AN: Wow, cool response :3 Those reviews really helped pick me up, I've been in such a bummed-out state for the last week, thank you guys! Couple of notes about the first chapter/prologue: I noticed some glaring errors that I somehow missed in my final check before posting it. I'll get around to reposting it or fixing it somehow, but for now I remain mortified :'( Suddenly changing the name and purpose of something several chapters later... tsk-tsk-tsk. Bad me! Well, I sincerely hope this one is up to standard!

Also: YES, I'm perfectly aware of the masses of 'artistic licence' I've taken in this chapter. :) Especially near the end. While I've tried my best to make it as realistic as possible, I'll admit here and now that I've never done anything of the like in my life, the closest I've ever got to that is youtube. Le sigh. I seriously think there's so many untapped possibilities! So I try to do thorough research and brainstorming as well as any other methods I can think of to make things realistic. Personally, I focus on the thought that if I can't immerse myself one hundred percent in a story because there's something off, then how can I hope for others to do the same? Well, I did my best.

I just hope it's as good as it seemed when my brain threw it at me. XD

~!~

A hand waved in front of her face. Chell blinked, coming out of her reverie, then realised there was a voice in the room.

"Chell? Che-ell?"

She switched her vision to the source. Tight brown ringleted curls, freckled skin, a considerable overbite reigned slightly by wire bracers which showed when the girl grinned at having finally got her attention. Emma, one of her uni roommates.

"Man, Chell, what do you think about?" Emma asked. "You get this look in your eye sometimes, and I swear you'd forget to breathe if it wasn't a subconscious act."

"I think about before." Chell said quietly. Emma sighed an 'oh' and was silent, looking at the tv again for a lack of anything to say. Chell's thoughts drifted again. They'd just finished exams, and she was hoping madly that she'd passed them without incident. It would mark a significant milestone. Five years since leaving Aperture, five years since she'd wandered out of the wheat-field, exhausted and filthy.

Living the sheltered life of a test subject had not prepared her for this world of people, money and possessions, so armed with her usual stubbornness, she'd gone looking for information. That brought her to the university -which happened to offer a sports scholarship and was particularly seeking gymnasts. It was the easiest thing she'd ever accomplished. It was the one thing that all of GLaDOS' testing had taught her that she could apply to this new life. How to be as fast, flexible, nimble and strong as she could possibly be at the same time. Now she had a wall of medals and awards, and a wealth of knowledge that she valued far higher than lumps of shiny yellow, white or orange-colored metal with her name stamped on them.

She shook herself out of it once more and focused on the television. There were adverts at the moment, but then the program returned. It was a documentary on the planet's history, going back thousands of years, to a time when humans had roamed the Earth's surface once before. They'd created art, buildings, machines... Three and a half thousand years ago, '1954' according to an engraved metal plate found wholly intact. Nineteen-hundred-and-fifty-four what, no one knew, but the current popular theory was that the figure signified the number of years of recorded history -when the Homo Sapiens of that time had learned to write and read.

'We can see here that this machine was built to last. The moving parts have maintained their shape and, if I just give it a bit of a shove...' The presenter trailed off, ramming his shoulder against a crank-handle which was attached to a series of gears. After a moment it groaned into action, and he turned it several times with only a bit of effort, before letting the rusty metal crunch to a halt again. 'It even still works. So, clearly, humans had come a long way in the time they were around for. Just as we've come so far. Twenty years ago, computers were still science-fiction. Today, they make our cars work, they keep track of our money, and kids are playing games on them. It's entirely possible that these humans, the pre-Long Winter humans, might have had computers too. Maybe even things so advanced that whole libraries could be stored on something the size of a brick, and the information recalled in snippets, at will, by using search keywords that make the computer think and work for us.'

