Mission 025: Live Weapons Testing

[super_astute]

Just after the contaiment breach was sealed and half of the surviving personnel were back on duty, Wheatley stopped down to check on Chelldon.  The morning's water cool chatter had been boring and besides, today he had something important to do.  Something that would make his name stand out!  Oh, sure, it helped that lots of people that might have stood in front of him got eaten or committed suicide when it looked like some evil other-dimension monster was going to poke their eyes out and use their skulls for planters...

But Wheatley didn't let that get him down!

Quite chuffed in fact, he arrived at Chelldon's room quite early with his morning rations and beamed at the Test Subject.  "Oh, have we got plans today!  You are going to LOVE this!"

Comments

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Wheatley linked arms with Chelldon -- he didn't usually like to touch the human, smells rubbed up far too easily -- and dragged him towards the front of the line. Oh, he really hadn't known that it had been Chief Hunt! The man was a legend, fearless and really good with androids. Maybe that was why Tyler was with him?

Ohh! Maybe Tyler was going to be decomissioned? Wheatley started to giggle...darkly. The other machines sort of ignored him.

It was always best just to ignore him.

"You're going to be fine, just fine. The botos will be fixed, no one will know. I think we should have your neck looked at next. It seems to be on a wrong way hinge."

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Wrong? What was wrong with him? He looked the same as everyone else though it wasn't really his fault if he had some sort of abnormality. As they entered the medical bay, he leaned his head to the side and gave Wheatley a pointed look because he knew that the man was probably worrying over Chief Hunt. Well, they would hardly be in trouble, they were useful. They were probably interesting the bosses at least.

"Twenty-five."

That was all he needed to say, they had successfully managed to complete 25 tests and they'd had no hitches thus far, bullets hardly counted, that was all down to Wheatley being a bit useless.

When the medic finally came out, he groaned in dismay at yet another injure today. "Did this one lose his teeth when the guns backfired because we did put that disclaimer out through GLaDOS."

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Oh, no, no, he failed to dodge bullets properly," Wheatley said. "No backfiring-- Wait, why didn't I--" He fell silent, reading reports he'd not had time to earlier. "Oooh. Right, yes, labelled 'read immediately to prevent gun backfiring.' Clever title, really ought to have a tip off." He hummed lightly, being sure to commit it to memory when Chelldon spoke.

He'd learned long ago to listen to the man when he opened his mouth -- and then promptly dismiss him too because mostly it was nonsense. This time around, Chelldon's words made him smile.

"Twenty-five is a brilliant, fantastic number, Chelldon. You should be proud. And all of this despite the brain damage."

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Internally, Chelldon sighed and called Wheatley a moron. Externally, he just stared for a few moments before approaching the medic who had a look over the rather neatly sorted wound that just required a bit of tightening up, hence the swift and painful stitch job.

These people had clearly never taken the Hippocratic oath and didn't give a damn about human pain. But it could be worse, he remember the time he witness Doctor Handy stitching a test subjects arm up... and accidentally stitching his skin to his lab coat. It had not been pleasant to watch the separation when Handy made a swift run to answer the door.

"There we go, now all you need is some drugs. They'll help with the painkillers but not with... rest," the medic gestured at the whole of Chelldon and he could help but look confused because seriously? What the hell was wrong? He felt fine!

Being silent was clearly something they couldn't comprehend well.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

When Chelldon was completely mended, Wheatley fell into step beside his Test Subject and rounded a few blown to bits corridors to get to the break room. "Oh, oh, no! Stupid alien attempted take over," he lamented and sighed rather painfully before turning on his heels and smacking right into Chelldon, almost as if he'd forgotten he was there.

"Oh, well, looks like we'll have to try the cafeteria. Test Subjects aren't allowed there so I need you to just keep your head down and follow me and don't do anything at all brain damaged. If anyone asks, you're my cousin Steve from Engineering."

Well, Wheatley never said that the majority of the people here were bright.

Smarts and genius didn't always match up.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

"Steve," Chelldon repeated as he followed along after Wheatley, he didn't care what he had to do, he hadn't had anything but protein bars, shakes and those weird unspecified sandwiches, frankly the sound of cake was like something from heaven and he had been fight for that for years.

He was starting to think it might be a lie.

The canteen was all nice and shiny, he'd ever been there before. Unable to hide his awe, he wandered behind Wheatley. His cores never let him into these sort of places before, it was definitely one of the highlights of having Wheatley as is guide.

