A week passed with no more hot marine scientists. Barney was assigned to sector C test labs, where Gordon was working lately. Every morning, him and Gordon traded shots, usually about Gordon being late. Today Barney had been stationed at the front desk. After a morning of nothing beyond verbal sparring with Gordon Freeman, an alarm suddenly blared in Barney's ear.

"Warning, fire detected in testing room 4-a. Disaster response personnel please respond."

"GREAT!" Barney thought to himself. "What NOW?"

He ran down the hall, grabbing a fire extinguisher off the wall on the way. As he approached a large *BOOM* erupted in the air, followed by a loud "ahhhh!" as he saw Jenna Brandenburgh thrown through the air like a rag doll. She came down with a large *thud*.

She got up and limped back into the room with Barney running after her. The fire had been reduced to a small pile of smoldering papers. There was a large hole in the ground where the explosion must have come from. Barney put out the small hotspots and looked at Jenna, who had black ash on her face and a large gash on her forehead. She looked clearly aggravated.

"Kind of an awkward second meeting, huh Jenna?" Barney said, trying to force her to smile.

"This is ridiculous! This place will be the death of me, I swear! If one more thing explodes in my face, I'm deserting!" she said, wiping debris off her shoulders.

"What happened?" Barney asked

"Chemical explosion! They made me come up here to these wannabe test rooms get computer analysis on the tao cannon, but the process just made it go off on its own! I tried to run, but it was so powerful that it tossed me clear through the window!"

She was right. The room was a complete loss. Barney was appalled that anyone could survive the blast, which even took out some large chunks of the concrete walls. He looked to investigate and saw that she was wearing a thick vest that looked like something from her marine days.

"Is that what kept you alive?" he said, pointing at the vest.

"Barely! Thank god for my PCV!" she exclaimed.

"PCV?"

"The Powered Combat Vest." She said, regaining her composure, "It's an electrically powered Kevlar vests specially made to protect us from hazardous environments, gunfire, pretty much everything…. Apparently even science experiments gone awry."

Jenna was barely finished with her sentence when Dr. Breen, the Black Mesa administrator came running down the hall, red-faced and extremely agitated.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?!? CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF SPACE AND EQUIPMENT HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO ASH?"

"Because I wanted to spare you the effort of cleaning the windows," Jenna said, trying to make light of the situation, "They never get perfectly spotless." she finished, with a slight shrug.

Breen turned to her, "YOU!" He yelled, "YOU MARINES THINK YOU CAN JUST COME IN, GUNS BLAZING AND BLOW EVERYTHING TO SMITHERINES! YOU ARE AN EMBARASSMENT TO THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORP AND THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY! WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR PhD? CLOWN COLLEGE?!?"

Jenna suddenly got very annoyed, "LOOK, PAL! I DIDN'T ASK TO BE SENT DOWN HERE TODAY! I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THESE STUPID SECTOR C COMPUTERS ALL MORNING JUST TO HAVE THE GUN BLOW UP IN MY FACE RIGHT BEFORE I WAS ABLE TO COLLECT THE REPORT! I WAS PERFECTLY CONTENT WITH HAVING THINGS EXPLOSDE IN MY FACE DOWN IN SECTOR E WHERE THE EQUIPMENT ACTUALLY WORKS! YOU ORDERED ME UP HERE TO WORK ON YOUR FAULTY EQUIPMENT THAT MALFUNCTIONS 80% OF THE TIME!"

Dr. Breen breathed heavily, looking like he was about to explode, "This is completely obscene. I'm going to see to it that you are transferred out of here. Before you know it, you'll be back at some military base scrubbing the floors!"

"It would be better than the half-assed operation you're running here, SIR" Jenna retorted with deep disdain.

Dr. Breen turned and marched away. Jenna marched in the opposite direction towards the locker rooms to clean off the ash and blood. Barney Calhoun just stood there, mouth open in awe.

When lunchtime came around, Jenna slouched off to the main dining hall. She dragged her feet along the way, knowing she had a long night ahead of her of repairing the damage her PCV took. When she rounded the corner, the dining all erupted in applause, almost causing Jenna to jump out of her skin.

She looked up and saw Barney Calhoun standing on a table, "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! HERE IN OUR PRESENSE IS THE ONE AND ONLY JENNA BROTHERON!" He yelled, trailed by more applause. "NOT EVEN AN HOUR AGO, SHE CAME FACE TO FACE WITH DR BREEN *the crowd shuddered*, TOLD HIM OFF TO HIS WEASLEY, GROSSLY BEARDED FACE (NO OFFENSE, GORDON), AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE! SHOULD THERE EVER BE A BLACK MESA REVOLUTION, SHE WILL BE OUR LEADER; OUR SHEPHERD; OUR MESSIAH" Jenna gave him an incredulous look. "Or whatever…" Barney finished sheepishly.

The hall burst into applause again. As Jenna tried to make her way to Barney and Gordon Freeman's table, scientists all over came up to shake her hand and pat her on the back (to which she winced because she had landed on it hard after the tao cannon accident). When she finally made it to the table, she slumped down in the seat and let out a huge sigh.

