[Splat]

Well, tragically, as T-Nex failed to reply to the last chapter, there will be no new chapter this week!


Nah, just kidding.

Interesting guess, Sci.

And no, Anni doesn't know when to quit. Speaking of which we've now left W@RF 2 behind us and are into the world of W@RF 3...

Chapter 35

A little more than a month after Reg had left, Bunny left as well; he was angry at how Reg had been treated and sick of Arnie’s way of running Rupture Farms. Arnie and his assistant, Otto, had been searching long and hard for a fairly competent but cheap slig to replace Reg though when Bunny left they were forced to make a quick decision. They picked a slig who would arrive in a couple of weeks, and began searching for another to replace Bunny.

Already two sligs down, Arnie was then forced to accept Nick’s request for six days’ leave as he was already well overdue some holiday time (he was just too useful around the place). So with only Seven, Expert and Bela left to guard his eleven mudokons, Arnie had decided to cease production for a week and order a factory-wide super-clean. Every room of Rupture Farms was to be scrubbed from top to bottom (except the restricted areas, obviously), three rooms at a time, working through the whole place, from the stockyards to the cafeteria, from the production lines to the roof.

After Kix had been attacked, Anni had ceased hostilities and the two of them were now close friends and were very happy to be able to work together for a week. Kix informed Javi that they had ‘vital girl-talk’ to share. Javi had no idea what this meant. He asked Dean what he thought; Dean didn’t know what it meant either.

Dean now found he had two mudokons assisting him in the cafeteria every day for the week and he was making use of the time this freed up. “Try this,” He said to Javi one afternoon, handing him something that looked suspiciously like a paramite pie.

“What is it?” Javi asked cautiously.

“It’s a paramite pie you moron!”

“Why are you giving me a paramite pie?”

“Just try it!”

Javi shrugged and took a bite, “It tastes like a paramite pie,” He said pointedly.

“Right,” Said Dean, “Now try this one.” He produced another pie.

“Um, is it any different from the other one?”

Dean rolled his eyes, “No Javi, it’s exactly the same,” He replied sarcastically.

Javi decided not to retort and tried it, then looked surprised, “Wow. It tastes like a paramite pie I guess, but it doesn’t taste like it was made by vykkers!”

Dean grinned, “Same preparation time as the normal pie, same preparation method, very nearly the same shelf-life (though no glukkon cares about that anyway); just different ingredients, and slightly cheaper!”

“You made this?” Javi asked, raising his bitten pie.

Dean nodded, grinning from ear to ear, “My own special recipe. I wanna see what everyone else thinks, especially the sligs, but I recon if I can convince Seven it’s worth while they might put it into the production instead of the old one!”

Javi rolled his eyes with a grin, “You know no one will ever know that you invented it?”

“So what? My paramite pie recipe will be in vending machines across Mudos! That’s good enough for me!”

As it turned out, all of the mudokons agreed that Dean’s pie was vastly superior to the normal one, and so did Seven, though Bela and Expert said they couldn’t taste the difference (Bela pointed out that he couldn’t taste anything, so this didn’t concern Dean too much). Seven promised to tell Arnie about it and since Seven was normally a trustworthy slig, Dean took his word.

Anni was still spending free time with Somi, who was getting bigger, now about half the size of an adult paramite. Anni was still feeding her but she wasn’t eating so much of the food offered as she used to, there were times when Anni went down to look for her and she wasn’t around. Javi suggested that she may have joined a pack of wild paramites, who were helping her find food; this was good, because it would teach her to survive without their help. Anni was at first a little sad to think of her friend moving on without her, but was in the end glad that Somi was living like a paramite should. She was also more and more bored with work, and though she kept her word about not visiting Somi in work hours (she had learnt this lesson at least for the time being) she was starting to spend more time hanging around in the cafeteria or stockyards, working little and talking to her friends, no matter how often they told her to get back to her job.

Towards the end of the cleaning week, she had convinced Kix to take a break and they were sat in the cafeteria at the counter, talking to Dean who was busy in the kitchen. “This room is so boring!” Anni said, suddenly.

“Huh?” Kix, who had been engrossed in conversation with Dean, looked at her in confusion.

“I mean this is a place where everyone is supposed to hang out and relax, but it just looks like every other room! It should be brighter and more fun!”
Kix rolled her eyes, “And how do you suggest we do that?”

“I don’t know. We could paint the walls or something; you know, decorate the place!”

“What place are you decorating?”

Kix and Anni spun on their seats. Dean called out, “Hey, welcome back, Nick!”

