sorry sorry i ain't been posting much, been writing 'Fragments...'
btw, which of the two stories do people prefer?
i could have sworn i'd already posted these chapters, but there you are
CHAPTER 37
“Hey, wake up!”
Crim felt a slight pain in the ribs.
“Come on, get up, lazy bugger!”
He opened his eyes to see Jal standing over him. He pulled himself up, and saw Int, Bil and Ana standing behind Jal. The sky was dark.
“What happened?”
Int shook his head. “You fell asleep. After playing with the kids.”
“No, I mean in the argument.”
“I think we won,” said Jal, sounding relieved, “They’ve agreed to accept you for now, until after the attack.”
“Attack?”
Jal sighed, nervously. “We’re going to attack the factory. A Full-Scale Assault, not just a raiding party. Maybe 2500 of us. With the Crawler, Meetles, and all the weapons we can carry.”
“When do we leave?”
Int groaned, and Jal took a sharp intake of breath.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Jal hesitated, and then replied. “We think it would be better all round if you stayed here in the village.”
Crim looked shocked, then exploded. “Why? You need everyone you can muster!”
Int laid a hand on his shoulder. “We just feel that you’re not… not fully able. You don’t have free hands to hold a weapon, and we think that your chances of survival wouldn’t be high.”
“I’m as good a fighter as anyone here!”
Jal tried to keep his voice calm. “You were as good a fighter as anyone, but you have to remember your disability. It sometimes seems as if you almost forget about it.”
Crim spluttered. “But… I’ve learned to cope! I can hold weapons in my feeding tentacles, and run quite fast on my hands!”
Ana spoke up. “There’s something else.”
Crim turned to her, calming. “What?”
Int bit his lip. “We didn’t really want to say, but, well, you’re a slig. You’re not exactly popular. Several of the tribe, including our best warrior, Incal, would happily stick a knife in your back if they thought they could get away with it. In a battle, there would be lots of opportunities to do so, and we don’t want to lose you. Or Incal, for that matter, as we’d have to exile him if he did kill you.”
Crim was speechless for a while. “So I’m stuck here in the village, alone, because one of your warriors dislikes me?”
“You won’t be alone. The kids are staying. And Int.”
Crim looked at Int, surprised. “Why are you staying?”
Int sighed. “Someone has to look after Bil and Ana’s kids. That’s me.”
“Why doesn’t one of them stay?”
This time it was Ana’s turn to sigh. “If me or Bil stayed, we’d be thinking about each other all of the time. And the kids would pick up on that; they’d become depressed like us. Int’s good with them, he can keep them happy. We noticed that they enjoy having you around; that’s one reason why we want you to stay: so that you can help to keep the kids’ minds off the fact that their parents are out there somewhere getting killed.” She smiled, humourlessly. “Besides, we’d never hear the last of it from Art if one of us stayed!”
Crim frowned. “How can you joke? Do you really think you’re just going out there to die?”
Ana sighed deeply. “I really don’t know. They have weapons that are far superior to ours, and they outnumber us. We have a chance…”
There was an embarrassed silence.
Int cleared his throat. “We should –”
“Ana! Int!”
They all turned, to see a young mudokon running towards them, an excited look on his face.
Int called to him. “What is it, Neb?”
The mudokon reached them, almost out of breath. “Arim’s back!”
Ana looked surprised. “Where’s he been the past week?”
“You’d better come and see for yourself: they’ve captured a patrol!”
With that, the mudokon turned away from them and ran back the way he had come. Ana ran after him, and the others followed, confused.
CHAPTER 38
“I keep telling you, we weren’t on patrol! We were running away ourselves!”
The guard snorted. “You expect us to believe that? Sligs are well-known for making up anything they need to say to save their lives.”
“But it’s true!”
“Oh, leave it, Drak, they’re never going to believe us. Just wait until the leaders get here, maybe they’ll be more reasonable.”
Their guards saw the veiled insult. “Shut up, Slig!”
Greeb lay back. Apart from his sore head and aching neck, he felt pretty good. After all, they’d been trying to find the local mudokons, and now they had. He had hoped to meet on more equal ground, but he was confident that they could get the leaders of the tribe to believe them. Mudokons were generally more reasonable than, say, Glukkons. He could only hope that none of these had ever been slaves…
Something was happening. There was a small group of mudokons entering the hut. He sat up to see more clearly. The first three to enter were unfamiliar, but he could barely believe his eyes when he saw the fourth.
“Jal!”
“Greeb! We thought you were dead!” Jal rushed towards Greeb, ignoring the disapproving calls of the guards. Greeb stood and threw his arms unashamedly around his friend. Ana, in the doorway, frowned.
“You two know each other?”
Jal broke away from Greeb, smiling. “Know each other? This slig saved my life, at least twice!”
Crim called up from the floor. “Hey, someone lift me up!”
Seeing Crim, Greeb laughed, and picked him up. “You alive too, eh? Are Meet, Sill, and Groz here too?”
Jal’s face fell at the mention of Groz’s name. “Meet and Sill should be here soon.”
Greeb waited for him to continue, but saw the look on his face. “And… Groz?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
Jal coughed uncomfortably. “He won’t be coming.”
“Not… Dead?”
