A/N: Wow, nobody's done this before? I honestly thought that at least one person would have thought of this before, with Pacific Rim and all, but hey, I guess I'll do it. Totally AU by the way. All of it.
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Did I escape? Did I win? Was I free of Aperture? I couldn't remember. Everything was blank, dream-like. Then, a pin of light in the darkness. So close, yet, so far. I reached for it. I stretched my arm out far, and the light grew. So bright, I thought, as I threw myself forward through the murky watery darkness toward the light. I swam further up, close to the light. Almost there, almost there. I was very close now, only a few feet from the surface.
Then, everything shook. Violently.
My eyes flashed open, and I saw green water all around me, and past that, a glass cylinder. There was a man in a labcoat in front of me. I banged my fists on the glass, and he looked up, surprised, before going back to whatever he was doing on a small terminal. I hit the glass again, trying not to breathe in the liquid all around me. My breath was running out. I hit the glass once more with the strength I had left. I noticed the water beginning to dissipate, lowering past my head. I took a huge gasp in of air, and looked around as my feet fell onto the bottom of the glass cylinder I was contained in. The man stepped up, on the other side of the glass.
"What is your name?" he asked, rather promptly, through the glass. I hesitated. What was my name? I racked my brain, trying to remember the name I was given at birth. Why didn't I know this? I thought hard. It has a K at the beginning. No, a hard CH. Yeah, that's right. Come on, how was it? C,H, then a vowel. An E. There we go, C, H, E,… Chell! That was my name, right? It sounds so natural! That's got to be it! I opened my mouth to answer, but he cut me off. "Yeah, I didn't think you'd remember anyway. It's Chell." He huffed. Well now, awful rude. "Last name?" He demanded. I wasn't going to answer him if he was going to be like that!
"Doesn't matter, you don't have one on file anyway." The scientist, or so I assumed, scoffed as he flipped up a sheet on a clipboard. "So just follow me. I've got someone who wants to see you."
I stepped out of the tube, a bit shaky on my bare feet, and looked around to see hundreds of other green glass cylinders lines up across the walls of the massive room. The man set off, and I hesitantly followed. This place looked familiar, I guess. The stark white hallways reminded me of somewhere I'd ben before, someone I'd met, but nothing was coming to me. Everything in my mind was one big blurry blob. We continued down an office area, rounding a few corners, until we got to a glass bridge that looked incredibly familiar. I knew this place, I just couldn't put my finger on it. I felt like there was danger on the other side of the door at the end of the bridge, but I continued in. Pas the door were two terminals, each with a red dial-up phone. A red phone. I knew those phones. Past the phones was a giant, snakelike figure hanging from the ceiling.
No, no it can't be. No, no, no, no. Not here, why am I here, anywhere but here. I escaped, didn't I? I Won, I killed the machine, I went to the moon! She let me go, why am I here? I looked down to see the orange Aperture Science test subject jumpsuit. The walls bore the Aperture logo, the phones, a last defense against the homicidal GLaDOS, and before me, the AI hung, staring back at me with a piercing yellow eye.
"We both know I don't want you here" the massive machine said, voice dripping with simulated anger. The entire room went silent at the words as scientists stopped working and engineers put their tools down. "But," the machine sighed, "as much as I despise the idea, I need you. Believe me, I tried to do this without you, but I can't. It just isn't meant to happen." I sat, angry and confused. Do what? Why do I have to do 'it'? "Oh, I assume you have no idea… well, things have changed since you were above ground. Well, besides the end of the Stone Age, but other things have changed. Namely, everything. Lucky you we're in the middle of the North American Continent, or this place would be underwater. However, because this is one of the only surviving places on earth, we've got a bigger problem, namely, Angels. Long story short, we've got to kill them all, and by we I mean you." I crossed my arms. First of all, does She really expect me to believe that? Second, even if whatever that nonsense was is true, why does She expect me to just go kill all these "Angels"? Weren't Angels the good guys? I mean, I was never the religious type, but every time I ever heard of angels was when they were the servants of whatever holy god. I stared silently back at the computer, still unwilling to talk to Her.
We glared at each other for a few moments, before a scientist interrupted our silent grudge match. "Sorry to interrupt, Caroline, but we've got a problem." The computer spun around, annoyed.