The slig grinned as an unfamiliar hunched-up mudokon walked into the cafeteria behind him.

“How was your holiday?” Kix asked.

Nick scratched the back of his head, “Wouldn’t really call it a holiday myself. You seen Seven around here? I told him when I’d be back but he wasn’t at the station.”

“No idea,” Kix said, “But I know he has a whole list of jobs for you to do that we found this week.”

“Oh, joy of joys,” Nick muttered.

“Who’s this?” Anni suddenly asked of the mudokon following Nick.

Nick slapped his forehead, “Sorry, this is Math. He’s working here now, I guess.” He scratched his neck again thoughtfully then explained, “Ya see I was off this week visiting the lab I worked in before this; I got a call from one of the vykkers there who said he wanted to see me. It turns out that they’re closing down part of his lab – loads of places have had to close down since Vykkers Labs was destroyed – and it turns out his company was firing him.” Nick grinned, “So to take revenge he’s been secretly giving away all the stuff he’s in charge of, machinery, stock and about ten mudokons, just to spite his boss, you know? And since I helped him out of some trouble a couple of years ago, he said I could have Math. I don’t really get all of the legal stuff but basically he’s mine, which if nothing else should make it easier for me to get a job if I ever leave here.”

Math gave a nod of greeting but kept his mouth shut. He looked slightly uncomfortable since Anni had been grinning at him since he came in.

“Anyway, I don’t want to drag him all over the place with me while I look for Seven, so do you mind coming with me, Kix, and showing him around in a bit?”

She nodded and jumped off of her chair, giving Math a friendly smile.

The three of them left the cafeteria and it was in fact only a few minutes when they met Seven on the second floor. “Hey, sorry I missed the train, Nick! I was talking with the boss and just noticed the time. Is this the mudokon you mentioned?”

“Yeah, this is Math,” Nick said, giving him a casual slap on the back of the head. Math looked at him indignantly and Kix grinned. “Kix said you had a whole heap of work for me to do?” He said, fairly cheerfully.

Seven nodded, “I’m glad you’re back to be honest; it’s not been easy with only Bela and Expert. But that new slig’s coming next week and the boss has picked someone to replace Bunny, too; he’s some guy with mechanical skills like you, so he might lessen your work-load a little.”

Nick looked fairly surprised, “I’m not being replaced, am I?”

Seven grinned, “Don’t worry, he’s not as qualified a mechanic as you, and he says he’s more than happy to do just guard work, so I don’t think you’re job’s in danger. Just another cheap slig. Anyway, if you want to come to the security office I’ll talk you through the latest list of disasters we’re facing.”

“Right. Kix, are you ok to show Math around?”

“Sure, he can come and work with me later, too. I think Anni’s happy helping Dean for a while.”

“Right,” Seven said, “I’ll get this guy rota’d in and later, Nick, you can get Dean to show you his new-and-improved paramite pie recipe. If we can find a supplier to sell us the ingredients in bulk, the boss says he’ll take them to production.”

Kix grinned at Math as the sligs walked away, “Hey.”

Math looked a little shy but half-returned the smile, “Hi.”

Kix urged him to follow her and started leading him to the grinders, “So, what was this lab you worked at like?”

By the time the two of them had made their way back to the cafeteria they were chatting amiably and Dean, after calling the start of dinner, soon joined them. After coming out of his shell, Math got on quite well with the other mudokons and Kix and Dean told him about the ins and outs of Rupture Farms, its grounds, its sligs and the way it ran.

“Expert is the other big-bro; he’s not a bad guy once he gets used to you.”
Kix grinned, “He used to be really tough but he’s softened up a little recently.”

At about that moment, Anni ran over to them, “Hey Dean, I was thinking about what we were talking about earlier-”

“Oh dear,” Said Dean, remembering her idea of decorating the cafeteria.

“-And I thought it would be really great to paint some flowers on the walls and make it look really nice. I just checked out a storeroom and there were lots of different colours, red, yellow, green, blue. I couldn’t find any pink though-”

Dean put his hands over his ears and said loudly, “I am not having this conversation,” Which made Kix and Math laugh loudly.

Three days later a new slig was met by Seven at the station, “You must be Razor!” He said cheerfully, while quietly marvelling at how low Arnie was having to dig to get sligs these days. Razor looked generally unkempt and ill-tempered and Seven wondered how far they were from having as much trouble from him as they had had from Reg. The faded tattoo on his shoulder of a mudokon-skull with an axe implanted in it didn’t bode well.

