trans_9 | a fabulous team aperture adventure [open]

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a fabulous team aperture adventure [open]

They were very most definitely in space.

Chell hadn't wanted to believe it--as horrible as Aperture was, the Laboratories were at least familiar and...not space--but the overwhelming evidence was right in front of her, nearly everywhere she looked (and she'd made it her personal mission to look everywhere). Knowing all the ins and outs of a place made it that much easier to plot a getaway.

Escaping was what she planned to do, of course, right after she found where they were keeping her portal device, and where GLaDOS was hiding. She didn't want to fight an army of bug aliens. Stranded between dimensions or not, she wanted the same thing she always wanted--her freedom, and no psychotic computer (Stacy or otherwise) was going to keep it from her.

And speaking of psychotic computers...

Toting an overly excitable metal sphere without the portal device predictably impeded her progress when it came to combing the ship, to say nothing of her reasons for doing so. In true Wheatley fashion, the personality construct seemed to have little comprehension of their situation's gravity, and was probably just glad he wasn't off orbiting the Moon. The sooner she got him down to Engineering, the better, even if she was more than a little apprehensive at the idea of granting him any sort of independence (ultimately, however, her robot charge was heavy and her arms were starting to hurt).

One thing she could not deny was the overwhelming vastness and strangeness of the craft. Every inch of it begged to be explored, analyzed, committed to memory. Then, perhaps, she could plan her next move.

[OOC: Chell and Wheatley are anywhere you want/need them to be, poking around and being nosy. Just specify a location in the subject line and we will make the magic happen.]

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Anwei smiled back; she used her human-sized smile, not the one that stretched literally from ear to ear. She'd learned how discomfiting that one was to most people.

"I'm glad to see you up and around, Wheatley." As opposed to being stuck on a shelf somewhere. "I don't suppose this is the 'chap' who was with you in space?"

For one thing, chap usually meant a male, she was fairly certain.

"Aw, thank you! That's so thoughtful!" he replied. Finally, someone other than his bestest friend in the whole world Chell who cared about ol' Wheatley! "Oh, no, this is my good friend Chell," he explained. "The chap I was in space with, well, I haven't seen him at all. Maybe you have? Looks just like me but with a yellow eye? Keeps talking about space and going to space?"

Oh. Apparently Wheatley made a friend while she wasn't looking. She decided it would have been cute if she wasn't still angry at him.

Chell watched the exchange curiously, though when he introduced her as a good friend, her expression immediately changed to one of agitation, her face screwed up in a way that said there was more to their relationship than Wheatley was letting on.

She also found herself thinking please for the love of all that is science, say you haven't seen Space Core.

"Hello, Chell," she said, trying and failing to decipher her expression. Maybe they weren't really friends? Maybe they were from a culture where AI/organic relationships were taboo?

"I haven't seen anyone in a casing like yours. Of course, I've gone over the hangar several times looking for...things...and didn't see you. Your yellow-eyed friend may just be in storage somewhere."

She darted one eye sideways to look out at the stars. "Or maybe he's still out there."

"Oh, don't mind Chell," Wheatley tried to explain. "She doesn't talk. Like... ever. Completely mute, never a word. Just jumps. That's kinda her thing. But she's quite good at jumping, I might say."

"Well, I hope wherever he is, he's happy," Wheatley sighed wistfully. ~~Suddenly, from outside Stacy, a voice shouted "SPAAAAAAAACE!"~~

If there was one good thing that came from Aperture nearly going up in a nuclear explosion, Chell decided, it was that Space Core got his fondest wish. The rest of them had been completely and totally screwed beyond belief, but at least Space Core could be happy.

Thinking about the events that lead to Aperture nearly going up in a nuclear explosion, however, only served to aggravate her somewhat disgruntled countenance, eyebrows pulling together. It occurred to her that even if she didn't know much about human social graces, making angry faces wasn't going to end in positive relationships of any kind.

Her expression softened into one of questioning, and she pointed first at Anwei and then at Wheatley, silently asking how they'd met.

Edited 2011-07-22 00:37 (UTC)

Hmm, mute. Like the Chancellor? It was also possible that she was telepathic, and Wheatley couldn't pick her up. However, the Chancellor had a rather pleasant (if scaly) expression when she met him, and Chell looked upset.

She hoped the other woman wasn't upset because she thought Anwei and Wheatley were intimates of some sort.

"Oh, we just met at the pod pop. I worked in a culture with a lot of AIs, who used casings like his to move around. I just thought...he might be someone I knew." She looked down at the white sphere, her own expression sad for an instant.

"Yup, that's exactly how it happened," Wheatley confirmed. "She answered a LOT of my questions about this bizarre place, let me tell you."

She nodded in understanding. It made sense, of course. Certainly she hadn't been the first of the new arrivals to notice a babbling robot on the floor of the Observation deck.

If Anwei could answer questions, then perhaps Chell could stand to be a little friendlier. Pushing thoughts of Aperture and Wheatley's betrayal to the back of her mind, she thrust an awkward hand forward in imitation of what she'd seen other humans do when they met each other.

