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One Way Out - Chapter 9

Hey guys, it's Poke here! I think you might like this chapter, as there's actually something happening besides Vito talking to a bunch of people! But I'm not gonna say what, as you'll have to find out for yourself!

No more talking, on with the fic!

Well, after that eventful incident in the cell hall and bantering around in the mess hall, me and Kaz had met up, and as I saw him, I was about to talk to him, except before I could do this we were pretty much bunched together into a group of fifteen or so Pokémon, and they escorted us to the woodshop.

I tried to get a visible sight of Kaz, so that we could at least see each other. But one simple thing prevented this from happening. The fact was that these Pokémon that had been bunched with us, most of them were fucking huge! I'm talking about Rhydons, Nidokings, Tyranitars and the like here.

I think I was probably the smallest out of our group, judging by the fact that pretty much all of my group had fully evolved. All, with the exception of Yours Truly. But to be honest, it didn't really scare me, thanks to the big guys talking to one another with nary a care in the world.

Soon we did manage to arrive at the woodshop in question, but the smell of that hall was rife with turpentine and what I assumed was the wood that had been shredded up and whatnot. Whoever was leading this group decided that it'd be a good idea to line up, so that we wouldn't get bitched out by the guy who ran this place.

Unfortunately for that guy, whilst we all lined up, we did a pretty piss-poor job of doing so, and the overseer made clear of this.

To our surprise, a Nidoqueen walked in with her wooden baton in hand. At that point, the main question on our minds was: "A female in a male prison?!"

But to be honest, she didn't look like what most of these guys pictured a female as. Instead of being submissive and meak, this Nidoqueen had a dominant and brash look to her, her swagger showing off her body which was incredibly well built, with her biceps being fully visible. After casting a cold stare at us, she finally spoke.

"SO! You're the sorry bunch of slag heaps that I have to deal with today?!" She shouted at us, and we all nodded in response. Her voice has a southern tone to it, but it was heard to decipher over her annoyed tone.

After our response, she just folded her arms and muttered: "Buncha chicken shits..." before clearing her throat and speaking out loud: "Now! For this mornin', you lot are gonna be in this here woodshop. You're gonna be making shelves, doors, and whatever else we tell you to! You guys look pretty strong and smart enough to know the risks of fucking about with the equipment!" And with that, she picked up a sanding pad of sorts, and continued talking.

"First, you ladies are gonna be using these files to get rid of the bark on the logs that you're given!" She started, and then pointed to a huge pile of logs that were laying out ahead of us. "I don't give a damn what method you use, just as long as the bark's gone on them, and it doesn't take a fucking century to do! After that, you're gonna be sawing the wood down into the stuff that you'll be assigned to! It's a piece of piss, and if you get done by lunch, that makes us both happy. Now... Any questions?" The Nidoqueen finished, and folded her arms in anticipation.

Sure enough, a Krookodile spoke up from my left, with an extremely gruff tone to his voice. "Yeah I have a question, cutie... Do you want a real man to treat ya right, tonight?" He asked, and then caused half the group to either burst out laughing, or groan at the stupidity of the ground/dark type.

The Nidoqueen's eyes widened slightly as she heard that remark, but soon she just shrugged, and casually walked up to the Krookodile, with a smile on her face. After a rather tense exchange of stares between the two Pokémon, the Nidoqueen overseer smiled and turned to walk away, which caused the Krookodile to relax with a devious grin on his face...

...But in an instant, the Nidoqueen curled her right hand into a fist, and immediately spun around and socked the Krookodile so hard in her face, he was knocked backwards into the wall behind him, causing him to slide down with a pained moan. And with that punch, it shut the whole group up, putting any remaining sexists in their place.

The Nidoqueen then recoiled her first and sighed before warning the rest of us: "Now... If anyone else asks any questions like that, I'm sure they won't mind working with a concussion!" That warning also caused the guy - a Beartic - next to me to gulp in an extremely worried manner.

"Any MORE questions?" She demanded, but our group asked none. She seemed to like this, as she smirked and barked: "Okay... Now get to work! This side..." She then scanned herself down from the Rhydon at the right end, to the Ursaring beside me on the right. "...You're working on the door frames! This side..."

