Crash landing. New body. Back home. The story was pretty textbook when it came down to it; even Abigail and her serious lack of forethought could have seen this coming as the most positive possible solution for she and the other two cores she had spent a great deal of time in space with. Now the joy of returning home had faded and Abi the Space Core was now bored. She sat on the very top of a pile of cubes with her knees drawn up to her chest and a pout firmly set on her face. The test chamber she was occupying should have been clean by her hand, but she couldn't care. Booooriiiing.
"Fact: If one's face is set in an unpleasant expression, it is 45% likely to stick," Craig's voice came from the bottom of the pile, sounding like he was pacing around it.
"Leave me 'lone, Craig, you're no fun," Abi huffed, unfolding her legs and turning to try to spot the pink android coming into view.
He came around to a stop right in front of Abigail's cube hill with his arms tucked behind him and a bland expression, "Fun is not conducive to science. Neither are stacks of cubes in the middle of test chambers."
"Closer to space," she muttered with her shoulders tensely up to her ears, arms crossed.
"Fact: Daydreaming of going to fictional places is not worth the processing power," he said airily, continuing on his way toward the chamber exit, "The assessment of testing chamber number 12 is below-necessary cleanliness, above-average plant life, and dismal morale. Suggested method to correct this: new test chamber supervisor."
Abi huffed again and began to pull herself off of the pile of cubes. That grumpy gus wasn't helping her terrible mood by talking about 'fictional' space and now it looked like he was going to tattle. If the little redhead knew how to swear, she would have called him a kiss-ass, but instead she just grumbled about shooting him into space to see it was indeed real while she cleaned up the boxes, fizzling those she didn't need in the emancipation grid.
It looked like she was going to get punished either way, so she didn't bother to start weeding the plants and things growing from between the cracks in the panels. Instead, she shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and stared down at her shoes while navigating the rails outside of the testing track. It wasn't really like her to be so down; normally she couldn't stop chattering about whatever she happened to be enthralled with at the time, but now it was just cubes and testing; neither of those things were really worth getting excited about! There were no nebulas or stars to discover, only faith plates to test and garbage to fizzle every day. Even though she wasn't very useful to the Central Core in her child-like body, she was still put to work. She needed something that she could sink her teeth into, something stimulating. She was a growing android, after all.
It wasn't fair; Craig was happy so long as he continued to add more facts to his stupid database; Rick was alright so long as there was some danger involved and Wheatley… It hit Abi: Wheatley was probably just as miserable as she was. He wasn't very happy to be back either, considering everything that happened. She'd certainly heard quite a lot about the 'lady in the tests,' how he'd betrayed her, and how sorry he was. That lady wasn't here anymore, they soon discovered and Wheatley must be upset about that, Abi was sure of it. She wasn't dense, she knew that her talkative and excitable nature made her grating, especially to him, but maybe they could just be sad together. That's what friends did, right? Sounded just weird enough to work, so Abi picked up her pace, moving down the railway toward where she knew Wheatley would be hanging about.
He'd been given the hard stuff to clean; lots of broken glass and heavy machinery to move, but for now, he was near the Neurotoxin dispensal unit. She picked her way through the broken glass, past the turret redemption line to hear someone talking loudly to nothing. Welp, she found him. She peered over the balcony that over-looked the dispensal unit, she could see Wheatley's dirty-blonde hair bobbing up around the edges of the fallen unit, pacing around it at a fast pace.
"Bloody over-complicated no-good scrap metal!" he groused at what Abi had to assume was the big canister that used to house the neurotoxin.
"Wheeeeeeaaatleeeeey," she called with both hands cupped around her mouth, "Caaaaan I come doooooown?"
There was a heavy thunk and a swear, "Frackin'…, just like that, banging up the new head, nicely done, old boy, very nicely done," he was muttering to himself again, Abi rolled her eyes with a stifled giggle.
His scrawny, bespectacled face appeared over the top of a huge crumpled piece of sheet metal that once held all of the neurotoxin in the facility, "Whassat? Is that you, Abigail?" he groaned.
"S'me alright!" she called back with another muffled titter.
"Well… c'mon down, can't hurt too much more than already's been hurt," he finally conceded, still not sounding terribly enthused.
Abigail ignored the obvious implication that she wasn't entirely welcome and swung down on the balcony with a high-pitched, "Wheeeee!"
Wheatley tapped a wrench in his hand when she approached, her hands clasped behind her, "You. Sit. There," he said, pointing to a cube off to the side, "You'll never hear the end of it from me if you manage to… make a mess or something or worse—get hurt, understand? That's a good girl, go on."
