CHAPTER TWELVE
Abe kept his head bowed as he walked north. As he walked, he let his thoughts range free of his current troubles.
Free Mudokons were, despite all his efforts, a rare thing to see walking the land. Usually, they would be accompanied by Slig guards, most armed with anything ranging from metal clubs to Barrage 32-A Laser Carbines. Abe had been freeing Mudokons for years and years, and still Mudokons weren’t free to walk around as they wished. Most of them just hung around their big fortress, or in the village to the north – his current destination. He still had a lot of work to do. Hopefully, with his former “buddies” along with him, he would be able to get work done quicker.
Still, he knew this wasn’t going to be easy getting their help. Alf, Lowrn, Grunn, and Ferg had never been very good friends with him even when they had openly professed that. They had betrayed him one too many times, and he’d dumped them for the leeching slime they were. All they wanted from him was to take part in his excessive fame as the greatest hero on Oddworld, and they had gotten away with it for twenty years.
So he’d told them off for what they were. He’d told them to stay away from him or he might get graphic with his new wrestling moves…and, like the cowards they really were, they fled.
He’d been doing a very good deed at the time, protecting his legacy and getting an irritant out of the way. But now, it was going to be that much harder to get them to join up with him.
Kapwing!
Instinctively Abe ducked and rolled to the side at the sound of a bullet, fear nearly making his head-tentacle stand up on end. He hadn’t known someone was nearby – if that first shot had been properly aimed, he would be dead now.
My killer instincts must be escaping with my youth, he thought grumpily.
Nearby, he could hear a Slig cursing loudly, but Abe didn’t waste time trying to translate the filthy language. Instead, he kept ducking to either side, strafing madly. Another pistol shot split the morning peace, making a deep furrow in the ground only a few inches to his left.
Still strafing, he shouted, “You’re going to stop shooting right now, or I’m going to be very mad!”
Another shot tore through the air, this one all too close to his head. “Shut up, Mud!” someone shouted at him, in a distinctively Slig voice. “Just stand still, it’ll be easier on both of us!”
Abe didn’t reply. A Slig, still wielding a Snuzi gun? That meant it had to be one of those rare rogue Sligs, ones that survived on their own in the wild without the Glukkons to watch over them. That also explained how he hadn’t been able to detect the Slig’s presence before the attack – living in the wild could boost stealth.
At the familiar click that announced the firing of a bullet .01 of a second before the actual blast, Abe dropped face-first on the ground as solidly as if the ensuing blast had hit him – which he hoped to imply to the Slig had happened. He let out a groan.
“Help!” he gasped out. “Help!”
Apparently, surprisingly, his ruse was good enough. The Slig snorted something about “city types always so weak,” and the Mudokon could hear the squeaking sound of the Slig’s mechanical leg joints as the shooter came in this direction.
Abe found he had to grin, as he put one hand under him, making it look as if he had been shot somewhere in the chest. By letting his guard down, the Slig was proving himself to be something of an amateur.
And Abe handled amateurs for breakfast. And dinner, for that matter. But usually he rounded it off with a professional for supper. Wimps in between—
The Slig came up over the hill with Snuzi gun pointed right at Abe. The rogue grinned, said “You Muds couldn’t fight to save your own lives—” and fired directly at Abe.
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