"It better be important." The computer half-yelled. The scientist shrank back and murmured something I missed, but GLaDOS reeled back and started barking orders around the control room. I stood back as scientists and generals manned various stations around the room.
"You," the machine spun to address me, slightly panicked, "You, go with, uh, Sakura are you in here?" The AI spun, looking for someone specific. A young girl, a good six or seven years younger than me, caught the supercomputers sweeping eye. "Over there, the one waving, follow her." GLaDOS finished, turning back and giving more orders. The girl grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the room, before introducing herself.
"Hi, I'm Sakura, and you're Chell, right?" She asked, rather spirited. I nodded. "Hm, not a talker, huh? That's fine, but you've gotta follow me, I've got something to show you, and I can fill you in on all this while we go!" I shrugged and nodded again. "So, I guess I'll start at the Second Impact. There was this thing in Antarctica that woke up while it was being started and, in the simplest terms, it blew up. The majority of the world flooded, and killed a ton of people, and now, because of that, there are these things called Angels that are attacking us for reasons I'm not quite at liberty to tell you. Sorry…" she paused, checking windows as we walked down one of the nicer halls Aperture had. She stopped at one. "Look, this is what we use to fight these Angels." She told me as I looked through the window to see a giant head and shoulders sticking out of a giant pool of red-orange water. "They're about to launch that one, so you can see it in action. There's an Angel incoming right now, that's why everything got so crazy. I slowly nodded again, trying to take everything in. Since when did Aperture Science, a shower curtain factory and later human testing center become a line of defense against these "Angels", and when did they get giant robots? Was this the same Aperture I was tested in and nearly killed more times than I could count?
"Hey," Sakura interrupted my thoughts, "What's the beef between you and the commander? She's usually not that bitter towards the new pilots." New pilots? Pilot of what? I could talk, right? I tried clearing my throat, and managed to croak a few words.
"Well," I coughed and tried clearing my throat once more. Not talking in a good 9999999 days really does a number on your vocals. "Well, before whatever this is, I was a test subject." Sakura seemed unimpressed.
"All the new pilots are unused test subjects, and, sorry, for another reason I can't discuss with you." Wow, lots of secrets around here. I glanced back at the glass and noticed the water was now completely gone, revealing a roughly 80 meter tall robot covered in white armor with black accents here and there. I noticed a white tube sticking out of its lower neck, which quickly slid in and was covered over by two plates of armor. I looked back to continue the story.
"Well, she used me to do Her tests, and before She could kill me, I escaped, and almost killed Her, but she captured me and put me back in tests that were designed solely to kill me, but I survived and replaced her core with another core, who went crazy and tried to kill both of us. Then-"
"Wait, you're THE Chell? Like, you knew Wheatley?" Sakura once again interrupted me, excitedly.
"Yeah, he was the core that I put in Her place. Why? Is he here?" I asked, eager to see him again. He didn't really deserve to be sent to space, it was just a defense reflex, I guess, to shoot anything portal-ly.
"Yeah, we had to get him out of space and everything, but he's your designated core! How cool is that!" Sakura was very excited now, but everything she was saying was Greek to me.
"Designated core? For what?" I asked, hoping it wasn't something serious. He had good intentions, sure, but he also had a way of screwing them up.
"Well, I'll explain it later, but we've gotta hurry if you want to see the fight!" She exclaimed, grabbing my wrist and running me down a side hall and into a room adjacent to the giant tank that the giant robot was now absent from. She led me into an office with plenty of screens, one of which showed a guy roughly my age sitting with a core in front of him. I couldn't quite see the actual core, but the green glow it cast on the boy's chest made me think it could be Rick, the Adventure Core. Other cameras switched on, showing the giant robot from different angles.
I watched as it ran to meet a giant black figure, also covered by a camera. The two clashed, or more accurately, the black creature, which Sakura informed me was an Angel, created some sort of forcefield that the robot was attempting to bash through. The robot managed to crack through the shield and began to grapple with the Angel. The two were genuinely incredible to watch fight. Sakura patched through into the communication between GLaDOS and the robot as I watched.