She couldn't just do as he said without blowing him a raspberry; she did skitter off to the cube and leaned on her knees, propping up her chin with her hand. Watching Wheatley attempting to fix the a bit piece of broken metal with a wrench was assumedly funny, but after several minutes of watching him pace around it and attempt to size it up with his hands and the wrench, Abi was bored; bored as she was sitting on a pile of cubes getting berated by dumb old Craig.
After about the fiftieth pass around the canister, Abigail huffed loudly, making Wheatley whirl around and look at her with an almost distressed look on his face, "Well, y-you want to take a crack at it. S'not as easy as it looks, I'll have you know. Nowhere to turn those little spinny bits, like on the others."
Abigail drew her knees up to her chin as an answer, no thank you silly, "S'not got spinny bits, weirdo," she giggled in spite of her boredom, "It's all broke, you gotta find new metal or punch the old stuff back into shape."
"Weirdo, am I? I'll have you know that… that…," Wheatley harrumphed, but scratched his head in thought and frustration, "Well, I'm fairly certain that isn't a word."
"Oh please," Abi giggled with a dramatic roll of her yellow eyes, "'Course it is. Now, how're you gonna fix that pile of scrap?"
Wheatley threw up his hands in exasperation, "I don't know, I have to do something or I'm doomed into a pile of bolts by her!"
Abigail frowned and drummed her fingers on her knee, "This's definitely not any better than cleaning test chambers. I miss space," she grumbled.
"You… You manage to fix this heap of junk and I'll take you there myself!" Wheatley cried, exasperated beyond belief.
Abigail blinked several times in shock before smiling about as widely as her face could handle, "You will?" she shrieked excitedly.
"YES, but pardon me if I don't believe you actually can, Abigail, because, I'll have you know, I am an expert —wha… what are you doing?"
The personality construct had hauled herself off of the cube and began to circle the pile of metal before them without a word. Wheatley attempted to follow her, but she pushed him away without looking with a firm hand to the chest. He faltered and just watched for a moment, slightly confused and a little worried. Oh god, she wasn't actually going to try was she?
"Air pressure," she said finally.
"What?"
"Hook those big hoses back up and it should go back to normal. You're fixing the wrong bits," she said with a sudden giggle.
The blonde construct dropped his wrench in surprise, "You… think that'll work?"
"One way to find out!" she was already dashing her way up to the connection cables, "You connect the other side!"
All the other android could do was stare for a long moment before stumbling to hurry to the other side of the neurotoxin dispenser unit, climbing up and attaching cables back how they belonged. They worked together, shoving the severed hoses back onto the ports. Out of the tools Wheatley had to fix the big container, he had welding material, so the hoses were soon fused with the severed parts and any cracks and tears were sealed with a little extra metal.
"Okay, now we gotta turn it on," Abi said, climbing her way up to the control room.
The redhead bounced on the balls of her feet while she waited for the other construct to catch up. When he was safely inside of the room with her, she flipped the switch with flourish. They both jumped at the loud sound of whirring, but Abi quickly recovered and pressed her face against the glass to see if her plan would work. Sure enough the dents in the container were starting to flatten out and soon the whole structure was standing again. She squealed and happily clapped her hands over the din of metal getting realigned. Another switched opened up the vents to allow the toxin to get through where she could use it, and maybe to prevent the metal from bursting.
The girl whipped around and clasped her hands behind her back, rocking on her feet with the biggest grin at the taller android in front of her, "Soooo…?"
Wheatley tugged at his collar nervously, "Uh…hahahaha, very well done, very well. Uhm… so what, now?"
Abi frowned, "Space. Deal."
The blue-eyed android was silent for a long time and Abi almost impatiently interrupted him when an idea flickered into his dim head, "Ah! I've got it… you just… wait for me, yeah? I'll come find you… hm, later on. I need to prepare, got it?"
Disbelieving, Abigail nodded slowly. Man, if he wanted to duck out of that, he could have done it with a touch more honesty. She tromped to her designated quarters and sat on the ground with a huff. That was the last time she helped out dumb old Wheatley, then; especially if he was going to be a big… mean liar. The little red-head grouched about it to her knees pulled up to her chin until she dozed off sometime later.
There was a jarring beating on the door to her chamber that woke her up with a bleary groan. Was it inspection time already? It wasn't morning, it couldn't be, could it? Abigail stumbled to her feet and yanked open the door to the observation room she used to sleep in, finding a she was staring at someone's stomach. Wheatley. She craned her neck upward with a small scowl.
"What do you want?"