Edited 2011-07-22 18:43 (UTC)

Anwei took the other woman's hand and gave a fairly soft handshake to it, letting go a little faster than she normally would. She didn't want Chell to feel trapped.

"I'm sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances," she said, gesturing to indicate the fleshy couches, the unnerving architecture, and the stars outside. "Stacy is - well, a definite improvement over being trapped in a collapsing universe. But she isn't quite - home-y."

"Tell me about it. Ooh! You know what would spruce this place right up? A few Panels. Oh! Oh! Or even some... mashy spike plates..." He seemed downright giddy at that thought.

WHAT.

NO.

Chell visibly tensed at the mention of those mashy spike plates. She was going to have none of that, and shook her head fervently in response.

Chell's expression was not unnoticed.

"Please bear in mind, Wheatley, that everything you see is actually an extension of Stacy's body," she cautioned. "Asking her to modify her interior could be considered insensitive."

Although mashy spike plates sounded like they could be useful, in the right circumstances.

"Oh, don't mean to offend anyone," he said apologetically. "Just thinking aloud, from a purely practical sense. There's a lot of things you can use a good mashy spike plate for, after all. There's mashing up things... and... um..." He trailed off.

WELL. Chell was good and offended. The mention of those particular instruments of her attempted murder did not score him any points in the "I am really and truly sorry" department.

She looked at Anwei with obvious concern in her eyes as if to question the presence of such mashy spike plates aboard Stacy.

Please tell her there weren't any mashy spike plates. Or spinny blade walls, for that matter.

"For the moment, Stacy seems to have settled on the tentacles for internal defenses. And of course there are a lot of very high-powered crew members, who can probably do their own mashing."

Mind you, the image of, say, Kain trapped between mashy spike plates was rather nice. Or certain members of the Epicurean elite.

That raised a very interesting question.

"So do you think, and I'm just thinking out loud here mind you, that just maybe... I could get my own... personal... mashy spike plates?"

He seemed practically giddy at the very idea.

Chell knew she couldn't control him forever, as much as she would like to. That was the reason why she hoped to take him to Engineering, give him some independence and hope he could handle it without going insane. Again. A risk she'd have to take--if they were really in the middle of an interdimensional war, toting him about ad infinitim would be completely impractical and probably get them both killed eventually. And she liked being alive. She liked it a lot.

It also occurred to her that getting him limbs would not necessarily be enough in a combat situation, so weapons were going to be part of the equation, whether she liked it or not (she didn't).

Mashy spike plates, however, were just too soon. Here he was, asking if he could get his figurative hands on the very things with which he'd tried to murder her. For all she knew, he'd just turn around and try to kill her again the instant they were in his possession. So where Wheatley was practically giddy, Chell was positively furious, and certainly looked it, too.

Chell's expression spoke louder than words. And to be honest, the image of Wheatley marching about the ship attached to spiky plates (would he use them like shoes, or clubs, or ?) was also a little offputting. She picked her own next words with care.

"If you would like to recreate the experience of having these - mashy spike plates - you could visit the Sensoriums. They let you build simulations of almost anything that you can imagine, and there are built-in safety protocols so that nobody gets hurt by mistake." Or on purpose, her glance said to Chell.

"For outside the Sensoriums, Stacy is watching us, all the time, everywhere." Well, not literally everywhere, although Anwei was suspicious that the places where Stacy couldn't 'see' the crew were just part of an elaborate ploy to make them feel at ease. "It would be a shame if you accidentally dropped a plate on my foot, for example, and Stacy thought you were attacking me and thrashed you." Another meaningful glance, this one at the tentacles lining the walls of the Obs Deck between the windows.

Wheatley looked up to Chell. He didn't say anything. But his expression said all he needed to.

It said 'Could we go? Like right now?'

She wasn't sure why he thought she'd even begin to entertain this desire. Indulging his robot god fantasies was pretty much the worst idea since his real stint as robot god. Was he just going to go to the Sensoriums and imagine up Wheatley Labs all over again? Pathetic.

At the very least, however, leaving him there to play Overlord of Imaginary Aperture would give her some alone time (like hell was she sticking around for that, anyway), so she acquiesced to offer him a shrug.

To Anwei, she gave an apologetic smile.

"The Sensoriums would also be a good place for you to decide if you'd like some motility additions to your casing, Wheatley," Anwei pointed out. "You could basically build any sort of limbs you'd like, test them out, and then see if someone from Engineering could help you build a real pair. Or set, as the case may be."

The Sensoriums should be able to simulate what sort of motor control he would have, connectivity and so on.

"It could be fun, don't you think?" And take a weight out of Chell's arms, she mentally added.

"Pleeeeease? Pretty pretty pleeeeease?"

It would be much easier to march down to Engineering knowing exactly what they wanted. At the very least, it would be easier for the people they expected to slap some limbs on the little personality core, especially if Chell didn't plan on speaking to them.

She glanced at Wheatley with an exasperated sadness, not wanting to admit that it sort of hurt to see him so excited about being able to play robot god whenever he wanted. It didn't lend a whole lot of believability to his apology.

But she gave him a nod anyway, knowing that if he was going to play robot god she didn't necessarily have to be there for it. She could go off and do human things, like sleep.

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