Lilly Rycroft

The Story of Annie (Spoilers for Harmonic Despair)
          
          For years, Annie’s family had loved slathering bad people in goose grease, putting them in spheres and slowly cooking them alive. 
          
          It was a cruel and unusual punishment, and Annie loved it.
          
          But one year, something changed. Her father declared that the practice was too barbaric for the family. He banned it. Without her only source of entertainment, Annie was sad.
          
          She needed new entertainment. So she became bad.
          
          She masked her bad personality under a sweet personality.
          
          She would make the tradition return!

I posted my 20th story: 
          https://www.wattpad.com/story/295618988-harmonic-despair-taeko-x-protagonist-oc

On the night of 18 January 1960, Aether President Lusamine enters the Team RR castle. Soon after arriving, Lusamine is summoned to the office of the leader, Giovanni, who warns her that she can’t escape this castle for its exceedingly high level of security. According to her kids, Lusamine has an exceptional I.Q., but Giovanni informs her that no slave of theirs has ever successfully escaped from their castle. After being stripped naked, given a haircut, renamed “Mud” and given a slave dress, Lusamine is escorted to her cell where Cyrus taunts her by saying "Welcome to Our Castle, slave".
          
          Over the next several days, Mud makes acquaintances with a few inmates among them are Lysandre, a vain man who keeps a pet lion, Ghetsis, an American man and the prison librarian, and Archie, a man who paints portraits. However, Mud also encounters a bully named Maxie, who harasses her in the showers and later attacks her in the prison yard with a gun. The guards break up the fight, and both are sent to solitary confinement cells in D block, despite Mud merely acting in self-defense.
          
          Two weeks later, after being released from the brutal, isolated conditions, Mud settles into the routine of being a maid. Ghetsis commands deep respect in the prison yard, sitting high above the other inmates. When Mud approaches, Ghetsis’s friends try to stop him but Ghetsis unexpectedly permits him to sit with him.

Mud also befriends a new inmate in the adjoining cell, Faba. When Giovanni enters Archie’s cell unannounced, he sees that doc has painted a very detailed portrait of Giovanni. At first Giovanni’s appears flattered but later he cruelly orders Archie’s painting privileges to be eliminated without explanation. Devastated, Archie intentionally chops off three of his fingers in the carpentry shop with a hatchet. Mud and the others soon learn that Giovanni saw the portrait of himself among Doc's paintings and was responsible for ordering the sadistic penalty.

In his cell one day, Mud sees a roach climb into the ventilator grill underneath the sink. Using the nail file he stole from the warden, she chips off a piece of the concrete around the opening. Along with her recently captured daughter Lillie, and Faba, Mud plans an escape. Because the moist air and the salt water surrounding the castle have softened the concrete foundation and corroded the metal over the last several decades, Mud thinks they can dig an opening around their ventilators large enough to crawl through and access the shaft leading to the roof.

To mislead the guards during head counts, Mud suggests making papier-mâché dummy heads, using flesh-colored paint and hair from the barbershop. Faba takes up painting to procure the colors needed to create the dummy heads and create cardboard coverings for the cell vents. Over the next several nights, as Faba keeps watch, Mud continues to scoop out her opening with the nail file and uses an accordion to disguise the hole. She later sneaks a spoon from the cafeteria and welds it to the file to provide a better grip for digging, a trick she learns from Ghetsis using filings from a dime he gets from Cyrus (who happily gets Mud  desserts at chow time).

Using a wedge she sneaks from the carpentry shop, he is able kick out the metal grill and takes his first peak into the shaft. Faba and Lillie start to chisel their openings, while Mud creates her dummy head. When the decoy is finished, Mud lays the fake head on the cot as if she is sleeping and takes her first trip into the passageway. Initially Cyrus is fooled by the dummy, but later becomes suspicious when he notices that Mud has not moved. However, Mud miraculously returns to the cot before the decoy is exposed.

The following day, Mud learns that Lillie are making progress on her opening and head, but Faba is behind schedule. During the next trip into the passageway, Lillie finds a boat. Meanwhile, Mud investigates the iron rods and metal blocking the exit to the roof and devises a makeshift drill from a small fan to remove their structural support. With the passageway clear and the boat almost ready, Mud schedules the escape for Tuesday night.

Lysandre is enraged, but as he reaches out to attack the man, he suffers a fatal heart attack. Later, Giovanni requests a shakedown of Mud’s cell and finds nothing unusual. However, when he hears that Mud and Faba stay up late conversing, he issues orders for the two to be relocated to different cells as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Maxie has been released from solitary confinement and prepares to stab Mud with a knife, but Ghetsis is able to intercept him.

A few days later on the day of the planned escape, during mealtime, Mud places a sapphire at the table in honor of Archie, but Giovanni stops by and crushes it, reminding Mud of regulations.