'By looking at these parts of the former human race, we can be forgiven for assuming that they might have thought in exactly the same way we do. Our early machines looked and acted much like these ancient things, they were rough and unrefined, and over the course of a few short decades we've made our own machines a heck of a lot more streamlined. We've also started using materials, synthetics, that are better in the short-term but which wouldn't stand the test of time as much as a few chunks of solid metal would do. If we suppose our ancestors used the same materials, then we can't expect much of their later world to have survived as long as this old crank-machine has.' The presenter was saying with a fond tone, patting the little jumble of gears. 'What we call science-fiction, these humans might have called commonplace. Motion-detecting software is on the drawing board today, but would our predecessors have had it in every room of every house? Would they have had computers that could look at a living thing through a camera lens and actually speak to it, react according to the emotions displayed on that living thing's face? Computers that could display pre-programmed emotions correctly and accurately in response to any given situation? We could really let our imagination run wild and wonder if there were computers with personalities, semi-sentient machines, with the capacity for genuine emotions, the capacity to feel.'

Chell huffed suddenly and got up, hurrying to the kitchen. She splashed some cold water on her face, then filled a glass and quickly drank it. Her quickened pulse calmed slowly, mental images of GLaDOS, Wheatley, the turrets, all fading from her mind's eye. She refilled the glass and returned to the living room of the small Uni res house, trembling just slightly, only to find her three roommates had forgotten the tv in favor of looking to see what the matter was.

"You okay?" Lexi asked, getting up and crossing the room to her. The redhead pressed the back of her hand to Chell's forehead, frowning. "You're all hot, Chell, you feel alright?" She asked.

"It's... my brain just got away from me for a minute, there." Chell said to her friends, attempting a smile to reassure them. Lexi frowned, then after a few moments it melted away to a concerned expression.

"You've got those hard eyes again." She sighed. "You're not gonna explain, huh?"

"My brain just got away from me." Cell repeated firmly. The other girl groaned and rolled her eyes, going back to her seat.

"When someone's worried about you, it's a good thing, Chell." She grumbled.

"It's probably just the stress getting out of her system since exams are finished, Lexi, give her a break. We're all stressed." Sarah spoke up.

"I'll get some sleep." Chell said. "I haven't slept well all week. Maybe that's it." She continued, trying to sound reassuring as well.

"G'night." The others chorused, Sarah and Emma flashing smiles and Lexi only glancing up to meet her gaze for a brief second.

"Okay, 'night." Chell headed to her little room, shutting the door behind her.

For a minute, all she did was stand there and look around herself. The room was kind of small, it looked cluttered with all the things in it. Single bed slotted in under the window across from her, less than three steps away. The walls to her left and right were covered in medals hanging from temporary picture hooks all over the place, the results of her scholarship obligations. She was the university's prize gymnastics representative, their ace-in-the-hole. Silky pennants obscured every other spare bit of wall and hung from the high shelves that held a multitude of trophies, too. Between the door and the bed was a little side-table with a radio-alarm clock on it, her keys and chunky little wallet sat there too, and on the far-left wall was a desk for studying at. Beside her was a built-in wardrobe that contained her few items of aparrel, though it lacked doors because there just wasn't enough space for them.

"Hmm." Chell frowned, setting her glass on the side-table and then kneeling in the narrow gap between her desk and wardrobe. She reached in between the cloth items and touched a hard, white synthetic surface just visible from the other side of the room. Her Long Fall Boots. Her pulse thumped in her mouth as she pulled them out of hiding. Sure, they were a little bit scratched-up, but considering what they're gone through and saved her from, they were in good condition. GLaDOS had left them with her for whoever-knows-what reason. Maybe the AI had forgotten to take them away? Maybe she didn't care whether Chell kept them or not?

Chell sighed and patted the boots fondly, as the tv presenter had done with the ancient crank-machine. She smiled. Then she brushed probably-nonexistent dust from the white, glossy surface and put them back in the far corner, behind everything, and got changed for bed.

She lay down on top of the covers -it was a warm night, even though she wasn't wearing particularly warm pyjamas- and Chell closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. She didn't like doing it. Any second, she expected to see a Relaxation Vault around herself, the Vault Pod panels sliding closed above her face, impervious to a pair of human fists hammering against them for release. Or a crappy, dilapidated hotel room, with peeling wallpaper and dinky lampshades and lame prints in warped picture frames-

Chell's eyes snapped open with a harsh gasp. Her heart was thundering in her chest, her breaths ragged. She looked at the clock. Four minutes. Her brow was damp and it took another minute to get her breathing under control.

