(AN: That's right, I'm finally back on this site again, and I've come with my first Portal fanfiction ever! See, I'm absolutely in love with the Space, Fact, and Adventure Cores from Portal 2- largely due to their portrayal in Geekenders' Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical, which you should totally check out on YouTube, by the way. This idea actually came about through a Sims 3 family with the same concept, and it was when I started running out of room in my Sims' memories because I was writing so much story-esque stuff that I realized I should make it a fanfiction. I'm going to try to update this more regularly than I have with stories in the past, but I'm a procrastinator and a flake so no promises. But I am trying really hard to improve on that. Also, something weird happened with the formatting and parts of it are double-spaced whereas others aren't? I'll try to get on fixing that. Anyway, here is Chapter 1!)

"So, you two are gonna be my roommates, huh?" Rick asked conversationally, looking over the other two young men.
"Evidently," the sweater-vested roommate replied, without even looking up from the box of assorted textbooks he was unpacking.
"Mmhm!" said the youngest of the three, a very thin and enthusiastic blonde.
"Name's Rick," Rick said with a grin. "I'm something of an adventurer, of sorts." His tone was falsely modest, but it was clear he wanted to be prompted to elaborate.
The blonde seemed interested, but their other roommate chimed in before he could say a word. "My name is Craig," he said. "I was a runner-up in the Michigan Young People's Trivia Competition two years in a row."
"So... You're bragging about not winning?"
"My facts were far more accurate than the winner's," he replied indignantly, adjusting his glasses. "I'm one hundred percent certain it was a miscalculation on the judge's part."
"Well, anyway. How 'bout you?" Rick asked the childlike blonde, who was taking some kind of wooden box out of his luggage.
"Kevin!" he said, turning to the other two with a wide smile.
Craig scanned Kevin's third of the room critically. "Do you have bedsheets? Books, a clock? Anything?" he asked. The blonde hadn't unpacked anything aside from the wooden box.
He nodded vigorously. "Yeah. But this is more important."
"What is it?"
Kevin smiled wider, bouncing slightly, clearly eager to show off whatever was in the box. He opened the lid, revealing a set of twenty or so black rocks. "Moon rocks," he whispered excitedly. "From the moon."
"We gathered they were from the moon," Rick replied with a tinge of sarcasm, though he did look at the rocks and nod his approval to appease his new roommate.
"On the contrary, 8% of moon rocks are actually from Venus, and just critically misnamed," Craig piped up, picking up one of them and examining it.
"Is that a fact," Rick said disinterestedly.
"Yes."
At that moment, there was suddenly a rather frantic-sounding knocking at the door.
"Hello? Is anyone in there?" a voice called from outside.
Kevin set the box of rocks down on his bare mattress before dashing past his roommates and opening the door practically in the blink of an eye.
"Hi!" he said, waving at the person on the other side before he even had a chance to see who it was.
Rick extended an arm and pushed him aside so as to see whoever had knocked. Standing before the three roommates was another young man about the same age as they were. He smiled awkwardly, running a hand through his messy, dirty-blonde hair, and quickly began speaking, stumbling over his words a bit in his haste.
"Oh! I guess there is someone in here. Three of you, matter of fact. That's good- saves me a bit of time. That is, saves me looking for each of you separately. I'm from across the hall, down that way-" he pointed one direction, then frowned, shaking his head and pointing in the opposite direction instead, "-no, that way, yeah, that's it. Anyway! I was sent to get all the other blokes on this floor to make their way over to the student building- the student orientation, we're all meant to be over there. Everyone, I mean. Well, I've got to go get everyone else, but I'm sure I'll see you around, seeing as we're practically neighbors and all."
"Yeah, we'll be there. Thanks, bud," Rick confirmed, nodding at the man, who quickly turned and made his way to the next door over.
"See you later!" Kevin waved after him.
"The student orientation. I was just about to propose we go that way- it's in our school flyers, of course," Craig said, feeling the need to clarify that he had not, in fact, forgotten something.
"Sure," Rick replied, unconvinced but choosing not to make a fuss about it. He grabbed his brown leather jacket off the bedpost and slipped it on.
"Are we gonna meet everybody?" Kevin asked excitedly as the three of them walked out the door.
"He did say all the students were required to be there," Craig answered.
"So we can make more friends!"
"I did wanna check out the female population of this school," Rick said. "No way I'm letting all this natural charm go to waste, am I right?"
"Yeah! I bet all the girls wanna be your friend! I bet everyone! I mean, I wanna be your friend!" Kevin gave Rick an affirming grin.
The taller man laughed a little. "Well, I'm looking for a special kind of friendship, little guy. Not that I'm worried."
"'Special friendship.' I take it you mean copulation," Craig cut in.
"Not on the first date! What, you don't take me for a gentleman?"
The two of them seemed to have lost Kevin in the short amount of time their little exchange had taken. He was now walking beside them staring upwards with a dreamy sort of smile, his mind clearly somewhere other than the campus of Aperture University.
"Space…" he mumbled almost inaudibly. Rick and Craig exchanged a glance and shrugged.
The three of them continued walking until they'd reached the student services building.
"All right, we're here," Rick said, elbowing the still-daydreaming, practically entranced Kevin. "You might wanna come back down to Earth now."
"Back to Earth," Kevin repeated, sighing.
They made their way inside the building and were immediately swamped in bustling first-day chaos. Kevin instantly became thrilled by the world despite having to bring his head down from the clouds, and ran through the crowds, unsure which stranger to befriend first. Meanwhile, Rick adjusted his hat and made a beeline for the first attractive female student he saw, leaving Craig alone by the table of university freebies. He thumbed through the school brochures for a few minutes. Not much he hadn't already read about. Map of campus, class rundown, list of clubs. Nothing too interesting. Bored, he put the brochure back down, took himself a university poster for the dorm, and turned to be immediately faced with an annoyed-looking Rick.

