Say Something, Chell!
A quick footnote for those of you who enjoy my bubbline fanfic, I will be getting back to that. Just had the idea for this one while playing some Portal. Many more cute Marceline/Bubblegum stories to come.
Chell sprinted through the crumbling halls of Aperture Laboratories, or "Wheatley Laboratories" as the power mad, metal basketball would have them call it. She had already escaped his first, poorly maintained, death trap and was on her way to shut the moron down, armed only with a portal gun and an Artificially Intelligent potato.
After wriggling her way out of an Excursion Funnel and avoiding a set of grinding, spiked cylinders, Wheatley jeered her over the speakers.
"Good. Finally. A nemesis worthy of my vast intellect."
Chell ran into another room, and redirected another Excursion Funnel with a pair of portals and jumped in, letting it carry her through another of Aperture's seemingly bottomless corridors.
"Holmes versus Moriarty…" Wheatley continued, as Chell floated forwards. "Aristotle versus… MASHY SPIKE PLATE!"
Suddenly, a spike-covered plate erupted from the wall ahead of Chell and smashed into the wall opposite. It drew back and advanced towards her, repeatedly assaulting the opposite wall as it went. Chell's eyes darted around in a panic. At the last moment, she spotted a tiny stretch of white wall, fifty feet below her. Clenching her stomach, she repositioned the portal the Excursion Funnel was shining from and fell, missing the plate by inches.
"Stay… Still… Please!" Wheatley said, like a child, trying to stab an ant with a fork.
Chell's eyes widened in panic as the plate lowered to her new level with the whirring a grinding of electronics.
"Come on… come on…" She thought to herself.
She would never say it out loud, of course. No matter how chummy they got, she would never give GLaDOS the satisfaction of hearing the fear in her voice, and as of recently, that went for Wheatley too. And since she was scared essentially all of the time, the realisation had slowly dawned on her that she may simply never speak again.
Chell dropped from the Excursion Funnel just in time to run around a corner and escape the advancing plate.
"Hey! Hey guys!" Wheatley said excitedly. "Guess what I just found!"
The room Chell had run into lit up and the door closed behind her. It was a huge, rectangular room, lined with white walls. Several panels slid away from the ceiling and a dull, clanging sound of metal hitting metal echoed down, getting louder and louder. Eventually, something huge and silver crashed through the hole and onto the floor, with a smash that was enough to made the light on GLaDOS' potato flicker like she was wincing.
"Oh, I remember this thing!" GLaDOS chimed. "I discontinued it when I realised that no intruder would ever make it this far into the facility."
Wheatley appeared on a monitor in the corner of the room.
"That's right, it's the security drone!" He said, happily. "And he's pretty upset that you shut him away in a cupboard for all these years! Hard to blame him really…" He added, thoughtfully. "I know I would be…"
The drone slowly picked itself up. It was huge and mostly humanoid, built like a house with hands like wrecking balls. In the centre of its chest, was a Personality Core with a blood-red eye. It made the same rasping, snarling noise as the red core Chell had blasted of GLaDOS all those years ago.
"Ugh… the backdated memory in here is a mess…" GLaDOS complained, referring to the potato body Wheatley had forced her in to. "Just keep it busy while I dig up its emergency shutdown codes."
Chell frowned at the monstrous machine. That was easy for her to say.
Suddenly, the beast lurched forward, swinging its arm above its head. Frantically, Chell fired a portal across the room, and then aimed another at her feet, sending her sliding onto the floor, behind the robot. She picked herself up and scanned the room anxiously, she wasn't about to rely on GLaDOS to get her out of this, even if the sociopathic potato wanted to help, Chell had never trusted or relied on AI, and with more than good reason.
As the metal monster turned around and began shambling towards her, Chell fired another portal at its feet, but its legs were so stumpy, it barely slowed down. Panicking, Chell repositioned her portals and travelled across the room in a single step, so she stood beneath Wheatley's monitor.
Furiously, the drone tore the white wall panel away, fizzling out the portal, and hurled it across the room like a Frisbee. Without the time to fire another portal, Chell dived out of the way just in time, leaving the chunk of wall to smash into the monitor, causing it to crack and spew sparks.
