The Not-So-Great Escape
Toxy wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was hot. Not just hot, but glukkon-gym-shoes hot. He got out of the factory at last, but now this huge wasteland lay before him. Some things just don't seem fair.
He uncorked the cap a bottle and sipped at the brew inside. He just couldn't stop drinking the stuff. He took a taste while he was working for Larzikk at the factory and has been hooked ever since.
Toxy really didn't remember how he began working at the factory, he just remembered swallowing a strange herb a shaman at the village gave him and the next thing he new, he was in a factory pulling levers.
You might be wondering if that was all he did, the answer would be yes. All day he just pulled levers of all kinds. It didn't matter what machine the lever was attached to, or what that particular lever did (He still had the scars from when he released a bunch of particularly nasty-looking slogs from a pen when he pulled a big, shiny, expensive-looking lever) .
Eventually, Toxy started seeing levers in his dreams. Most of the time they slapped him and verbally abused him, other times they pulled themselves and made things explode. You can pretty much see why Toxy left the factory in the first place.
One day, he saw a vending machine. He was looking for more levers to pull when he spotted it. It was such a strange looking machine to him, and it didn't help that it was in the strangest place it could have been in. It was placed in the middle of a hallway. It wasn't against a wall, but right in the middle of the hallway in a way that would have blocked any large (scary) machinery that would have had to go through.
The machine was large an metal. It had a plastic-ish front on it which had lots a words on it, large print and small. Toxy could only understand some of the words because his vocabulary wasn't very expansive, but he could understand the words "free" and "refreshing" on the front, and that was enough for him.
The machine had only one big, green button on it. Toxy couldn't resist pushing it, after all, pulling all those levers can make a mudo very thirsty. After he pushed the button, the machine made some strange clicking noises and a bottle rolled out. He pulled the cork off the bottle and sipped it a bit. It was incredibly sweet, and a bit sour at the same time, but the overall effect of the flavor was incredible. He drank and drank until he couldn't see straight. Everything around him got really fuzzy and out of focus.
It was at this point when he remembered that he had a pet slurg at the village. After all these months he wouldn't be surprised if the slurg was already dead and dried-up. Toxy didn't really mind though. He hated his pet slurg. He didn't want to hate it, it was a pitiful thing to behold, but it was such a horrible thing to have as a pet. He had to feed it and clean up after it, and when he held it, it excreted slime all over him.
Anyway, back to the part with the brew. Toxy wandered around the factory for a bit until everything went black. After waking up, he felt really sick. His eyes were sore so he didn't want to open them. After waiting a while, he felt he could finally look around.
He was in a bed, which was obviously pretty old and rusty. Around him there were other mudokons. They too were lying in old, unsteady (and probably makeshift) beds. After a few minutes of silence, a pair of interns came through a door with a big metal table with wheels loosely attached to the legs. They grabbed a mudokon from a bed and hauled him off through another door.
Toxy looked around the room for a way to escape. He didn't really see anything except a eight-foot tall sign on a wall that said exit and an empty glukkon suit in the corner of the room. Toxy sighed, it looked like all hope was lost.
All of a sudden he got an idea. He would sneak out using the glukkon suit to disguise himself as a glukkon. It was just crazy enough to work... or fail miserably and end in his death, but he was willing to risk it. He would do anything to not have to pull any more levers.
He ran to the suit before anyone could see him and put it on. It was large and fit over his whole body. He looked simply ridiculous, but it was better than nothing. He walked toward the door slowly so he wouldn't trip. It would have been so much easier if he wasn't sick.
There was a slig sleeping outside of the exit door. Toxy tried not to wake up the sleeping guard, but it was inevitable.
"Where are ya goin?" said the slig, "Ya got a meetin or somethin?"
"Uh... uh, yeah." said Toxy, trying desperately to make his voice sound deep, "Yeah, I gots a a meeting wif... umm... a Mr. Importantman."
"Oh" replied the slig, "Okay then, good luck with this Mr. Importantman, he sounds kinda important."
"Oh, okay, thanks." Toxy started to walking away.
"I hope you get yer head fixed." said the slig, who went to sleep abruptly afterwards.
Thus Toxy escaped from the factory, he was sure to stock up on brew from another random vending machine outside before leaving. Now we find him in the wasteland he was in at the start of this strange tale. For hours there was nothing is sight, but soon enough, he saw a message written in the soil. It was scrawled in crude and dislexic handwriting. It said "freedom" and had an arrow pointing foreward. Toxy hoped it was right.
This is my first oddworld fanfic, so I'm sorry if it's not completely accurate. Thanks if you read through the whole thing, I'll post a second eventually.
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