The Asylum

[Chad32]

"Alright. I'm game. What should I do to earn your trust? I know! A rousing speech! That's what you need, right? If not, then I'm still all ears. If for nothing else than to break the monotony of this current lifestyle."

[Galladerotom]

Taxi
"<Steal five cases containing appamene from the storage room. Ten if you can manage it.>"

[Chad32]

"Alright. I'll make my move the next time they come to feed us. Come back afterwards, and see what I've got."

[DinosaurNothlit]

((Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  I had a bunch of writing to do for classes and such, and I just about couldn't take any more for a while there.))

"Should I go with him?" Snake asked Taxi in his slithery Taxxon speech, as an aside, lowering his voice in hopes that Teeth wouldn't hear.  "You said you didn't trust him, you want me to watch him for you?"

Snake was trying to make it sound like he agreed with Taxi, that he didn't think Teeth could be trusted either.  But that wasn't really his motivation for siding with Taxi on this.  In truth, Snake was thinking of one thing, and one thing only.  Appamene.  Going along with Teeth was the perfect excuse to steal some for himself.

[Galladerotom]

Taxi
"<No. This is his task alone plus if both of you get caught you'll ruin everything. As for me I am going to see what everyone found.>" and he walked back inside.

[Chad32]

Eventually one of the guards came with some meat to feed Teeth and the others. However, he used all of his will to lay in the corner, and not pounce on the meat. He even looked at it like he wanted it, but didn't move.

"What's the matter with you?" She asked, and opened the gate. She took a pole, and nudged him a bit. "Come on and eat, Taxxon."

At just the right moment, he lunged! The guard shocked him with a taser bolt from the pole, but he stunned her. He stole her keys and swallowed them before she recovered, and when she did, he glared menacingly. "I don't want processed cow meat. I want living, bloody flesh!" Of course he doubted she could understand him, but the point came across. She screamed and fled, shutting the door behind her.

He then brought up the keys, ate the meat, made his way out, and went to the storage room. He found eight cases before he heard people coming down the hall. He raced back to his cell, removed the stuffing from his bedding, and shoved the cases underneath. Then he closed the door, threw the keys outside, and lay on his bedding.

"...and I think I dropped my keys. No I don't want to go back alone. There they are. You behave, you vile disgusting animal!" She said, then left with the other guards.

"Mission accomplished." He said to himself.

[Galladerotom]

Taxi
He waited in the acttic for the results and caluculate his next move.

[Chad32]

Zoshonel had gone back to the attic whnever he could, and found Taxi. "So, how did it go? You get your diggers? I think I'm getting worse. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. The guards won't take this stupid muzzle off." He said.

[Galladerotom]

Taxi
"<The leader wants us to make some appamene pumps for the rest of them. Once that is cleared we should be able to start on the tunnels>"

[DinosaurNothlit]

Tora, now finished eating, followed Taxi back to the attic.  She listened to Taxi explain the new factors in the plan, and although she didn’t say anything, it was easy to tell from her expression that she wasn’t happy about the Taxxons’ new demands.  She tended to dislike Taxxons almost as much as (if not even more than) Yeerks.  They were so frantic, so demanding and their thoughts . . . their thoughts were like a perpetual nightmare.  She was somewhat disgusted that they would be relying on their help to escape in the first place, and even more so that they were now catering to their demands.

Tora looked, first with a stalk eye, then with her main eyes, at Zoshonel, noticing his muzzle for the first time.  Why were they treating him like some kind of animal? she thought angrily.  It wasn’t fair.  All he’d ever done was fall in love.

<Maybe I can help,> Tora said.  She brought her tail blade up to Zoshonel’s face.  <Hold very still,> she said softly.

[Chad32]

Zoshonel had seen Tora come in after Taxi. He felt nervous when she asked him to hold still, and brought her blade to his face. What was she going to do with that? Cut his muzzle? He had already tried his claws. He wasn't sure if it would work, but he held still anyway. He wanted to trust Tora. She was pretty, and smelled good.

[AcreLorraine]

Darren yawned and decided it was a good night to wander.  He'd had nothing but basic duties in a while and it was getting monotonous.  Of course something big was going to happen soon, he'd heard it on the recordings.  Bugging most of the rooms had served as a nice distraction in the past and it was paying off now.  While any news attention it would draw would be bad for him, it might bring just enough excitement to let him leave.  Darren began to whistle as he wandered through the grounds.  It wasn't a tune so much as a few chords over and over again.  He smiled to himself as he imagined the panic there would be very soon.

[Chad32]

Teeth was a bit nervous as he sat on the cases of appamene. If Taxi didn't get there soon, he could get busted. Especially since his nextcell mate was an appamene junkie. Of course he liked appamene too, but he never got into a frenzy over it since it didn't smell like blood. He knew that Snake had seen him enter the cell with eight cases. He just had to be strong, for the sake of freedom.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Tora daintily, ever so carefully, placed the sharp edge of her tail against the wire of Zoshonel’s muzzle, careful to keep the point away from his skin.  She pushed, gently at first, then harder and harder, until she couldn’t press any harder without hurting Zoshonel, and it was at that point that she heard a soft ‘crack.’  But it wasn’t the muzzle that had given way, it was her tail blade.  She gasped in pain as she carefully drew her tail away from Zoshonel’s face, watching a tiny trickle of purple blood seep from the cracked tip of her tail.

<Sorry,> she apologized, holding her tail in her hands and wiping the blood away with her thumb, <it was a stupid idea.>  Of course it had been a stupid idea, she berated herself.  She knew perfectly well that female tail blades were weaker than the blades the males were so famous for (hers, even more so, since she had had so little practice with it), and she should have known that whatever that muzzle was made of would be something that couldn’t be so easily cut.

Maybe it was for the best, anyway.  If the staff happened to find Zoshonel without a muzzle on, they might figure out that something was going on.  Little did Tora know, that someone else already knew.

Snake, meanwhile, was casually hanging around near Teeth’s cell, weighing his options.  He knew where Teeth’s quarters were, and had seen him take the appamene in there.  He could take it, right now.  But could he fight Teeth?  Maybe, maybe not.  That wasn’t the point, anyway.

The point was that it didn’t seem like the right thing to do.  Taxi was the big dog here, the one in charge.  Better not to do anything to upset Taxi, and Snake had a feeling that stealing the appamene wouldn’t make Taxi happy.

Snake was good at playing the politics game.  It was the one thing he’d learned from the Yeerks.  You find the one in charge, and become their best friend.  If they don’t trust someone, you don’t either.  If they want you not to do something, you don’t.  But, on the other hand, if Teeth should have a moment of weakness, Snake would make it his job to be the first to know . . .

[Chad32]

"It didn't work." Zoshonel said quietly. He did appreciated the effort, though. He found some cloth in the attic and tied it around Tora's blade to stop the bleeding. "So how do we make the appamene pumps, anyway?"