Well, here we are again. It's always such a pleasure. This is the start of a story that has been rolling around in my messed-up head for a few weeks, and at the urges of my fans (read: Portal-crazed BFFs) I have finally decided to post it. Please enjoy, and remember, we're not banging rocks together over here.
[Note: I'm operating under the assumptions that HL… didn't happen? If you feel that the worlds must be the same, just assume that society has been rebuilt since the Combine attack.]
Prologue
They found her unconscious in a wheat field in the middle of nowhere. She lay curled protectively around a badly burnt metal box, a few feet from a small, dilapidated old shed. When they went to examine the box, she awoke before they even touched it. She clutched it tighter, pulling back in fear. It seemed almost as though she had never seen another human before, or nearly never. They asked her who she was. She opened her mouth and pushed, but no sound came out. She tried again, finally managing to croak out "Ch…Ch…Chell."
"Is that your name?" they asked gently, as though she were a wild deer that would dart as soon as she was startled. She nodded, her ponytail bouncing up and down. "What happened to you?"
She spoke again, softly at first, uncertain of her own voice. "I…I was… underground. She… tested me. So many tests…" Her voice cracked. She began talking faster. "And the cake, She said there would be cake, but I knew better. The walls… they all told me it was a lie, so I knew She had it in for me. Oh, yes, I knew." Once she got going, there was no stopping her. She babbled incessantly, to them, to herself, to her cube. She kept casting nervous looks at the tiny shed. "And the turrets, the creepy little child voices that sing so beautifully, they tried to kill me too, see?" She lifted up one pant leg, revealing several half-healed wounds. "And right after, She made me burn-" she froze, staring over at where one member of the group was getting dangerously close to the cube. She lunged for it, fury in her grey-blue eyes. "I won't let you touch it! It's mine! I will never, ever, let anything happen to it again!"
They all backed slowly away from her as she began to cry.
jO
Twenty minutes later, she was admitted into a mental hospital. Due to her screaming, kicking, cries of desperation and even threats to commit suicide, they allowed her to bring her severely scorched cube with her. Soon she had her own rubber room and was happily chatting away to her precious cube, stroking it gently. Soon everyone in the area knew of "Lab Girl" and her mysterious "burnt box."
jO x 3
Chell was perfectly content to sit alone with her beloved companion. She had an inexplicable urge to tell, to tell anyone and everyone what had happened to her. All the words that had gone unspoken in her seemingly endless life underground came pouring out of her. Confusion at her initial surrounding on her first day of testing, snippy comebacks directed at GLaDOS (some of which were quite good), even exclamations of pain she had held back when being shot, zapped, and burned. She sobbed openly, recalling all of the horrible things GLaDOS had said and done to her, and cried even harder when she thought of the thinly-veiled kindness and strange, GLaDOS-brand mercy she had been shown the last time they had spoken.
Everyone at the mental hospital agreed that she was an unusual case. Even her daily meals caused unexpected, unexplained reactions. Lemonade, for example, made her laugh. Apples made her cry. Once she very carefully picked apart her baked potato, searching for something. And the time they made the mistake of bringing her chocolate cake as a treat, she became so frightened that she hid behind her cube until they took the offending pastry away.
You didn't really think she could adapt to normal life, did you? Poor Chell. Anyway, next chapter will include a very special guest. I bet you'll never guess who it is.
"Ok, she's not even trying to be subtle anymore. Or maybe she is, in which case, wow, that's kind of sad."
Thank you, GLaDOS. DMLunatic out!