Castle of a Thousand Illusions [Private Plot]

[cityship]

[This is for Team 1: Lash, Zetta, Martha, Howard, Doctor, Chell, Doc, Sumeragi. The first shore leave / observation deck post is here where they can say goodbye to others.]

As they arrived and landed, there was just a small track of land with one large wooden boat. A man, clothed in black, ushered them in. He didn't answer anything, in fact from the way he squeaked from rust, it was easily to see he was mechanical. Even the water didn't look that deep until near the end, as what looked like sharks swam around them menacingly before disappearing abruptly as they arrived in the middle of a black obsidian castle. The landing wasn't gentle, and everyone was pushed against each other, as the boat lifted itself up and dropped them all together on top of stacks of hay.

There were two rooms leading out. One had carved in "YOUNDER MALE OR WHATEVER SPECIES" and the other "YOUNDER DEM BEAUTIES". Inside, each would find leather outfits, and white underwear so there would be no chaffing. They could use their plantsuits for that too. Soft moccasins for their feet too with a note that while it was not era-perfect, they figured they would appreciate not having too many bruises on their feet (at least for now). The leather was pretty fresh from the smell and looked to have been made just the right size for each person too.

Kinda really creepy when you thought about it.

But that wasn't the worst of it, oh no. The doors would not open until everyone was fully clothed. For those that still refused, ghostly white hands came out of the walls and did the deed for them, removing all weapons and putting them in the appropriate attire before giving a thumbs up and disappearing again.

As the second door opened, with a red glowing orb turning green, they could see many doors leading around twisting, moving stairs that somehow didn't quite seem possible.

The sound of a gong going off somewhere. Again. Three times. Suddenly the weather shifted to sunset (and never changed) and one could swear those ghost hands were now throwing plastic seagulls in the air, as they mostly flew for a few seconds and crashed into the walls. Seawater was blasted off from tiny little spray bottles.

A large scroll appeared, dusted itself sending dust bunnies flying into the air and unwounded before them.

ATTENTION CONTESTANTS! WELCOME YE FAIR OF MIND AND BODY, TO THE GREATEST PHYSICAL CHALLENGE IN ALL THE UNIVERSE!

After what sounded like someone thinking about it, coughing, a few more words appeared.

PLEASE HOLD ON WHILE YOUR HOST GREETS YOU, IN JUST A FEW MINUTES. THIS IS OUR PLAN, WHICH WE ARE TELLING YOU, THE CONTESTANTS.

Comments

Re: ...and Wheatley

[fattynoparents]

Yes. Okay. Hallucinatory drugs. That made sense. She'd mostly settled on that before even attempting to take stock of the room, which only solidified her decision.

This was all kinds of stupid.

But whatever. Chell would play along, if only so she could get back to the ship. Already she was analyzing the room as she would a test chamber, though the lack of cubes and buttons was a bit disconcerting.

At least there was that very familiar British scream.

Wait.

NO.

She whirled in the direction of the noise a split second too late, and for the second time in her life experienced a face-full of Aperture Science personality core.

The force of the impact (he was not terribly light, after all) made her see stars and she dropped to her hands and knees, nose numb and tingling, a sharp pain through her forehead. OH GOD WHY DID THIS ALWAYS HURT SO MUCH.

If Chell had a dollar for every time she did not catch Wheatley when he requested it of her

she would have two dollars.

[notamoron]

"Oww!" Wheatley shouted as he first collided with Chell's face and then the floor. He rolled for a moment before stopping. Upon realizing that he was both not dead and reunited with Chell, he breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh thank GOODNESS it's you! I was just carried off by a mad bird! Could have given me rabies, if robots could get rabies from birds, but either way it was filthy and horrible and I didn't even steal its eggs this time! Well, at least I don't have to deal with birds anymore, eh?"

He was currently seated near the giant parrot's perch, facing towards Chell. He did not yet realize it was there.

This was going to be fun.

[cityship]

As Wheatley did his usual thing (talking a lot and falling on faces) a large timer appeared at the far end of the room, starting its slow ticking down.

They now had three minutes to do this.