"Oh for crying out loud, don't you start!" Wheatley sighed. "Just kill her! It's not that hard!"
Chell looked around the room again. Running through portals was very much a temporary solution, but the room was bare of anything she could use. No lasers, no gel, and the only thing that would fit through a portal was her. As the drone turned around and began to lumber forwards, all hope seemed lost.
"I've got it!" GLaDOS cried triumphantly. "Hey you! Emergency Override 602759 Sigma!"
The drone snarled, and charged on, undeterred. As Chell continued running around to room, avoiding it, Wheatley laughed cruelly.
"How stupid do you think I am? No, don't answer that, because the answer's 'Not at all'… Well actually, that'd be the answer to 'How stupid am I?' and the answer would be… not at all… Whereas, the answer to…."
GLaDOS interrupted Wheatley's babbling. "What are you talking about, you moron? What did you do?"
"I AM NOT A MORON!" Wheatley bellowed. "As proved, by me adjusting the drone's sound frequency thingies, so it can't hear your voice anymore…" He explained smugly.
"Wait… so the code's still the same?" GLaDOS asked.
"What…? Erm… well yes… but…"
"You heard him! Say the code!" GLaDOS cried, as Chell dodged an alarmingly close swing of the robot's mighty arm. "Emergency Override 602759 Sigma!"
Chell gritted her teeth as the robot loomed towards her. GLaDOS made it sound so easy. She desperately wanted to survive, but the words simply didn't come to her.
"Oh, you are kidding me!" Wheatley chuckled. "Are you seriously mute?"
"No she's not!" GLaDOS insisted. "I've seen your medical files, your vocal cords work just fine! And you don't have brain damage! So just say the code!"
Chell backed away in a panic. She opened her mouth, and a large part of her brain desperately wanted the words to come out, but they simply didn't.
Suddenly, Chell had an idea. She fired a portal under one of the advancing robot's feet, and before it could put its foot on solid ground, fired her other portal under the other foot. The drone flailed its arms around and hissed desperately as its programming updated itself to accommodate for the bizarre notion of each foot standing on the sole of the other.
Chell charged forwards and rammed into the robot with her shoulder. Although it felt like her arm had been flattened, the robot did begin to topple backwards. It hit the ground with a mighty crash. Before it got up, Chell leapt onto its chest and, without dropping her portal gun, heaved on the Personality Core, but it didn't budge.
As it got up, the drone swatted Chell off itself, sending her hurtling into a wall.
"What do you think that thing is secured in with? Blue-tack and happy thoughts?" GLaDOS asked, desperately. "It's a ten tonne death machine! So if you want to shut it down, just SAY THE CODE!" She cried, her voice alternating in pitch, as it did when she was upset.
"Don't say the code!" Wheatley said, encouragingly. "You haven't said a word for hundreds of years! Why start now? And for her sake no less!"
Chell backed into a corner, desperate to catch her breath, her severely bruised shoulder doing nothing for her stamina.
"Emergency Override 602759 Sigma!" GLaDOS repeated, pleadingly.
"Don't say it!" Wheatley warned.
Chell wished the two computers would shut up and let her think. She studied the drone, she looked at the joints in its shoulders, the space between its stubby legs, the angle at which it hunched forwards. She added them all together, and she had a new idea.
As she charged at the robot, Chell crouched down. As she predicted, the robot leant back, preparing to send a punch straight down at her. In one, fluid motion, Chell dived forwards, firing two portals at the floor as she went, moving just fast enough to be clear of them before they opened.
She clutched the portal gun to her chest as she slid between the robot's legs, leaving it to send its fist flying through one portal and squarely into its own chest.
With a shower of sparks, the Security Drone rolled onto its back, revealing a crater the size of an umbrella, and not so much as a red flicker from the Core.
"Oh for heaven's sake…" Wheatley moaned. "I don't even know why I bother! Why don't I just say, 'Come on into my lair!' and… and… send you a magic pony to carry you here? Of course I won't do that. Many more deadly traps to come!"
"Well I must say." GLaDOS said, as Wheatley rambled on. "That would have been a lot more impressive if Plan A wasn't sooo much easier…"
Chell smiled silently and walked towards the door Wheatley had opened.
"Not to worry though!" He continued. "Just wait until you see what's next!"