It took a long walk around the factory to get Razor to understand that he wasn’t allowed to beat mudokons in Rupture Farms and he simply couldn’t understand why this was. “I mean, what do I do if they’re messing about when they should be working?!” He demanded, by which he actually meant, “What do I do if I’m bored when I should be working?”

Seven growled, “Just… ask them to get back to work, and if they still refuse point out that you can tell me and then if they still refuse-”

“Did you just tell me to go and complain to you if I have any trouble with the muds?!”

Seven looked at him pointedly, and after a few moment said delicately, “I’m going to get Bela to show you around the rest of the factory.”

* * *

It was two days later; production had started again the day before (scrab cakes) and Anni was assigned to help Dean in the kitchen. Since he didn’t need her for a couple of hours while he worked on menu plans and updating the kitchen rota, he set her cleaning the cafeteria, though after half an hour he looked up to find she’d disappeared. Rolling his eyes, he got back to work.

A few minutes later however, she stumbled back through the cafeteria door carrying a strong bag of something and grinning happily.

“What have you got in there?” He asks cautiously.

Anni pulled a paint pot out of the bag, “I’ve got yellow, red and blue. I thought if I could mix the red with white I might get pink but there wasn’t any white left, so it’ll be red and blue flowers with yellow middles!”

“Oh, good grief.”

But taking the opinion that she couldn’t do too much damage in just the hour before he’d need her to help with the cooking he let her get on with it and, singing to herself, she got on with her flower-painting.

Some time had passed and six or seven garish flowers had appeared on the cafeteria wall before Dean’s judgement proved bad, “Hey, what are you doing, mud!?” Came a yell from the doorway.

Dean Looked over to see the new slig, Razor, storm into the cafeteria. ‘Oh dear,’ He thought.

Anni, her face, chest and arms flecked with paint, grinned at him, “I’m making the cafeteria look nicer,” She said.

‘Oh dear,’ Dean thought again, having an unpleasant idea of where this might be going. Razor didn’t look like a slig with a sense of humour (or at least one not involving violence).

“What do you mean, ‘making the place look nicer’? You’re supposed to be working, not wasting time!”

Anni looked indignant, “I am not wasting time! It’s really boring in here, and-”

“CLEAN THAT MESS UP NOW!” Razor roared, storming towards her.

“There’s no need to yell!” Anni yelled, then said more calmly, “I’m not yelling!”

“I said CLEAN IT UP!” He shouted and gave her a vicious push, knocking her backwards into the wall and coating her back in blue paint.

“Now look what you did!” She yelled, waving furiously at the smeared paint on the wall, “You ruined my flower, stupid slig!”

Foreseeing disaster, Dean crossed his fingers and yelled, “Hey, uh, hey slig, you know you’re not supposed to push mudokons around here?”

“Don’t tell me what to do, mud!” Razor yelled, “This is a factory, not a playground! I ought to rip-”

And then he stopped very suddenly because Anni, stretching up as high as she could, had just emptied a tin of red paint over his back.

There was a long silence. Then Razor spun round, “YOU STUPID IDIOTIC GTRZ! I’M GONNA-” He lunged at her but his tiny metal feet slipped in the puddle of paint and he flopped over onto his face, getting his front covered in red paint as well. Laughing, Anni ran out of the cafeteria. “Get back here, MUD!” Razor roared furiously; Dean by now had dived behind the counter and was struggling to keep his laughter silent.

* * *

A trail of smeary red prints soon led from the cafeteria to the security office (after a short detour to follow another set of prints until they disappeared) where Razor burst violently through the door and glared murderously at Nick and Seven who were both in there doing paper work.

“What happened to you?” Nick asked sardonically. Razor’s pants, mask, face, arms, chest and back were covered in red paint.

“THAT GRHZZING MUD!” Roared Razor.

“Ah,” Said Nick.

“Oh dear,” Said Seven.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

What a brat!

I don't know what vital girl-talk is, either.

And naturally we all know the song Anni was singing when she was painting.

Razor is property of T-nex (Spelt Razer in the RPG). The paint thing actually did happen in the RPG And the event included the following utterly awesome quote that tragically didn't make it into the story.

Kix went over to the cafeteria and saw Anni with some red paint on her.

Kix: "What happened to you?"

Anni: "Nah, it just this new slig who thought that he could ruin my flower. Well, it was a flower untill he came and ruined... Which means that he DID ruin my flower. HEY! The stupid slig ruined my flower!"

(In the RPG, all the flowers were red)

I love the banter between Javi and Dean. This chapter was rather lighter-hearted than the last few.
Heh, like that'll last...

Next week will be my last Friday update; then I'm moving to Tuesday updates instead.

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