[fattynoparents]

She was too busy rubbing her forehead and trying to blink back her swimming vision to listen to Wheatley's latest avian tirade. Besides, there was now a COUNTDOWN CLOCK, which means they had to get moving and figure out what kind of stupid thing they had to do in this stupid room with this...

giant

bird.

WELL THEN. Maybe if it didn't make any noise, he wouldn't notice it.

Once the throbbing subsided, Chell quickly and carefully crawled towards Wheatley scooping him up in on arm and snatching the instructions with another. The room wasn't very well lit, so she stood and made for the torch, leaving the note for her partner to read while she took stock of everything available to them.

[cityship]

Chell. Chell you were not touching the obsidian steps. The soft soil caused vibrations in the ground.

Did you know the saying 'walk or stand without rhythm and you won't attract....



...the giant monster worm.

Well uh. That might be a problem.

[notamoron]

The instructions placed before him, Wheatley started to try and read. "A bit dark in here to read," he muttered. "Hang on a tick."

Wheatley turned on his flashlight.

The flashlight did a good job of illuminating the giant monster worm.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Wheatley screamed.

[fattynoparents]

If Chell was more predisposed to screaming, she probably would have screamed right along with the little robot. As it was, however, she was not predisposed to screaming and instead reacted instantaneously, lobbing the torch as hard as she possibly could towards the HORRIBLE MONSTER THAT JUST BURST FORTH FROM THE FLOOR WHAT THE HELL.

Not content to potentially jab the thing in the facial orifice with a flaming, pointy piece of wood, Chell's next knee-jerk reaction was to grab the next closest blunt object of considerable weight and swing it at the creature with all of her strength.

Unfortunately the next closest blunt object of considerable weight happened to be Wheatley.

btw everyone is allowed to watch each other's thread if they like.

[thewunderkind]

While this was happening, Lash was pressing her nose against the viewing window, looking inside.

"That's awesome!"

Sorry Chell. It's just...giant worms.

[cityship]

The fire seems to be doing something, as the worm bursts into flames for a few seconds, before the torch fell to the floor again, still lit. The creature moved away from it with an unearthly screech, before burying itself back into the ground, just as Wheatley hit the end of it's tail.

The sound waves echoed in the earth from the pain.

Then it was quiet again....for a few seconds.

Then the rumbling started again. The worm was coming in for round two. Better get ready!

[notamoron]

What was that for. He wasn't even doing anything stupid at the moment. "OWW! What the heck was that for?!" Wheatley asked. "That was rather rude if you ask--" The swing did one thing at least.

Thanks to the arc in the air giving him a good look around the room, it made him aware of the giant monster bird.

"...BIRD! BIRD! BIRD!"

[fattynoparents]

Chell silently cursed the Aperture engineer who thought it would be a good idea to program all of the AIs with a strange obsession-slash-fear-of birds. SURE it was probably really hilarious at the time but right now it wasn't; they had less than three minutes and they could not afford to be screaming about birds, no matter how giant. The thing was in a cage, even, and besides, there was a GIANT MONSTER WORM that needed to be dealt with.

She offered a hand and an apologetic glance as if to tell him that EVERYTHING WAS GOING TO BE JUST FINE PLEASE STOP SCREAMING AND START READING THE PAPER WHILE SHE KILLED THE WORM. The torch was back in her grasp and she brandished it in preparation, but as the ground rumbled beneath her feet she lost her balance, managing to catch herself on the organ.

Which, predictably, emitted a loud, unpleasant chord as her palm depressed the keys.

[cityship]

The parrot screeched and spoke.

"No no no! Bwark! All wrong no notes, all wrong, no notes!!"

The giant worm lunged at them, but stopped when Chell was on the organ. It seemed that if she was on soil that wasn't earth, it wasn't going to attack him. It did, however, his menacingly, its giant teeth out in the open in it's completely open mouth.

[notamoron]

"Aah! Ah..." Wheatley slowly calmed down, but only because of Chell's gesturing at him and the scroll. He quickly looked down at it and began to hurriedly read it aloud, so that he could get back to screaming about the bird and worm monsters on both sides.

"Sing a song of pleasure, a pocket full of beasts of the earth. Feed the hand that tries to bite you and gain the notes to the entrance. The key will fall out once you do for all its worth."

