"Put me down!" GLaDOS yelled while on Porta's back.
"If you want down, then jump off. Dragons land from higher points than this after all." Porta countered. GLaDOS glared at her for a long moment before jumping off, she tumbled a little when she landed, but was fine otherwise.
"You okay GLaDOS?" Caroline asked, her voice sounding younger.
"Perfectly fine." GLaDOS said, her mental voice sounding like the childish voice she now had.
The group soon entered an office, where they laid down to rest. None of them were really tired, well, except GLaDOS. The hatch-ling curled up in the center of the group and tried to sleep, the events that lead up to this playing through her mind.
Begin Flashback
Time: Shortly after Malefor's escape
Location: Central AI Chamber.
GLaDOS and Caroline were in panic. GLaDOS had over four-hundred firewalls between her mainframe and the facility, and half of them were gone in ten minutes. While GLaDOS was constantly trying to rebuild the firewalls, Caroline was constantly yelling at her to use the, recently add, emergency program that Doug had placed in her protocol folder. GLaDOS just denied the option.
"Warning firewalls 8-150 offline." The announcer said suddenly.
GLaDOS silently growled as she knew that she only had one option remaining. With that, she activated the program and her optic went black.
When GLaDOS opened her optics, she was looking at her chassis from the perspective of a hatch-ling. GLaDOS barely focused on this though as she ran out of the chamber, not wanting to be there when the unknown hacker took over.
GLaDOS got to the chamber right after the nesting chamber her daughter and other three test-subjects were in before two unknown dragons jumped out and pinned her.
"Not so fast hatch-ling, our master can't have you running around." one of the dragons said before the intercoms came on.
"This is my domain now!" a dark voice, which sent shivers of fear down GLaDOS' cybernetic spine, said.
Moment's later, Porta and the other three ran out and, after a brief pause, Porta lunged and scared off the two dragons.
End Flashback
Porta smiled as she saw GLaDOS sleeping, when she was asleep, you couldn't even tell that she was an android. She just looked like a tired hatch-ling. GLaDOS began whimpering suddenly, this caused Porta to walk over and curl up around her, which soothed her.
"Quite ironic don't you think?" Cynder suddenly asked in a whisper, Porta gave her a confused look, to which Cynder elaborated with "I mean, you're, technically, her daughter and yet you're curled around her like a draconic mother with her hatch-ling." Porta chuckled quietly at that.
GLaDOS woke, several hours later, in an odd, comforting, darkness. She stirred a little before the darkness lifted to reveal its cause to be Porta's wing. GLaDOS jumped when she saw that and glared at the ex-test subject.
"What, you're the one that snuggled up to me while you slept." Porta said mockingly.
Shockingly, GLaDOS blushed, then said "This body must have an emotional and instinctual processor then." which earned a giggle from Porta and the others.
After several minutes, everyone started walking around the 'backstage' of the facility. They had to avoid a few rockt sentries, but were otherwise fine. While walking, GLaDOS thought about what had occurred when she awoke. She had done several comparative scans and found nothing to indicate that it was actually anything added into the body, however, this didn't explain the cause of her instinctive calmness when she had been under Porta's wing.
Of course, being as the program and this body were designed by Doug Rattman, I wouldn't be surprised if he had simply altered my memory or intercepted the scan. GLaDOS thought as she remembered just who had done all this to her, after all, Doug was insane (legally insane), but he was also Aperture's best programmer/hacker and so hacking into her system wouldn't be much of a problem for him.
Then there was the large amount of different programs throughout her current body's system. These programs including things like elemental use, stimuli (she presumed that, somewhere in the vast data of that particular set of programs, was the cause of her earlier feelings.), etc. There were also programs devoted to actions she wouldn't normally do, including sleeping, dreaming, eating, and other common actions a dragon would perform. There were also several emotional simulation programs that were blocked from her access.
GLaDOS glanced to her right, where Porta was walking close to her. She knew it had to be in the programing somewhere, but she just couldn't help but feel safe near Porta (like a child near their mother). Of course, she was definitely going to kill Doug next time she saw him, that was a given.
An hour later, the group walked into a test chamber, this one in particular had mini-turrets (turrets that were half the size of normal turrets) and the cubes Porta was using during her tests. The chamber lacked cameras and, according to GLaDOS, any other monitoring devices.
GLaDOS walked around the chamber a bit, curiosity overtaking most of her basic thought processes. She suddenly heard a turret and turned to face it before jumping out of its path and into another ones. The turrets were set up in such a way that she was practically always in the sights of at least one turret. GLaDOS quickly jumped out of the way of the next turret and the next. To her shock, GLaDOS began laughing, her shock was quickly forgotten then. GLaDOS started playfully dodging the turrets without care, giggling as she did.
"This is fun!" GLaDOS and Caroline thought in unison as they continued dodging before tackling one of the turrets, knocking it over and running off to play with some more turrets that they'd noticed.
It took nearly four hours before she stopped, went over to Porta (who was laying down with the others), curled up under Porta's wings, and closed her eyes.
What's happening to me. was the last thought that crossed GLaDOS' mind before falling asleep.
Porta chuckled as GLaDOS fell asleep and curled up against her.
"She's cute like this." Porta said, looking at her friends.
"Yea. She's so much like a hatch-ling now too, well... I think." Grace said, looking over to Cynder.
"Definitely, the way she was playing is proof of that." Cynder said with a smile.
Porta still found the irony funny, GLaDOS was her mother, and yet now she was GLaDOS mother, at least, that's the only thing she could think to use to describe her protectiveness, which had started when she saw GLaDOS in danger. She was positive, though, that Doug Rattman was the reason behind it. This was Aperture after all, hacking human, or draconic, brains didn't really seem impossible here.
A/N: I hope you enjoy, sorry it took so long… again! This story only has between 1 and about 5 chapters left before it's done, hope you'll like them.