She gulped a mouthful of water and tried again, focusing on steady breaths, listening to her pulse and making her foot twitch in time with it for good measure. She thought hard about her surroundings. Pennants, medals, furniture, glass window-

-glass wall-

Table, clock radio-

-radio-

Carpet-

-floor tiles, wallpaper, lampshade-

Textbooks, binder folder, note paper-

-clipboard-

Bed-

-cryobed, fluro ceiling lights, toilet, mini-fridge-

A yelp and she was bolt-upright, her fists clenched in the sheets, her mouth gaping wide. Her chest was heaving but Chell was dizzy, it wasn't until she consciously gasped at the air that anything got through to her starving lungs. She forced one shaking hand to open up and planted it over her face instead, heedless of the wet slick of perspiration on her skin. The room was blue-white, Chell dared looking to her right at the open curtains and oh-so-slowly dragged her gaze upwards, having to force herself to look at the gleaming moon. They said people went mad under the full moon, but it was only a three-quarter crescent tonight. Was she going mad? Was she insane?

Was she really brain-damaged, and had she really been up there in space? Sucked through a hole in the floor here on Earth and almost flung to oblivion in that frozen vacuum of nothing?

She looked once more at the clock, it was an effort because she fully expected the chunky clock radio to have turned into the sleek, cornerless, near-spherical radio from the Relaxation Vault. She had actually managed to get to sleep, it was just after midnight. The numbers ticked from 12:11 to 12:12 even as she stared at them, and Chell was reminded forcefully of the countdown clock from the second time she'd run the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device Basic Comprehension Test Track. After Wheatley had rocked and crashed their way through the area where so many test subjects -lives now defunct- had been stored. Like cans on the shelves in the supermarket. He'd gone and picked the one at the back, and knocked half the shelf over to get at it.

Finishing off her glass of water, Chell lay down once more, her trembling hands clasped together over her stomach and her eyes locked onto the ceiling. She picked a subject at random and started reciting mathematical formulae in her head to keep herself awake -she would not go back to sleep tonight, she decided. Sleep was not her friend. Dreams were not her friends. Like turrets, like Wheatley, like GLa-

Wait, was GLaDOS her friend or not? Sure, the AI had repeatedly tried to kill her, but after those few hours of working together, couldn't they be considered friends? Or was that Chell's own desperation for some sort of sappy, happy ending to a horror story that put the concept of GLaDOS being humane in her head? Could a machine be 'humane'?

A growl escaped her and Chell got up, screwing her eyes shut and then glaring at the wall. Shiny medals glittered back at her in the moonlight. Something else did too -the Long Fall Boots, the white surface gleaming as though they were trying to get her attention. She hadn't put them away properly, one had fallen over and now stuck out between two pairs of jeans.

"Nothing happens without reason." Chell whispered to herself, still conscious of her friends sleeping on the other side of the paper-thin walls. It wasn't anything supernatural making them visible, she simply hadn't hidden them away properly. She shook her head, walked to the wardrobe and then stopped short, wondering what the hell she was thinking. Halfway back to her bed, she faced the wardobe again. Then the bed. Then the wardrobe. Then she snatched her pillow up and punched it viciously, frustrated, glaring at the Aperture boots from the corner of her vision. She refused to throw them away, they had saved her life so many times. Simply learning to not wear them everywhere -she didn't want the attention that the strange-looking boots would bring, but she couldn't remember a time without them on her feet- had been a monumental effort. It had taken ages to wean herself of toting them around in a huge backpack all day, too, and ages again to teach herself not to run back to the res house and check on them between classes.

Maybe once, for old-time's sake...