And with that, she brushed past me and reached the Pokémon on the end, finishing her briefing. "...You'll be working on making the shelves! You just need to make the pieces." After that, we went off to do our respectable jobs, the group segregated by the job they were assigned to.

First, the Nidoqueen told us to get at least 3 logs from the back. Not wanting to arouse her impatience, we did as we were told, and I barely managed to pick up ONE of the logs! The accursed things nearly weighed a goddamn ton! Unfortunately I reflected in this by letting out a rather pouty moan as I dragged it along to my workbench. I hoped that it wasn't heard by anyone.

But the thing that pissed me off was that I would have to do that again many times. I groaned as I went to get another log from the back, clearly finding the weight of the log difficult to cope with. It was pretty humiliating as well, judging by the fact that a Nidoking was carrying two logs under one arm, and another under the other, whilst casting a cocky grin in my direction.

So, after more hassle involving the movement of the logs from the back to my workstation, I finally got to work, debarking the logs with the rather meek file that was provided. It WAS shedding some bark off of it, but not as much as I had hoped it would.

The thick bark was coming off in small chunks, which were rock-hard to the touch. After about five minutes, I'd only gotten about a third of the log debarked, and the Nidoqueen decided to step in, noticing that I was lagging.

"You. The servine. You're not debarking the log right." and with that, she took the file out of my hands and showed me how it was done. She started to roughly strike upward, stripping a great deal of bark off of the log.

"Where you went wrong, was that you treat the log too soft! You gotta be rough!" Well, I guess she sorted me out there. But this unfortunately attracted the laughs of the pokémon beside me. No Kaz, though. Turns out he'd been assigned to making those door frames the Nidoqueen was going on about.

But I tried my best to shrug off the laughing from the Pokémon, as I took her advice to heart, ensuring my filing was as rough as possible. Sure enough, the overseer's technique turned out in my favour.

After about an hour, I'd finished debarking all three logs, and got to work on sawing them up. To be frank, the saw I picked up was heavier than it looked, and must've been the size of my leg!

After the Nidoqueen told us that we needed to make the bases of the shelves, we just nodded and got on with it. I took my saw, placed it at the upper part of the log, and after a moment of concentration, I started to saw against it, and a great deal of sawdust fell out, as the saw carved its way into the log.

To be honest, this was pretty tiring, as it required my hands to flex and retract several times, causing them to ache after a certain period of time. After about twenty minutes, I'd managed to finish one log off, but to my dismay... There were still two logs remaining, and to be honest, I felt as if my arms were about to fall off.

I even considered calling it quits, but after a brief glare from the overseer, and looking back to what happened to that Krookodile, I realised that that would be a bad idea. With a tired sigh, I place the second log into position and soon got back to work, but soon my cutting slowed down thanks to the sawdust getting into my eyes after breathing on it.

Now... Try to imagine someone spraying your eyes with lemon juice. That's exactly how irritating the sawdust was. Despite its small granules, it certainly made up for it in terms of its potency! After I finished sawing the first board out, I had to stop to wipe my eyes clean of the excess sawdust. My eyes were probably pinker than a rare steak at this point.

This period of torture lasted another half an hour, until I had finally finished cutting both remaining logs into the shelf boards. Then we had to sand the goddamn things down.

The sandpaper that was given to us was pretty small, but it made up for its size with its strength. Jeez, was it rough to the touch!

So, yeah. We basically spent another half hour sanding the board down, so that they were clear of any splintery ends and the like. To be honest, it wouldn't look impressive to the odd Pokémon passing by, but to me, it felt like my life's work had been placed in these shelf boards! Yes! Yes! I know, it sounds stupid; but I just find it nice to see the fruit of my labour. Especially with regards to the state that my hands were in!

So, I'd pretty much finished our quota by around 11:45AM, with fifteen minutes to spare. But to my surprise, one of the Pokémon was lagging, and had been caught out by the Nidoqueen for only taking two logs, instead of the three that were required. He was the same Aggron who pretty much made me watch that atrocity in the showers.

I knew he was an aggressive son of a bitch, but I'd never pegged him down as being lazy. In fact, I thought of him being the exact opposite, judging by the Zeus-esque build of him and his friends.