"She wouldn't even give me the time of day," he grumbled.
Craig glanced at his watch. "It's 3:36," he replied helpfully.

Rick facepalmed. "Not what I meant. I tried to chat up this lady-" he nodded subtly towards a brown-haired girl in orange, standing off to the side of the room- "but she didn't even say a word to me. Can you believe that?"

"Perhaps that 'natural charm' you spoke of isn't nearly as effective as you thought." Craig's expression was smug.

"I'm finding a different wingman."

• • •

As the roommates unpacked, it quickly became clear that their dorm room would look more like three rooms squished together, not very naturally or prettily, than just one when they were finished.

Kevin seemed to have, while packing, consolidated what most would call the essentials- bedding, textbooks, etc.- into one small box so as to have as much room as possible for his other things. Those things included a large model of the solar system, a worn-out plastic spaceship, and a full-sized, high-quality telescope, which he immediately claimed the little balcony off the side of their room for.
"Isn't that for babies?" Rick had asked when he noticed the stars-and-planets mobile Kevin had hung above his bed.

The blonde was unfazed. "Yeah. But also me."

"...No, I'm pretty sure that's just for actual babies."
Craig's third of the room was cluttered with the last ten years' worth of Guinness World Record books and Ripley's Believe it or Nots, as well as newspaper clippings from increasingly questionable sources pinned up on the wall.
"So that's where you get your useless information," Rick had commented, and it would be equally useless to document the argument that took place between the two stubborn and rather egocentric students afterwards.

But for as much as Rick criticized his roommates' decor choices, his were equally questionable, as he seemed to have packed more for some kind of expedition of ancient ruins than a semester at college.

"Is that a grappling hook? And a whip? Why do you have a whip?" Craig asked, mild confusion and concern growing with each item Rick unpacked.

"Like I said, I'm an adventurer," was apparently the only explanation necessary.

Craig raised an eyebrow. "And where exactly do you plan to use these things here?"
"Do you really wanna argue with me, shorty? I do have a whip."

"...Point taken."

"Ooh! I like your poster," Kevin, who had finished his own unpacking with an almost unnatural speed and was now going through his roommates' remaining boxes, commented to Rick upon taking out and unrolling a massive movie-theater poster of Indiana Jones. "And your other poster! And your other… This is a lot! A lot a lot."

"That's actually a little concerning," Craig muttered. "You seem a bit old for this kind of hero-worship."
"Seriously?" Rick turned around. "You're gonna lecture me about acting my age? What about him?" He pointed at their space-obsessed companion, who was now standing on his bed on tiptoes attempting to stick glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling while being just slightly too short to succeed.

"I'm perfectly capable of lecturing the both of you."

"Save it, I'm not listening and I doubt he is either. Hey, since you've got nothing better to do than talk at me, why not make yourself useful and help me hang some of these instead?"

"I still have my own things to unpack, thank you very much."

"Guys. I can't get these up," Kevin said. "Help? I'll do the posters and you do my stars?"

Rick sighed. "Yeah, sure." He nodded towards the box of posters and took the plastic stickers before standing on the bed and beginning to stick them up in no particular pattern.

"Nonono!" Kevin shook his head and swatted lightly at Rick to stop him from putting up any more. "Not like that, that's wrong! The Big Dipper goes there! Pick me up, I'll do it."

"Yeah, sorry, not happening. I am not picking you up."
"But you're doing it wrong!" Kevin insisted. After a moment, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He got onto the bed, stood up, and climbed onto Rick's shoulders before he could even react. Smiling, he started rearranging the stars on the ceiling.

Rick just rolled his eyes, resigning himself to his fate as a human stepladder.

Craig, meanwhile, just watched, snickering slightly to himself as he unpacked.

One thing was for sure- it was going to be an interesting semester.