Chell flung her pillow aside and held her breath, excited now, and she jumped for the wardrobe and yanked the boots out. Using a tee-shirt from her washing basket, Chell polished the glossy white casings thoroughly, and the barely-scuffed heelsprings, a little tremble of joy rushing along her spine as the Aperture logo flashed when she tilted a boot under a moonbeam. She was smiling now, running her hands over them, recalling the feeling of wind whipping her hair and the whooshing sounds that went with it to steal her breath away.

Freefall... terminal velocity... impact.

The resounding thunderclap of the boots smacking into a floor surface, the heelsprings coping effortlessly, the only evidence being cracked tiles under her feet and her pulse racing along under the influence of surging adrenaline.

Chell's face hurt, she was grinning so hard. A faint clicking sound assured her that the latches were secure and she stood up, glancing at herself in the mirror. She was dressed now. Loose cargo pants rolled up and buttoned above her knees, and a close-fitting tank top and sports bra. Her favorite training clothes. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and her feet and calves were enclosed snugly within the high-tech Aperture footwear. Silently, she crept out of the house, nervous of every faint thwunk, thwunk, of the heelsprings reacting to her footsteps. Even her roommates didn't know about them, the boots were her greatest secret.

But once she was outside, the door shut behind her and the outline of her housekeys prominent in her pocket, Chell breathed deeply and relaxed. Her spine was arched, shoulders back, the posture enforced by the boots never forgotten. Gently, she rocked back on her heels and let herself bounce slightly. The very second her left toe met the ground again Chell leapt into a sprint, hunching down and rocketing forwards. Even without Propulsion Gel, the shape and mechanics of the Long Fall Boots increased her maximum running speed to well over thirty kilometers an hour if she could manage to keep it up over a bit of distance. Unassisted, it took a powerful athlete to get anywhere near that speed, let alone maintain it as long as she did with the help of the boots. Chell flew across the empty carpark, turned right as hard as she could on the far side of it and ended up running several meters up the side of a building before gravity beckoned, and she kicked away from it and flipped over in midair, heelsprings coming down on the bitumen and propelling her effortlessly forward.

Chell leapt up onto a bench seat in one long stride, continued up onto the roof of a car several yards away and raced along a line of them before leaping to a dumpster and then off it again for another smooth somersault to cover the distance between airborne and ground. She landed hard, landed still, her right foot came down first and her knee bent just slightly while her left boot made contact with the ground and took its' share of the load, leaving her crouching, panting in exhiliration and her eyes wide as she looked quickly around herself.

The noise echoed faintly back at her off a nearby wall, sounding like a car backfiring in the distance. Chell's jaw remained wide open, hot breath fogging out and deliciously icy-cold oxygen hissing its' way down her throat in return. Her gaze darted over her surroundings, her mind churning. What else could she run on? What could she jump from? Every surface was analyzed critically by the quick-thinking athlete. It was barely the middle of the night and she had no wish to go to sleep, no one would disturb her, nothing would interrupt.

~!~

AN: -peeks out from behind PC screen- H-hello there :3 Well, as you can see, I was telling the truth. Lots of artistic licence there. -points- And also playing way too much Prototype and Mirror's Edge lately :/ But I seriously think that the Long Fall Boots could do SO much more than saving you from a fall at terminal velocity. I've looked at the mechanics of them, heck I even jimmied up a pair made from scraps in my garage that, while I'd be more likely to break my leg wearing them than have the boots protect me from broken legs, they helped me a ton in imagining how the boots work, how they could work and how they definitely don't. (Note: Homemade LFB Mark 2: probably gonna replace the elastic bands with gaffa tape or similar. Heelsprings that fall off aren't protecting me from anything.)

So constructive criticism would be great :) Especially about the freerunning stuff, since the next chapter is kind of... well... based on her pulling off freerunning moves :D I can see where it doesn't fit in Portal and Portal 2, but I really think the boots are capable of doing what I've made Chell do with them :D Well... maybe not to that extent IRL, but woudn't it be great if they did? XD

I'm not going to hold my chapters to ransom for reviews though. Weekly updates seems reasonable, give or take a couple of days depending on my internet connection, so that's what I'm aiming for. See you then! :D