A/N: EDIT - The first chapter has been edited to something that makes more sense, especially considering what I'm planning for the end. I feel like this flows better and is more concise as well. It shouldn't affect the next chapters, though, but if you see a serious conflict let me know so I can fix it.

A/N: Hello, guys, I'm back from extended hiatus. I have been revived from the dead by some ideas for fanfiction. I've had to wait almost a week after Christmas for my laptop to come in because bad weather held it up. Not only that, but I've had to readjust to Windows after using a Mac for so long. Plus, it's a Windows 8…

I'm not sure how this is going to be received… of course, I shouldn't be writing just for you, I should be writing for fun and be fine even if only a handful of you like it, but oh well. No one likes hateful comments. The thing is, this is a fantasy fic, and there aren't many of these in the Portal Archive. Another thing to point out is that although some of this is classic mythology, it is my story so a lot of it's coming out of my head. For example, one of the supernatural creatures mentioned here is the angel. Now, I did do some research into the mythology of angels from various religions, and they all generally say the same thing. However, I have decided early on in the planning of this fic that the angels mentioned here will be nothing like that. All information about them written here was made up purely for the sake of this fic. Think of them as in the same league as vampires and werewolves. There will be no religious connotation with them. If that bothers you to the point of not wanting to read this, that's fine, there are plenty of other good stories on this site for you to read instead and I encourage you to do so.

Now that the horribly long intro is out of the way, I'm certain you would much rather read the fic than read about me rambling about it.

"Corrupted cores! We're in luck," GLaDOS said, "You find a way to stun him, I'll send in a core and then you attach it to him. If we do it a few times, he might become corrupt enough for another core transfer."

'It'd be so much easier if we could just blow him up', Chell thought, but remained silent as usual. She didn't want to risk accidentally giving herself away, and it wasn't like anything good would come out of talking back anyway. It never did in the past.

For the hundredth time, she prodded carefully at the curse, testing its strength. She sighed to herself. There was no way she could break it on her own. She'd kept trying and trying; whenever she had a moment away from the sight of all the AIs she's had to deal with, she would poor all of her strength against it, to the point of almost passing out, and the curse would not even budge. She needed more power, but from where? She had a vague idea of a spell she could use on GLaDOS, but she wasn't sure what it would do, as using it seemed to rely more on her instinct rather than her knowledge. However, it was her only choice at the moment. All she needed to do was take out Wheatley, get GLaDOS back in her body, and make some sort of physical contact with her somehow. Not to mention that an idea was forming in her mind about what to do afterwards…

Later…

'Humans are terribly over-studied', GLaDOS decided, though a little sarcastically. It was true that humans had been studying themselves for thousands of years, and while they did spend a large chunk of that time getting it wrong, they did eventually get on the right track as science became more advanced. Although she had been fine with squeezing out new data from them by putting them in unique and often hostile environments, she realized that in all the time she spent doing science, she had never had the chance to study anything new.

Although there were objects like the portal gun that used physics never before seen by science, it had all been figured out and put to use before she came along. She could always advance scientific understanding of such things and improve them, but there wasn't anything in the facility that she could begin to research with a fresh, clean slate.

Because of this, she got a rush of excitement she had never felt before in discovering an organism totally unknown to science… or perhaps an experiment that had gone so wrong, Aperture eliminated all files regarding it. Of course, that didn't make sense. Failed experiments that had caused hundreds of deaths in the past were filed away. In fact, experiments that resulted in no scientific value whatsoever were written down somewhere. It made no sense that Aperture had created or was even aware of this anomaly. In fact, not even GLaDOS had guessed that the test subject was anything more than an unusually dangerous human.

After they exiled Wheatley to outer space, Chell had passed out on the chamber floor. Of course, she appeared normal then. It wasn't until after she had woken up that things changed. GLaDOS was in the middle of her monologue when Chell interrupted her by stepping off the lift.

"Wait," she said, holding up her hand.

"What are you doing?" the AI demanded even though she felt strangely unthreatened by Chell's actions, "I was about to release you, you know. If you try to murder me again, however, I will go back to killing you. You don't have a portal gun or long fall boots anymore, in case you haven't noticed."

