And now's the time where I randomly roll in and shout, "Hey, guys! I missed ya!" I just came back from a vacation Thursday (13+ hour car ride, phew!) Hate to say it, but I'm heading out on vacation again in a week, which will be closely followed by school. Anyway, this series really needed an update for a while--I was shocked to know that the last chapter I wrote for this was early June! Time flies!

This isn't exactly a heart-pounding story, but more-so just a little one of those pondering kinds of things. I still have writer's block, so sorry for that. This could have sounded better if you ask me, but I seem to be losing my touch a bit.

By the way, extreme thanks to everyone for your reviews with the Sheckley and Griggs addition to "Tales From the Rebels"! I didn't know so many people would love it! Obsidian Thirteen pointed out that it sounded like Pisces' "Follown Freeman!" series--I'm really sorry if that's the case! If there were any similairities, it was not intentional!
Let's get on with the story, shall we?

Based on: Half-Life 2 (Valve. Heh, I just made a typo that said "Half-Life 12" XD Wouldn't that be the day?)
Rating: K+. Once again, nothing bad, but that game itself requires the more mature folks to understand.
Author's Notes: Heh heh...wow. You don't know how hard I am cracking up right now. "Junk Monkey" is actually the nickname of my friend's boyfriend, so naming this chapter after him is just...wow. Odd feeling.
So, this takes place in a fictional place that I dubbed as "the Wastes", after the original concepts of what lied past City 17, which was mainly just a dried riverbed with train tracks running through. Anyway, please enjoy this! Sorry this took so long to upload--I was writing it before I left for vacation, so I had to leave it for a few days.
This story ranks in at 2,300 words--not so bad.

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June 19th, 2022

Dog and I went hunting through the Wastes today to see if we could find anything to help with the teleport dad's been working on, or if we could find anything else. Well, we found something, alright—what the hell it is, though, I have no idea.

-Alyx

"Dog! Dog? Hey—what are you doing over there?" The young woman could feel the rough soles of her boots slip as she carefully walked over the heaps of junk the Combine had sent here. Black Mesa East had officially dubbed this area as "the Wastes" because of this, and it was only about a reasonable distance away from City Seventeen. A drop of sweat tickled down from Alyx's forehead as she tried her best to keep up with her electronic pet, whom at this point was searching through a pile of shrapnel ahead of its owner. "What, boy?" she questioned, as she watched the animated lump of metal search through the pile. Dog just kept making electronic barks to himself, clearing away a side of the pile. Alyx took this time to her advantage as she took a deep breath, feeling a thin layer of sweat beginning to form around her body. It was hard to be out in the heat of June with her leather jacket and tight jeans—unfortunately for her, that was the only thing that fit her, anymore. She already tried looking through any spares of her mother's clothing her father might still have, but unfortunately, he hardly had any. He couldn't exactly carry that much out of Black Mesa—all he had was just Alyx and that old photograph.

"Voot!" Dog's electronic communications caught Alyx' attention back to reality, as she watched her robotic friend pull out something from the pile in front of him. It wasn't much, exactly, but it made the twenty-three year old smile, letting out a slight giggle.

"Oh Dog, it's beautiful," she said with happiness bursting out of her lips, as her pet handed her a piece of metal. Dog's strong hydraulic-powered muscles had easily bent the sides of the metal into a curl, making the object seem as though it were a flower. Alyx smiled once again, tucking the new gift into her jacket pocket.

"Ok boy," she began, getting a quick scan of the area. "Dad needs those parts. You already know what we're looking for, right?" Dog nodded, shifting his large body weight into a pose that made him seem as though he was ready to play. Alyx carefully walked towards him, trying her best not to lose her balance.

"Alright boy," she exclaimed in a childish tone, grabbing the sides of the metal flaps of his head and giving it a gentle jerk like it was a steering wheel. "Go look over there, ok?" She pointed towards the right of them. "I'll be over here. Give a shout if you find anything." Dog let out another electronic bark as an agreement, and he began to knuckle his way over towards his destination. Alyx watched Dog for a few moments, and then changed her attention to focus on the junk ahead of her.

She's been to the Wastes a couple of times in her life before, and has seen some very strange things. The Combine threw out the weirdest things—whether it be their machines that no longer work, old parts of City Seventeen, or even some citizens' luggage. She's seen an open suitcase before, which was only filled with a sock and a necklace. It was actually a bit depressing.