It heightened the chances of cake!

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Oh, and there would be cake. Gobs and gobs of it. Wheatley was pretty nonchalant abotu the whole thing, grabbing the chocolate monstrosity from the table along with a fork and just leaving the cafeteria with it.

"Defective," he murmured to the chocolate frosting. "Honestly, the people here, the chef robots should be fired. Trying to feed people this-- The sheer amount of calories-- Miserable! Unforgivable. Nearly as bad as the science fair during take your son to work day. Honest, potato batteries, the lot of them."

He kept muttering to himself until they got outside and then burst out a resounding: 'run!"

Everyone in the cafeteria just thought they were mental and went back to eating.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon was more than happy to eat as he walked the moment after the cake was passed to him, he was practically shoving the cake in his mouth and he didn't care how 'special' that looked. Everyone thought he was damaged anyway, may as well make the most of what was offered instead of worrying too much about the little things.

And cake was amazing, frankly, he didn't want it to have to end.

He only slightly listened to Wheatley complain about the bring your son to work day. Oh he remembered that perfectly, a potato clock and then being told it was the perfect day to have him tested. And he'd never left. Or seen his battery clock again.

He didn't even realised what was happening beyond the cake hence he barely heard the run command, licking his fingers, he took off in a scamper, half a cake still in his hands.

He was living the dream here!

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, while Chelldon lived his dream, Wheatley was trying to be sure that no one got hurt. Luckily, he took some of his protocol even more seriously than Tyler did and there really was nothing against stealing a cake from the cafeteria when most of the staff had been eaten by or was trying to contain an incursion. In fact, having cake was systematically approved of in such an occasion to build up morale in case of an alien take over and it was the last thing anyone ever ate.

Wheatley, in his infinite wisdom, always failed to read the most urgent memos, mostly because he liked to take his time with things and urgent just seemed so urgent! Someone would likely fill him in.

That was his story at least.

Back in Chelldon's room, Wheatley wrinkled his nose to watch the other man eat.

"You'll vomit. Oh, please don't vomit! Try to swallow it if it happens!"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

He wouldn't vomit... well he might but he was happier doing things his own way. He crammed another handful into his mouth and smiled, the cake totally wasn't a lie, he may have been waiting for nearly a whole science fair ago for cake but it was finally here and he knew that this sort of goodness wouldn't last. Mostly because Aperture science didn't specialise in goodness and odds were it was poisoned or mutant cake.

Once he was done rather messily and horribly devouring the cake, he licked the chocolate off his hands and wiped the excess onto his sleeve. He was a bit like a toddle who had been giving a chocolate bar.

Looking at Wheatley, he half smiled. For a moron, he wasn't half bad.

"Thank you, scale of one to brilliant ... you rank brilliant," yes, he remembered the scale nonsense and credit where credit was due, he wasn't going to offer the moron much more than that.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Wheatley was flustered. He's never had anyone other than himself and all of the rest of the people he knew, but only in his head, call him brilliant before. If he could cry, he might have done so. Instead, he sort of shut down for a moment, a whirring noise coming from inside of his skull before he powered back up with a grin.

"Of course I am! But it's brilliant that you've just discovered this. Bit slow for a human but with the brain damage I suppose you might well be the best yet! Then again, you are covered in chocolate...right. Okay, to be expected, given the lack of sanitisation devices in this room..."

Wheatley sighed.

"Oh, it's going to just smell awful tomorrow, I know it. And now look at you, all hyped up on sugar!"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon was not sure to sugar and there was a reason why they didn't usually give test subjects sugar because Chelldon was bouncing on the ground, face covered in chocolate as he hummed to himself, clearly very pleased. Hey, his childhood had been stolen and all he'd done for ages now is run tests and sleep, having fun was one of those great privileges he didn't get to have.

And yet Wheatley was offering him all these changes.

"Test?" he chirped, cocking his head to the side, going into a test now was not only wrong but very bad and even someone like Wheatley should know that a bouncing chocolate covered man would not do well against robots and death machines.

But he didn't know what to do with all that energy.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"I haven't had time to come up with a new test," Wheatley complained before going silent for almost two full minutes, eyes glazed over and streams of light bashing around across the lenses as he computed whatever interface with GLADoS he was currently working on. "Oh." Now that was worrying. "Well there are two specimen tests currently on lock down due to containment breach but--"

His eyebrows shot up and he got to his feet.

"What could it possibly hurt?"

Famous last words.