Eli Vance, his wife Azian, and Isaac Kleiner, three other scientists Jenna met a few days ago while working joined Barney, Jenna and Gordon at the table. Eli, a black man in his mid 40's was beaming at Jenna, "So you're the one," he said.

"I don't know what everyone is so excited about," said Jenna, getting slightly exasperated.

"You're the only person who has ever had the courage to tell off Dr. Breen," said Azian Vance, a woman in her late 30's with soft white skin and contrasting jet black hair.

"No one in this facility really likes him," Eli told Jenna. "Ever since he took over this place has been going to hell. Everything is malfunctioning; all of the experiments are resulting in disaster. Your experiment is just the latest in a huge string of disaster experiments. You and Gordon don't really know how bad it is, because you guys are fairly new, but this has been going on for years and most of the employees are tired of Breen's mismanagement."

"Well, I probably shouldn't have snapped," said Jenna, looking down at the table, "Only here a week and I have already made bad with the boss. Hopefully I don't have to run into him for the next 12 months."

One week later

Jenna raced down the hall, dodging scientists and security personnel and weaving through hallways and corridors. The tram ride up to sector C had taken forever and she didn't want to miss out on the coming event. She had heard legendary tales of Barney and Gordon's vent races to get Dr. Kleiner's keys out of his sector C office, but since she had arrived at Black Mesa two weeks ago, Kleiner had been annoyingly diligent about not locking himself out. This time the stakes were high: the loser would have to buy the victor a full case of beer.

She rounded the corner and saw that she had arrived just in time. Eli, Azian, their wide-eyed young daughter Alyx, Kleiner and Gina Cross and Collette Green- two more scientists Jenna had become friends with- all looked like they had been there for a while. Barney and Gordon, on the other hand, had reached the office about two seconds before Jenna.

"Hey Jenna! I almost didn't think you would make it," Barney said, smiling brightly at Jenna.

"Yeah… thanks for calling me" Jenna said, slightly panting from her marathon sprint across the entire sector.

"Yep, you got here just in time to watch Gordon lose," said Barney, chuckling.

"We'll see, donut boy. I have been spending lots of extra time in the hazard course," said Gordon.

"Donut boy! Donut boy!" yelled Alyx, jumping up and down while clapping her hands. "Uncle Gordon called Uncle Barney donut boy! Hee hee hee. He's not a donut!"

Barney smiled at the adorable little girl, and then turned his sights to Freeman, "Gordon, the only way you could beat me today is if you had spent a month in the hazard course, my leg was broken, and I had suddenly been stricken with the plague."

"Ha. Ha. HA" said Gordon. He pretended not to care but he really wanted nothing more than to give Barney a swift kick in the nuts.

"Gentlemen, could we just get a move on? I have a very important experiment I need to do lest Breen will have my head!" said Kleiner.

"Alright, Doc, keep your lab coat on," said Barney. "Can you count us down, Jenna?"

"Uhh, ok," said Jenna "ready, guys? On your marks, get set….. GO!"

Gordon immediately flopped down on the floor near the vent on the ground. He pried it off and disappeared into it. Barney, however, raced around the corner and out of sight.

The room was silent except for the *thunk* *thunk* *thunk* of grown men crawling through the vent, along with the occasional grunting and random outburst of "dammit."

Suddenly, a voice rang through the vents, "GOR-DON!" Barney said in a sing-song voice, "You'd better pick up the pace! I'm almost there!"

"Shut up, Barney!" came Gordon's voice, clearly annoyed.

Everyone in attendance laughed, even Kleiner couldn't help but smile. Alyx looked up at the vents above her head. When the vents above started bowing slightly, emitting a light dusty cloud as a man passed through them, Alyx started jumping up and down again cheering "THERE THEY GO! GO Barney! GO Gordon! They're coming out soon!!"

The group looked through Kleiner's office window. Suddenly, a vent fell from the roof, followed closely by the black-haired security guard, landing in a crouched position. He straightened up and looked at the spectators; he was slightly dusty but sporting a wide smile. He grabbed the keys and put them in his pocket. Before he unlocked the door to return the keys, he looked up, waiting for his opponent. Suddenly, a large *crack* erupted through the air, a piece of the vent had broken and collapsed onto the floor, and Gordon came tumbling down after, almost landing on top of Barney. Barney jumped out of the way just in time, causing Gordon to land on his back with a loud *thump*

"GEEZ, Gordon!" yelled Barney, "You almost killed me there!"

Gordon jumped up from the floor, looking frantically around the room.

"Looking for these?" said Barney, pulling the keys out of his pocket, dangling them from his finger right in front of Gordon's face.

"DAMMIT!" said Gordon, "How did you do that?"

"I dunno, I'm just that good, I guess," said Barney, laughing as he unlocked Dr. Kleiner's office door. "Here ya go, Doc," he said, handing the keys to Kleiner. "Now, Gordon, you are gonna have to go to the maintenance desk and tell them you broke the vent. And I'll be expecting my case of beer by tonight. And make it a good brand, not the cheap crap!"

Gordon stormed away, fuming. He rounded the corner, and disappeared out of sight.