[fattynoparents]

YEAH WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!? Chell wasn't going to sing if that's what the scroll was implying. Could Wheatley sing? The turrets could sing, so maybe he could, too. Could she successfully communicate that he possibly needed to sing for them to get out of this stupid room? Did he know any songs? Was this going to be some kind of organ...singing...duet...thing?

She wasn't going to sing and he obviously wasn't going to play the organ (unless he rolled around on the keys or something), so at least that part was figured out.

The other part she was going to take care of RIGHT NOW. In one swift motion, she lunged forward with the torch, aiming to stab that STUPID MONSTER WORM through the gaping maw with a FLAMING STICK.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?!

[cityship]

The worm began to close its mouth around Chell's hand.

Yeah, that's what it was doing with them apples. Might want to remove it quickly.

[fattynoparents]

Chell quickly withdrew, leaving the torch where it was (in the mouth of the monster). The shock of the beast nearly chomping down on her made her stagger back towards the organ, knuckles bleeding where its teeth scraped her as she pulled her hand away.

Hopefully the stupid thing would swallow the torch and choke on it and die and also catch on fire at some point.

[notamoron]

"Maybe that's the answer?" Wheatley suggested. "Feeding the hand that tries to bite you? You could try cutting off your hand and feeding it to the worm."

That was Wheatley, programmed to make bad decisions.

[cityship]

No surprisingly, a single torch is all it took for the creature to let out and unearthly wail, as it suddenly caught on fire from the inside. It twisted and twirled around, making Chell's wish pretty graphic to watch, all things considered.

You could even smell it cook too. It smelled like burning garbage, pretty much.

After that was all done, there remained a well-done cooked worm.

What next?

[fattynoparents]

She glanced down at Wheatley in disbelief because seroiusly how could you even suggest such a thing are you stupid by design or something OH WAIT, but the bewilderment was short lived because the worm was choking and dying on the torch and Chell totally stood there and watched the whole thing with a creepy poker face.

JUST AS PLANNED.

With that imminent danger out of the way, she could concentrate on the organ and the stupid parrot--obviously she was supposed to make music happen, and she motioned to Wheatley to look her way and light the keyboard.

This time she used a single finger to play a single note.

[notamoron]

The flashlight shining in her direction, Wheatley said, "Good job! You've got this killing thing down, haven't you? First GLaDOS and now a giant worm, you're a natural! Ah, I tell you, humans, you're just the best when it comes to killing."

He looked up again and screamed "BIRD! STILL A BIRD HERE! BIRD!"

[cityship]

"WRONG NOTE WRONG NOTE! BWARK!" The giant bird told Chell. It kept looking around, sometimes opening and closing its mouth.

[fattynoparents]

She flinched. GOSH FINE OKAY WRONG NOTE.

Luckily, there weren't very many keys, so it was only a matter of time before she found the right one.

HOW ABOUT THIS ONE?

Time was still ticking down and her pressing the note was accompanied by a glance in the direction of her robot compatriot, as if asking for his suggestions.

She was kind of getting desperate.

[cityship]

The Parrot just squawked loudly and snapped his beak at her, before turning the other way.

He was getting pretty angry at all these random notes.

[notamoron]

Wheatley thought for a moment. "Hmm... Maybe you should cut your hand off and feed it to the BIRD?" he finally suggested.

[fattynoparents]

WHEATLEY THAT WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA THAT WAS THE WORST IDEA.

But really, she shouldn't have expected anything less. Now she was growing frantic, alternating glances between the countdown clock and the stupid organ and the STUPID BIRD, wondering what else she could possibly do.

She was going about it the wrong way. This was a hack, that was all, a musical hack, and she needed the password, which in this case would be a series of notes. And if there was one thing she learned from the construct and his helpful flashlight, it was that brute forcing a hack more often than not got them nowhere. They didn't have the luxury of time to sit around and plug in A A A A A A, followed by A A A A A B and so on and so forth.

There had to be another clue in the room somewhere. Her eyes moved from the organ, to the bird, to Wheatley on the floor, and finally to the stinking, charred remains of the worm. Without a second thought, she skidded to her knees and plunged her hands into the carcass, hoping to find something hidden within.