Alyx quickly navigated her ways towards a part of the pile that was slightly raised, which acted like a lookout for her. She quickly hopped on it and took a look around, trying to shield her eyes from the rays of the late afternoon sun. The Wastes was just a sea of garbage; useless to the Combine, but helpful to the rebels. It was hard to pick out what she needed just by looks—there was so much scrap metal around that most of the time she had to dig just to find what she was looking for. Even then, she only had about one-third of a chance of finding what she needed. She could hear Dog in the background, nosing his way through the piles. She let a laugh slip past her as she walked a little ways ahead of the lookout point.

"Let's see," she muttered, as she gently gripped the edge of her chin with her thumb and index finger. Her hazel eyes slowly scanned the area, looking for anything that might be of interest. A grunt of thought managed to make it through her closed lips, as nothing really seemed to stick out to her. But, then again, the things you want never appear in front of your feet, especially in times like this. Alyx quickly bent her arms behind her back, twitching her fingers and feeling the satisfaction of the cracking of her joints. She decided to see if there was anything buried in the pile a little ways to the left of her, taking her fingerless gloves off while she walked over there. She was fine with getting her hands dirty, but it was a pain to clean out those gloves. She took a quick scan of the pile in front of her, which didn't exactly seem to hold anything interesting. With a crack of her knuckles she got to work, slowly and carefully clearing away the chunks of metal. All of the pieces she came across were either too damaged or not what she was looking for, which made her mutter a complaint under her breath.

Alyx paused for a moment as she felt something…soft between her hands. She pulled out the mysterious object gingerly, and felt a feeling of dread shoot through her. She was looking directly into the plastic eyes of a young girl's doll, it seemed. The doll had a smile across its dirty and blackened face. A tear ran across her forehead revealing its stuffing, with half of her blonde hair ripped off; the strands that remained were all over the place. A sun-bleached green dress was wrapped loosely around her plush boy, one of her sowed-on shoes missing. Alyx felt like crying just by the sight of it.

She gently gripped the doll close to her chest, giving it a hug as her eyes closed half-way with misery.

"I'm sorry."

Why she murmured that apology to the doll was something she wasn't exactly sure of. Was she sorry for the doll, or for its used-to-be-owner? Or was she just sorry that the world had to be like this?

A deep sigh escaped from her lips as she twisted her body and gently placed the doll down behind her. But that didn't feel right to do, either; she didn't want to leave it alone out here. Alyx turned her attention away from the doll, and concentrated on the pile in front of her, once again. She was a bit disappointed that Dog didn't seem to have any luck, but she wasn't having much, either. She continued digging through the pile, her hands now blackened and covered with stains of unknown liquids and dirt.

Scrap metal, scrap metal, scrap metal. Not much else. She came across a couple of bricks now and then, most likely from some sort of wreckage of City Seventeen. There was even a large letter "F" that seemed as though it belonged to a sign that displayed a name on the front of a building. She even came across a door knob, but not the door itself. A couple of times, something poked at her palms, but her skin was so tough and callus-covered that she didn't actually feel anything. One time she pulled out what seemed to be some kind of sun hat, which had a large hole in the center with its straw-like material ripped up and pulled apart. She quickly threw it on her head anyway, just to see if it would fit. Funny enough, it did, and it acted as a nice shield to the harmful sun rays. It felt a bit uncomfortable to her after a few minutes, however, and she didn't exactly like the fact that it was sitting in junk for god-knows-how-long, so she placed it aside. She pulled aside pieces of metal that seemed like it would be good for the teleport, but she only found about three. Her face was covered with sweat now, causing her to slightly shiver when a breeze past by her neck. She realized that sun was actually setting now, and she didn't exactly want to hang around the Wastes at night.

She continued digging anyway, at least for a few minutes, to see what she could find. It seemed to be a last try sort of thing in a way, but she didn't expect to find much. She hadn't heard Dog in a while, now that she thought about it, but she figured he might have went farther away from her, as he was most likely still searching. Alyx pushed aside the trash gingerly, as she had done for the past few hours now, scanning the heap and trying to look for anything that seemed helpful.

