Level 2

"Ouch! Get off me, would you!?"

Maybe trying to fit two freaks in a teleporter was a bad idea. The space available was so small that the cat's force from sitting on me squished me to death. Well, almost.

"What's with that hair, anyway?" Bridgette bothered to ask in that easy-to-pick-up smart tone.

"I don't know, maybe I like my hair like that. And for that matter, why do you have two pwnytails!?"

"Say what now?"

"Exactly. Now I think I'm gonna want to explore this level for a while."

"Suit yourself. I've got a level 7 to pursue." She took off in an instant, and six seconds later she was nowhere in my sight. Now that I had one less thing to think about, I viewed the whole level of (seemingly) boring around me. I turned to my left. Boring. I turned to my right. Boring. Come on, this is a waste of my time. How do I get out of the game without getting a Game Over? Or is it even possible?

A gun. Whoever gave the creator of this game the idea to rip off Portal was an idiot. It's official. My gaming life is over. Modern games suck!

That was when I noticed the two side-by-side paths in front of me. One path was supported by walls on either side, but the other was once again in the penalty-for-falling style. I took the left path, not because I was left-handed, but because I wanted to. And right away a wall blocked the path. There weren't many options for trying to maneuver around that obstacle, as no walls surrounded the path. But I guess that made figuring out how to get past the obstacles a bit easier. And yet I had some major difficulty getting used to the controls when it came to the portal gun and its effects. Only pulling the trigger did nothing. You had to push one of two ordinarily-colored buttons in conjunction with pulling on it. And you couldn't fire twice with one color — the second shot would cancel out the first blast's effect. One had to be blue and one had to be orange. How creative. They should've made the colors dandelion and mauvelous.

I wondered if I could shoot that gun at someone else as a weapon. I crouched to a squat and leaned against the highest wall I'd come to so far, trying to avoid other players carrying portal guns. I held my Star Trek phaser the James Bond way (or at least one of them) as if I was playing Call of Duty or Tomb Raider or somethin'. All was quiet for a while. Too quiet, maybe.

A loud laser noise erupted behind me. Before I could figure out what just happened, I found a blue portal hole in the wall (no game show reference intended). By my calculations, the hole looked as though if it landed inches lower, it could've taken my head off clean. That was the last stick. I went on the attack and fired away for about 20 seconds. What, is this a less gory version of Call of Duty or something, with portal guns in place of real revolvers? Weird. I don't really wanna know what'll happen if I get hit.

"Hey you! You with the mask! Outa the way!" Racist bitch.

I just wish he and certain other people would just drop their envy.

"I'm gonna shoot if you don't move it!"

Whether that racist bitch had the intention to kill me, I had no clue. In the available space between the two walls blocking the path, I sped from one wall to the previous, slightly shorter wall, faster than a cobalt chump capable of running at the speed of sound. Well, not quite.

He took out his portal gun. With the pull of a trigger, a laser-like blast shoved its way across the platform, and carved a blue hole in it. One second later, a hole of orange cut through the Impossiwall (no game show reference intended). He secured it back in his pocket, walked casually towards the corrupted ground, and jumped through his man-made warp zone, making the mistake of landing feet first. He came out through the orange hole feet first, and besides, he didn't come anywhere close to clearing the required height. He retreated to get a running start on this next attempt. On the count of three, he ran (not so far away) as fast as humanly possible and, careful not to make the same dumb move twice, dove head-first into his portal... but came up short by a foot. Evidently he was ready to give up. He turned to me, and said in a calmer manner than before: "Could you help me get over that wall?"

I had a legit reason to give in to his request — NOT because he was someone I knew. "Yeah, sure. I got another idea."

I pulled out my gun, while he proceeded to reset his corrupted laser effects with the push of another button. I blasted in conjunction with the blue button straight at the wall, and the orange button two feet before it. "Stand back. I'm gonna need some room for a running start." After my path cleared up, I took a certain stance that might have made you think I was preparing to race against a blue hedgehog. A second after I took off, I reached a speed at which I was finally reminded why in the name of freakin' epic I even took that opportunity to abandon my life in Minnesota (but the nagging question of how exactly they proceeded with that action still gave me nightmares). To be the odd man (or... hedgehog) out was actually kinda refreshing at times like these. As I got close enough to the wall, I bulleted head-first through the portal hole as if sliding into home plate in baseball. Look at me fly. This is the best moment of my life. I went so fast upon jumping out through the ground effect that resulted from me portalizing (which, after a long series of figurative translations, eventually came out to mean corrupting) two points on solid low-res tarmac that I managed to secure my left hand on the top of the wall. I had enough energy to force myself two inches higher and view the other side of the obstacle so clearly, it was like a video game afterlife. I could imagine just how a blue hedgehog might react to such a display: with contempt.

As I was still celebrating, I blasted a streak of orange on the "otherworldly" side blocked by the wall, thus canceling out the previous orange scar on the corrupted tarmac. That other dude casually walked towards the high obstacle and slid through the hole that remained on it. Don't you just love portal guns? I crashed down to the ground once he came up through that orange hole. As I refocused on the path ahead of us, a gate had suddenly appeared that led to the third damn level. As he trotted towards the not-so-secret passage, he turned around and said, "So what's up. Sorry about what I said back there. Thanks a lot for getting us over that wall."

"No problem." Never phunk with a human shooting a portal gun...