Chell chuckled. "I know. I just want to try something first. Come closer…"

GLaDOS felt unusually trusting and lowered her head. Chell's hand had barely brushed her face plate when everything went black, and there was a sound that resembled shattering glass. She felt a small vibration go through her chassis, and then her sight came back. She checked her systems, but no errors were reported. She turned back to Chell and froze.

"What was that?" she asked suspiciously, "And… what are you?"

Her skin was paler than previously observed and some of her hair had been freed from her ponytail and formed bangs that slightly obscured her eyes, which, rather than the blue-grey color they appeared to be earlier, were actually a piercing icy blue. Admittedly, she was never actually fat, but she now had a leaner, bonier frame than before. Obviously, the most interesting difference was the pair of glossy black wings that were folded neatly at her sides.

"Can't believe that worked…" Chell said quietly to herself, her back to GLaDOS. She turned her head to face the AI. "That," she said, "Was a rather strong curse breaking. Welcome to the world of the supernatural."

GLaDOS allowed her chassis to sway from side to side as she examined her former test subject. "What do you mean by 'supernatural'? You haven't answered my question on what you are, by the way."

Chell sighed, stretching her wings. "I thought you would know enough about human folklore to figure that out. They don't get everything right, but it's usually enough to give you an idea. I'm an angel of darkness, of course."

"An angel of darkness? No, I don't think even folklore talks about that," GLaDOS replied skeptically.

Chell smirked. "That's because humans prefer angels of light. You should at least know about them – white wings, healing magic and such."

"Alright," GLaDOS said slowly, as if she was talking to someone who was mentally unstable, which was essentially the truth, "Then explain what you mean by 'supernatural'. Surely you don't honestly mean magic-"

"That's actually exactly what I mean," Chell interrupted, grinning mischievously.

The AI turned away from her and made a sound that was comparable to a snort. "Prove it," she challenged, almost sarcastically.

Darkness descended on the room. It was not merely the lights going out; it was a thick, choking darkness that completely obscured the walls. Panic set in when GLaDOS realized she couldn't even move the panels in her own chamber, let alone control or see the rest of the facility. A feeling of being trapped and helpless began to set in, as if the only option was to give up.

As suddenly as it came, it ended. The darkness and the feeling of hopelessness vanished in an instant and things returned to normal as if nothing happened.

"What did you do?" GLaDOS demanded hoarsely.

"Just a simple spell," Chell replied dismissively, "All it did was make you feel hopeless."

GLaDOS examined her closely as she leaned up against the wall with a smug look. 'What just happened?' She wondered. She received no error reports indicating that something went wrong, not to mention the fact that the probability of a sudden failure right when she asked Chell to prove magic existed was very slim.

For once in her life, GLaDOS felt doubt and confusion. Everything she knew and every wire in her body screamed that magic could not be, and yet it seemed to be right in front of her.

"Any other questions?" Chell asked innocently.

"Yes," GLaDOS replied darkly, "One: Why couldn't I see your wings before? Two: If you really have all of this 'magic', why didn't you use it to escape before?"

"First of all," Chell replied, "Anything that's not supernatural can't see a supernatural for what it really is unless a supernatural reveals itself. That's why I touched you. Now that I've shown myself to you, you will be able to see any other supernatural for what it really is as well. As for why I didn't blow a hole in this place to escape and be done with it, well, I did tell you that a powerful curse just broke on me. It prevented me from using my wings or any magic, which was why I had to pretend to be human. I had to save up a lot of energy in order to break it just now."

None of this made any sense to GLaDOS, but she let decided to let it slide. All she had to do was dissect Chell's brain to determine what caused this sudden bout of insanity, and then examine her DNA and bone structure to figure out how she grew wings… 'But what if she's telling the truth?' A thought nagged at the back of her mind, 'After all, I still have no idea how she made everything go dark before…'

"Why did you reveal yourself to me, then, if your curse is broken and all?" she asked tentatively, though she was unsure if she could take much more. She felt like she should take a break and read a document on physics. She wouldn't learn anything new, but it would make her feel more certain about the world and how it works.

Her question seemed to make Chell lose a bit of her confidence, as she began to look at the ground sheepishly. "I… Well, I need your help."

"With what?" the AI asked, her interest peaked.

"Look, I've lived in this facility my entire life as a test subject. However, it was in a lab that was hidden from the rest of this place and studied supernaturals like me. I want to find that lab again. There's someone in there I need to kill," she explained.

