Why did he think they deserved punishment so much? What particular personal wrong had they done him? Something to do with the other slig, Tilic?

She knew she had to know, and she would have to ask him, because now that she had had his friendship, it was painful to be without it. She missed him.

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Really hoping the next chapter won't be so long in coming.
Anyway, reply!