"Located the core, I'll try and get a shot in" came a voice, of which I assumed belonged to the pilot of the robot.
"Rodger. Core density seems to be rather average. Permission to dispatch." Someone in the control room responded.
"Haha, this is what I was built for!" yelled a core, definitely Rick. The robot shoved the Angel off and brought out a knife from one of the thick shoulder pylons and engaged once again. The Angel began swinging for the head of the robot, and managed to catch it in another grapple. The robot, however, managed to free an arm and stabbed the Angel in the chest multiple times. The beast roared and quit trying to fight, opting instead to wrap itself around the robot as it desperately tried to shove the Angel off.
Without warning, the Angel violently exploded, showering red everywhere. "Third Angel neutralized" GLaDOS announced, through the radio and speaker systems thorough Aperture. Sakura was ecstatic, pumping her fists in the air.
"So, how do you feel about your new job?" She asked after calming down. New job? Was that was I was going to be doing?
"Do you mean… that's what I'm going to be doing?" I asked, hesitantly, hoping that I was misreading the whole thing. Judging from the look of barely withheld laughter was telling me no, however.
"Come on, I'll show you the one you'll be using, and I gotta say, I'm pretty jealous." I obliged, following Sakura out of the office and back down the hallway we were in earlier. I noticed through the window the giant robot being lowered back into the bay, as the tank was being filled with red-orange water again. We made our way down a flight of stairs and around a corner to enter a new holding tank, similar to the one we passed on the way in here. The robot in question, however, looked different from the one I saw in battle. Aside from being free of dings and dents, this one shared the monochromatic paint job, but had a negligibly thicker body, but an overall slimmer profile. Without the water covering the mech from the neck down, I could see all the way down to the feet, which appeared thinner from what I'd seen on the other mech, but that could just be me seeing things. What I could tell was that it stood a few feet taller, and the most pronounced difference was a completely different shaped head. Instead of the rather medieval-helmet shaped head on the other robot, this one had a blocky, angular head with three eyes. The armor also appeared slimmer and more angular, as well as more mobile.
"So, this is what She wants me to pilot?" I asked, trying to get a hold on the situation. Sakura nodded, grinning.
"Y'know, this thing is pretty nice. I'm awful jealous of you, I'm sure Mal is too, he's the other pilot by the way. This thing cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of five billion dollars, so don't go blowing it up or anything." She teased. "Oh, come on, don't look so glum, you've got the dream job! This unit was made especially for you, tailored to you, built from head to toe to be your perfect weapon. That's something that almost anyone here would give anything to have!"
"Look, Sakura, it's great, but… I'm exhausted. This is a lot of information to take in for me. My entire world has been turned upside down, and nothing I ever knew makes sense anymore. But this is… great! It's great!" I halfheartedly said, hoping I'd be able to get some alone time.
"Oh, right. Sorry if I was a little much. Well, since we really haven't got anything to see, I guess I can show you your room, it's not far from here." She apologized, and we set off one last time for the dormitory wing.
We arrived at what used to be an office wing, but had been hastily converted to living quarters. It looked like this place had been set up as more of a makeshift defense than the long term base it functioned as. Sakura left me at my room with her number in case I needed anything, and showed me how to work the facilities.
After she left, I made my way to the shower. Come to think of it, I hadn't had a shower as long as I could remember. Really, all I could remember was from the day I woke up in Aperture to now, and there hadn't been any time for personal activities. As I stood, trying to process everything that happened in the span of the twelve hours I was awake.
Piloting a giant robot to fight off giant monsters that were attacking Aperture which was earth's last stand. Why was I the one who had to do this? And what about this Mal guy, the other pilot. If he was so good at killing Angels, why did GLaDOS need me to have one of the giant robots? Better yet, why did she trust me so much to give me the great power of driving the mech, if she knew I could very well tear the facility limb from limb if I wanted to?
Everything was questionable, nothing made sense. I decided to sleep on it. Maybe this would make sense in the morning.
A/N: Well, chapter 1 of this tale. I'll be sticking loosely to the Neon Genesis storyline, but don't expect a perfect retelling, since I'm leaving plenty of people out of the fun and Chell isn't the whiny little baka that Shinji is, so hopefully that can make up for it.