Now GLaDOS was certain she was wrong. "Look, this facility was sitting dormant for hundreds of years before we woke up. Unless this person is asleep in an Extended Relaxation Vault that somehow has power even though none of the others do, he will certainly be dead."

"It's not hard for even a human to live for a long time with magic," the angel replied, "Odds are, he's alive."

"Who is he?" GLaDOS asked.

"The main scientist who was in charge of me, Dr. Rattmann," Chell answered.

"He was just a schizophrenic lab rat who escaped my neurotoxin and wrote graffiti on my test chambers," GLaDOS replied blandly, "He certainly shouldn't have been placed in charge of anything."

Chell chuckled. "Is that what he told everyone? How cute. No, he was much more dangerous than that. He made my life a waking nightmare and was much worse than you ever were. I enjoyed being with you after being with him."

GLaDOS also laughed. "Well. I'm glad you can appreciate my testing. However, why do you need me?"

"That lab is hidden and covered in protection spells and is specifically warded against being detected by creatures like me. However," she flashed the AI a smirk, "A human who knows magic can detect it."

"You're asking me to become human," GLaDOS said flatly.

Chell leaned against the chamber wall. "I was sure you would want to study all of this 'supernatural' stuff. You know, to prove that it all can be explained scientifically or something. If you found that lab, you would have access to all sorts of data and be able to start way ahead rather than from scratch."

GLaDOS did want to study all of this scientifically. She was certain it wasn't exactly magic, but scientific laws that weren't fully understood and have never been studied with the right scientific mindset. Odds are that everyone heard the term 'magic' and assumed it couldn't be scientifically explained. She was determined to disprove that.

"Not only that," Chell went on as the AI mulled this over, "It's not like you would be able to do much with it even if you could find it without magic. You wouldn't really be able to do any experiments without being able to use magic. If you tried, odds are your facility will just get overrun by werewolves or something. You can't beat magic with technology alone."

GLaDOS thought that sounded reasonable. After all, during that brief, mysterious moment of darkness she tried everything in her power to regain control of her facility with no avail.

"Hold on," she questioned, "Why couldn't I just learn magic in my own body and find a way to detect it then?"

Chell shrugged. "Magic and machinery don't normally go together. I'm sure that once you've learned it as a human you could just transfer back and adapt to using it in your own body, but trying to learn it from scratch as a machine is probably just asking for trouble."

GLaDOS rotated away for a moment. She had already suffered from being forced into a potato and had finally gotten back the control she loved so much. Could she really stand being separated from it again? Unfortunately, this new, exciting branch of scientific research seemed to call for it, at least temporarily.

"If I were to find this lab," she began, "would I find more specimens like you?"

"I was the only angel in stock," Chell replied, "There should be a lot of other things, though, like vampires, werewolves, fauns, and even a unicorn somewhere."

"I see," GLaDOS said quietly.

She continued to weigh her options on what to do. The decision should have been difficult to make, and yet she felt like it had been made for her. There seemed to be no way around temporarily becoming human for the sake of science, as much as she hated that.

"Alright… You have a deal. You help me learn magic, I'll help you find the lab, then you'll get your revenge and I'll get my data," she said.

Currently Known Information: Angels

Angels are a species of supernatural creatures (aka 'supernaturals') that resemble humans with wings. There are two varieties: Light and dark. Angels of light have white wings and use light magic. They are usually kind and compassionate in nature, though some may be self-righteous. They have a strong sense of honor, and tend to feel that they must correct every mistake they make.

Angels of darkness, on the other hand, have black wings, use dark magic, and are characterized by their cunningness and their manipulation of others. They are usually cold and indifferent to the suffering of others, though some may be sadistic. They are very grudging and will never forget or forgive their enemies.

A/N: One of the changes I made here and plan to make for other chapters is the little blurbs of information at the end. They aren't exactly necessary, but I feel like they make understanding the fanfic easier by cutting down on in-story explanations as well as compacting information relating to the chapter into one easy to find location. Think of them as what GLaDOS learned for that day, either in the actual course of the chapter or by talking with other characters "off-camera". Not all of the information will be necessary for understanding the story; it's really just there in case you want to know more about the world in this story.