Another odd object seemed to slip under Alyx' hand, but this one made her wince at first when she made contact with it. It felt rather odd—it was smooth, but the surface of the object seemed a bit soft. Curiosity seemed to take over her mind, as Alyx pulled it out from underneath the piles of junk that covered it. At first glance, she was tempted to grab her pistol, as her eyes met with a glowing yellow, which automatically made her think about the Combine. She calmed down, however, as she got a better glimpse of it.

The object was a bit large yet lightweight, and seemed to resemble a watermelon with its size and oval-like shape. The two yellow objects were small circles that popped out on the upper sides of the object. They seemed to resemble lenses to a pair of goggles. In the lower center of the object seemed like some kind of filter, like the Combine tended to have on their gas-mask-like attire. A long, black cord came out from what appeared to be the bottom of the object, where its surface was flattened. The white color of the object was beyond dirtied and scratched, and didn't exactly appear to be in the greatest condition. Alyx managed to raise a brow, as she tilted the object from side to side, examining it carefully. What the hell was it, exactly?

Alyx took a long glance at the object, switching her vision toward the darkening sky, the distance of the Wastes behind her, and then finally at the items that she had collected within the past few hours. Her ears focused quite carefully to see if she could hear a sound from Dog, but she could only hear silence.

"Dog?"

She cried out the word so softly, that she wasn't surprised when no one seemed to answer.

"Dog!" she cried out again, this time the canals echoing her voice. Alyx could faintly hear the comforting "VOOT!" of one of Dog's electronic barks somewhere in the area in front of her.

"Hey boy!" she continued to call. "Get over here; it's time to get going!"
Another faint bark was her reply, and the pounding sound of metal-on-metal began to echo louder and louder, until Alyx was able to make out the large figure of her companion. Dog stopped a few feet away from Alyx, doing a large summersault before he stood tall above his owner. Alyx simply smiled, letting a giggle escape her lips.

"Hey Dog," she said in the middle of a laugh, patting her metal pet. "You didn't happen to find anything, did you?" Dog shook his head as he seemed to lower his body, letting an electronic whimper out as the metal flaps of his head dropped down. Alyx let out a comforting smile toward the one red-eye of the machine, gently placing her hand onto of one of the metal flaps.
"Oh, that's ok, I think we've got enough for now." She turned around and grabbed the pieces of metal that she had collected, scooping it into her arms and hugging her chest, letting the weight of the objects push against her.

"Actually, Dog…" she took a moment's pause before continuing. "Can you carry this?" Dog let out a bark of agreement, grabbing the objects gently with one of his iron fists. He seemed to have no problem standing three-legged. Alyx smiled, although a bit nervously, and turned around to grab the mysterious oval object. She still didn't know what it was, and her vision managed to catch Dog pondering the appearance of the object, as well. Alyx quickly let out a yawn before she began to walk forward on the un-even heaps of trash.

"Well, let's go, boy. Can't keep dad waiting." Dog barked yet again, and Alyx managed to let a little laugh escape from her lips. Her eyes looked down into the object she cradled with one of her hands, staring deeply into its yellow eye-like attachments.

Well, it can't be harmful, she thought to herself. It seemed to be the only thing that popped into her mind about the mysterious object, but she took a deep sigh as she tried to ignore any negative thoughts about what it could possibly be.
I guess dad will know what it is. Somebody's got to know something.

--

Ahh, yes. The Cremator head. For those of you who don't know, that mysterious object Alyx uncovered is what you see in that green jar over at Eli's lab. Although it's never identified in-game, Valve confirmed in "Raising the Bar" that it's actually an enemy from the beta, called the Cremator. The Cremator would be summoned to hose down some "leftovers" after a disturbance has happened. Like, if there was an unprising, he would get rid of the bodies with his vaporizor-weapon-thing. Would have been awesome to see him in Episode One.

I realized that I failed to do what I wanted to do here, which was have Alyx fool around with stuff that reminded her of the old days, before the Combine invasion. I only got to the hat and the doll, since my writer's block is still annoying me, unfortunetly. Not too bad, however. Also, that "F" Alyx found was supposed to be a reference to the E3 trailer of the fight with the Strider (Freeman chucks an "F" he stole from the side of a building at the Strider with the Gravity Gun. It doesn't damange it, obviously.)

Thanks for taking the time to read, and for your reviews! By the way, I created a poll--please check it out! Thank you!