The gawkish man held up a pair of flashlights, "We had a deal, if you didn't forget, because I didn't," he said with a winning grin.
Abi stared up at him warily, but took the offered flashlight and shut the door behind her when he turned on his heel and lead her down the corridor. There was really no way out of the facility unless it was through the roof, so unless he planned on actually going to space, this was going to be a bust… Even Abigail wasn't so naïve to believe that they could actually get to space again, not without like… a rocket ship and Wheatley definitely didn't have one of those.
Sullenly, she followed the much more cheerful man through several test chambers until they reached a couple of loose panels. Wheatley looked back at her and waggled his eyebrows; Abi perked up significantly. This was at least interesting, whatever it was he was planning. He pressed his finger to his mouth to shush her, pointing at the cameras in that chamber that were currently dim and weren't pointed their direction.
Bracing himself with one foot against a more solid panel, he dug his fingers behind the loose one and yanked until it came flying off of the wall, taking him with it into a heap on the floor. Wheatley gasped and stared at the still cameras. He sighed in relief and Abigail giggled silently. They both peered at the space that panel occupied and there was surprisingly a tunnel! Wheatley gestured to the tunnel, flicked on his flashlight, and crawled in first; the small, cramped space was just barely big enough for the lanky man, but that meant it was perfect for little Abi. She waited a few moments, flicked her own flashlight on, and scrambled through the passage to follow him, excitedly. He had something up his sleeve and she wanted to find out what.
It was dark when she emerged from the small tunnel on the other side; dark, but they were outside, so the moon lit their way. Abi's face split into a wide grin and she stared up at Wheatley, rocking on the balls of her feet.
"C'mon, this isn't the full part of the deal. We still have to go back before daybreak," he said, waving at her to follow.
"Oh gosh, oh gosh, are we actually going to space? How are we going to space? Do you have a rocket ship? Rocket ship! I've never been on a rocket ship, so exciteeeed!" she squealed, skipping along.
"You'll see," Wheatley said, which was more than a little cryptic and odd for him to say.
"Aaaah, spaaaaace," she was waving her hands, "I can't wait to go to—"
Abigail shut her mouth with a snap when they came over the top of a hill overlooking a big pond. The stars in the sky were bright and they reflected off of the smooth water in the pond like a mirror, perfectly keeping all of the constellations and the bright swirls of an unusually bright Milky Way in the water. The moon was reflected in the center, just very gently rippling with the movement of the wind. Abigail looked at Wheatley with her mouth agape and he gave her a sheepish grin.
"Best I can do, but I almost bet this is better. We can just go home whenever you like," he said brightly, shrugging.
"C-Can… is… is it safe?" she looked down at her android body and then back up at her companion.
"Huh? …OH, the water! Yes, actually, uh, found that one out the hard way, after ah… some involuntary testing," Wheatley laughed sheepishly, gesturing to the water and then back to Abigail.
He rapped his knuckles gently against Abi's forehead, "That plastic skin they made for us is apparently water tight, considering all of the… uhm… the incidents I recall being… completely submerged. You're safe, just don't swallow any."
Abigail barely waited for Wheatley to stop speaking, she was already charging toward the water, tossing her blazer behind her, and kicking off her shoes, shouting something about swimming in the stars in a high-pitched whoop. Wheatley watched her in the water with a crash, wincing at the belly flop she used to enter the dark, reflective surface; his face soon split into a grin when the peals of laughter reached his ears. The tall android settled down to sit next to a tree to watch over the smaller, likely younger android as she bobbed above the water, trying to teach herself how to swim.
"Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Draco," she mumbled to herself, swiftly circling the constellations that were reflected in the water.
Wheatley smiled when she shrieked and splashed into the reflection of the moon. Well, who knew it was going to be that rewarding to see the little pest so excited about a little pond with a mirror-like surface? Because she was unable to get too cold to function, Wheatley ended up dozing off while she played, only to wake up to find her huddled up next to him and napping, too.
Oh, looked like it was time to go in. Wheatley managed to pick the little android up and drape her blazer over her, along with her shoes; it wasn't too far a walk to the facility, he could manage to carry her. Getting inside the hole they crawled through took a little bit of time, but Abigail still slept and Wheatley managed to drag her all the way back to the chamber she designated as her room and set her down on the makeshift bed.
Abi clung to his jumpsuit a moment only to mutter, "Thank you, Mr. Wheatley," in a sleepy voice and curl up on the pillows.
The blue android awkwardly scratched his neck and mumbled a response. He left her to sleep and left the room, wondering if that was what it felt like to have a younger sister.