Aha. Funny. 'I've been gone for a month'. Funniest thing I've ever heard. There's no WAY that's true! One more day and THEN it would have been a month. I'm updating before that can happen, my friends.

Disclaimer (because I have to have one, apparently): Garry's Mod still isn't working...and I still don't own these two awesome games. I don't own Valve, either, though one day I plan on being a voice actor for them. I'll tell y'all when it happens, so you can look for me in the credits. Plus I have this AWESOME story idea for them, and they'll have to hire me! Not putting the story online, for copyright reasons in the future, but I'll give you a 'summary', I guess. "If you mess up time once, you've messed it up multiple times before, forever." Pretty sweet, eh?

On with the story!

The metallic chuckle grew rapidly, into an almost maniacal laughter.

Barney flew up the stairs to the deck when he heard this. "Man, what the hell has gotten into this guy? I've never seen anything like this before!"

Chell picked up a shovel she found on board and slowly walked to the general, silently demanding him to tell what was happening, which Mel voiced out loud to him.

After a while, the laughter died down. "You guys...you run out of ammo!" he managed to choke out. "We're gonna win!"

"Well, that's true, but we have the-" Mel started.

"The robots!" the laughter started up again. "The robots are the reason you're screwed!"

Barney held up his shotgun to the general's face. "Talk, dammit!"

The laughter died down. "Is that any way to treat your general, soldier?"

Barney slowly placed down his weapon. "Garry?"

"Hello, Barney."

GLaDOS!

:What is it, Caroline?:

Check the feed we've been getting from our robots!

GLaDOS imitated a sigh, getting really annoyed easily now that testing was halted. She pulled up the screen, and if she could, she would have gasped.

:It's them. They're tampering with our robots! But how?:

Silence was the only answer as they stared at the screen in sight. The robots were receiving orders to kill off the rebels from some unknown source.

We have to override it somehow!

GLaDOS froze up. :I know how they're doing it! They were built by the rebels, right?:

Yes.

:The rebels resources, if I'm correct, which I am, were taken from them, and they built the robots with old...Combine resources! The Combine must have figured out what parts of what they used, and are using it against the rebels! The only way to prevent this is if they installed that chip I gave out with each of the blueprints...but the humans were probably to stupid to even consider-:

They did. They installed it.

GLaDOS checked the previous feeds that were given to them. :Oh.:

Caroline inwardly smirked. She loved it when she proved GLaDOS wrong about something.

:Well then. Time for some direct intervention.:

::/Download initiated\::.../=Downloading_/

The man scowled. She wasn't supposed to download herself into the robots! Everything would be ruined if this went through. His employers wouldn't be pleased at all.

"Freeman..." he muttered. His plan had to work. Or else his employers...

Someone tapped on his shoulder. "It would appear as though things are getting out of hand."

G-man looked up to the man. "Yes, it has."

"I think we've given you too much power."

"I would dare to disagree. You said Alyx Vance wasn't-"

"A mistake on our part, I'll confess. She is quite valuable, and we're thankful for you now to have saved her, but this is going too far. We don't think we'll be needing your services any longer."

G-man scowled. "Just have patience. I know how we can fix this...unfortunate mistake..."

Intruder. Firewall destroyed. AI systems, destroyed. Shutting down...

:Something's wrong.: GLaDOS thought. Next thing she knew, she saw nothing.

Barney dropped his gun. "Garry...I thought you were..."

The chuckle resumed. "You thought you were a spy? I was spying on you. You're lucky everyone liked you, though. They didn't believe me."

Barney shook his head. "I thought we were buddies, man."

"Then why would I have signed up for the Combine? You wouldn't befriend a Combine!"

Barney stumbled on his words.

"Don't be too sad, Barney. I'll admit, I had some pretty fun times with you."

Barney smirked. "Like the time...when we found that chest?"

A less maniacal laugh emerged from the general's throat. "You thought it was some old treasure!"

Barney joined in on the laughing, while the other rebels glanced on confusedly.

"We opened it...remember what we found?" Barney added.

The general's laughter increased in volume. "Oh, man, that scared the hell out of you!"

"Well, at least I didn't scream like a girl!"

"What was it?" Mel interrupted.

"It was a giant jack-in-the-box some bored rebel made!" Barney yelled. "A large spring with a dead headcrab pierced on the top of it!"

"Remember when we showed it to the guys?"

Barney's laughter started up again. "I wish we could have seen their faces..."

The laughter died down when they glanced at each other again. "You know, I always wished that I could change your opinion about the Combine." 'Garry' stated sadly.

"I wished the same about you, old friend." Barney replied.

The general sighed and reached for something located on his other arm. "Sorry, Barney."

He pushed a button.

"Don't worry, Amy. I'll take care of them from now on." Kleiner assured the sobbing woman, eager to help his friend and get away from Magnusson's angry voice.

"Thanks." Amy whispered as she stumbled down to her quarters.

Kleiner sighed, confused as to why she had broken down. Curious, he turned all the cores on at once, them continuing an argument they had started before they were shut down.

"Well, I think they were like this before." Kleiner mused. "Are you guys...malfunctioning?" he asked the arguing cores.

"Fact: Every single one of us is 100% operational."

"Says mister false-facts!" Wheatley argued.

"Moron, you just called yourself non-operational, and if you're yelling like that, you're obviously not!" Rick shouted at him.

"Let's all go to the Space Spa!" The space core yelled.

"Not a moron, you are!" Wheatley shouted at Rick.

"Sorry, that's not what I was designed for!" Rick taunted.

"Oh, you're so lucky I don't have legs, mate!"

Kleiner sighed and walked out of the room.

There, done. Sorry for the super long update. I forgot that when you update, you have to write. And that to write, you have to have ideas. So I was doing a massive brainstorming thing to decide what to do next, and in the process, came up with a new story idea for HTTYD, and I just had to write down, and it got instant success. So I continued it, then noticed this story, and my head blew up. I also got surgery on my foot for about the MILLIONTH time! Stupid chronic ingrowns...

My toe looks pretty gross right now, guys.

Oh, and I had an infected cut on my finger, and in my agriculture class, I stuck it under the microscope, and OH MY GOD. I bought about three giant things of hand sanitizer right after school that day, which stung like a bitch. My advice to you, don't look at wounds under a microscope.