"Ugh... Do I really have to do more?!" The Aggron complained to the Nidoqueen, who was staring daggers directly at him. And the Nidoqueen clearly wasn't having any of his insolence.

" SHUT YOUR TRAP." She boomed, getting within two inches of his face. "You'll work on what I give you, and abide my rules and be grateful for it! Otherwise I'll give you something to be really sorry for!"

I could see the bulky Steel/Rock type actually gulp before relenting. He gave a defeated sigh and mumbled "Yes, ma'am..." before getting up to get that extra log from the back.

Heh, isn't karma a bitch?

Soon enough, our work shift had finished, and the Nidoqueen looked around, before coming to me. She examined the boards carefully, checking for any errors or screw ups. Fortunately, she had this to say:

"Well, for a rookie you've done a pretty good job. The shelves look okay enough, but they're a bit longer than what I had in mind. Other than that, good job, shorty!" She declared, leaving me in the clear.

After she'd finished inspecting the rest of the group's work, and then she walked to the fron of room, and concluded her time with us.

"So... Judging by what I've seen here, most of you have done okay! You managed to meet your daily quota, and you look like you've given that one hundred and ten percent! Now, do all of us a favour, and get to the showers! Most of you are covered in the sawdust!" and with that, we got in line again.

I met up with Kaz, and to be honest, he was in a similar state as me, his jumpsuit covered in sawdust and all. He still kept his cheery tone though. "Hey Vito!" he greeted. And I replied in kind.

We then focused on the state of each other. "Kaz... You look like you've been busy! Look at the stae of your suit!" I joked, pointing at his usually bright orange jumpsuit, now a pale peach due to the vast amount of saw dust on it. Kaz of course, had a rebuttal at the ready.

"Heh, you're one to talk! Any more dust, and you'll be wearing_white!_" I couldn't help but chuckle loudly at that, and soon I turned away for a brief moment, only to see the Aggron scowling at me. But after a few seconds, he turned away, presumably knowing that I caught him out.

We then made our way to the showers, walking in line, with Kaz right behind me. But to be honest, that Aggron's presence sorta got me concerned... Just a LITTLE tiny bit... But I thought I was being a bit on edge.

Sure enough we all made the long way down the narrow, dank corridor, still feeling just as claustrophobic and crushed as we were every other day when we were due for showering. But as soon as I got through that door way, I felt a bit more relaxed than before.

Fortunately I hadn't received any more issues from "Slick Mick" and his gang after that heinous incident a week ago. I don't know whether they'd backed off, or were just waiting for the perfect opportunity. The Aggron's presence did admittedly concern me a bit, but Kaz's presence put my mind at ease.

Especially when that hard door slammed shut with a unnerving thud, followed by it being locked on the outside.

Simply put, we had no way out again.

We all then reached our respective spots in the changing room, and as you may expect, we pretty much undressed and left our jumpsuits out, ready for collection by whoever the hell it was who did the laundry around here.

Heh, there's a thought... I wonder how Nico's getting on in the laundry? Especially with regards to Delrin's Welcome Home present. He sounds a reliable enough guy, so I wouldn't put it past him to get the job done.

Kaz and many others were already on their way into the showers just as I'd gotten my jumpsuit off. I carelessly left it there, not really giving a damn about who got sawdust on their hands after picking the thing up.

But, I hate to tell you that just as I was about to join the others in the showers, something grabbed me from behind, and basically dragged me back down to earth, in a matter of speaking.

Just as I wriggled my way out of it, I noticed three figures that nearly made my blood turn to ice in an instant. It was that morbid behemoth known as Slick Mick, alongside Steve, his Feraligatr friend, and the Aggron from earlier, who I still didn't know the name of. Regardless of this, they all had one thing on their mind: Me.

Well... So much for a good day in this hell hole...

Oh my... Looks like Vito's got himself in a right mess! What will happen next? You'll have to find out in the next chapter! Please don't forget to drop in some feedback, and if you have any issues with the fic, be sure to give constructive criticism! But take this warning: Any flames with no suggestions or valid reasons will most likely be deleted. Don't be a flamer, back up your criticism!

Until next time, this is PokeCJG, signing off! ^_^