Jal shook his head. “No, not dead. Probably not. Not yet, anyway. He let the guards at the factory catch him, so that the rest of us could escape.”
Int spoke up. “Groz? This is your Glukkon, is it?”
“Yeah.” Jal suddenly looked around. “What about the others? Rettick, Till, and Gorm?”
Greeb said nothing, but turned to look back at the forest. Before he could reply, Arim rushed in, closely followed by Bil.
“There they are! The bastards!”
Bil flashed Ana a look, behind Arim’s back. “The sligs?”
“Of course I mean the fucking sligs! We caught them patrolling the edge of the logging operation.”
Ana was alarmed. “Logging operation?”
“Arim says that the Glukkons have started to chop down the trees.”
“I thought that was impossible!”
“That’s what I said.”
Arim turned. “Don’t you believe me? Why would I lie to you?” He pointed angrily at Greeb. “They’re the ones you should be interrogating, not me! They kidnapped my little brother because he saw what they were doing!”
Briori spoke up indignantly. “We were just as surprised as you, and we’ve never even seen your brother.”
Arim flared up, charging across the room to throw his hands around Briori’s neck. If Briori had been a normal slig, Arim would probably have killed him, enraged as he was. But not even an incensed mudokon like Arim could defeat a Bigbro single-handedly. Briori caught Arim’s arms and threw him across the room. One of the mudokon guards swung his staff across the back of Briori’s head, knocking him to the ground. Briori stood, angrily, but was held back by Frag, who could calculate Odds a lot better than Briori. Jal stepped in between the sligs and Arim, who was readying himself for another attack.
“Stop!”
Neb and Lipp stepped up behind Arim, to hold him back. Frag patted Briori on the shoulder, calming him. Briori’s steroids were beginning to wear off, and he was more than ready to fight to the death.
“Greeb here is a friend of mine, and any friends of Greeb are friends of mine. Now, I don’t believe Greeb would kidnap anyone, and I know that none of us knew about this Logging. Whoever is running it must be covering it up well.”
Greeb interrupted. “Incredibly well. You haven’t seen the size of it. You’d have thought we’d have heard of something that massive.”
“Exactly. Now, I don’t know you very well, Arim, and I don’t know, err…”
Briori was in no state to speak for himself, so Frag filled in. “Briori.”
“Briori [Thank you]. I don’t know you, Briori, at all. But I know most of you, and you all seem to be the sort of people who should be able to get along. Now, Bil, if what Arim says is true –”
“It is.”
“– then we’ll have to rethink our battle plans.”
Greeb looked up. “Battle plans?”
Crim whispered to him. “They’re planning to attack the factory.”
Jal frowned at the interruptions, but continued nonetheless. “Obviously, the enemy is greater than we thought. We won’t just come up against the Factory itself, but there is this Logging Industry to take out. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that just the 3000 of us will be able to do it alone.”
Ana frowned. “What are you suggesting?”
Jal took a deep breath. “I’d estimate that there are about 4000 sligs working in the factory alone.” Ignoring protestations from Arim and some of the other guards, he continued. “If just half of those join us, that would nearly double our fighting strength. Not to mention the fact that they have access to the factory armouries.”
Arim broke free. “Are you suggesting we cooperate with them?” He almost spat out the words.
“Well, yes.”
Arim slowly walked up to Jal, the disgusted expression on his face getting stronger with every step. When their faces were almost touching, Arim paused. The whole room held its breath, and then Arim spat in Jal’s face. Then he turned his back and exited the hut.
“Arim!” Ana followed him out of the hut.
Neb and several other mudokons were nodding. “He’s right. We can’t be expected to cooperate with them.” And he also left.
“Wait…” Bil sighed, and turned to Jal. “Don’t worry, they’ll come around. They just need some time to think. I think they’ll see that we can’t destroy the factory on our own.”
Drak snorted. “I wasn’t too keen on the idea of joining the muds in the first place, but if they’re all like that, I don’t wanna be part of it.” He attempted to leave, but a stout wooden staff barred his way.
“You’re not going anywhere.” The guard narrowed his eyes, as if daring Drak to try and get past him. Drak swung back his fist, but Greeb held it.
“It’s not worth it, Drak. Let them sort it out.”
“And if they decide to kill us all?”
Greeb’s eyes met Jal’s, their expressions of despair mirroring each other. “They won’t.”
Bil and Int began to walk out. Jal caught up with them. “Where are you going?”
“We need to sort this out,” Bil replied, “And find those two other friends of yours. I was a bit worried when they didn’t turn up.”
Jal turned back to the others. “Will you –”
Greeb nodded. “We’ll be okay.”
Jal made to pick up Crim, but was stopped by one of the guards, who shook his head. “He stays here.”
“But you know we can trust him!”
“He’s a slig.”
Jal paused, and then took one last glance at the sligs before walking out.
__________________
Guns don't kill people, People kill people! Using Guns.
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Hmm... maybe I'll experiment... 
*hunts out a pencil and paper and curls up on the sofa to doodle*
Ah well. You can have the original if you like... 
That "Oddworld should have Oddworldian characters") and though Drag and me have collaborated on a couple in Instant Smeggenger - great fun when you're just chatting and suddenly go off on a spontaneous fic - the chronology of them is doing my head in... *realises she's not been breathing and collapses*
