Test Chamber 036: Training

[super_astute]

The puzzle wasn't hard, he told himself, and it certainly wasn't impossible.  No, in fact, he knew the solution but he just wasn't going to play without Chelldon.  He repeated that out loud, telling Tyler that his training course was very lack luster.  He did not need to be taught to jump.  Or to use the Apperture Science Portal Making Device.

In all actuality, Wheatley just couldn't figure out why the portals weren't working because he'd forgotten that he could actually switch colours to allow him to place two portals on the walls.

He just kept firing one over and over...  'To check how the gun was working.'  "Safety first, Tyler!" he said before Chelldon pretty much literally dropped down on him.  "AAAH!"

Comments

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon dropped onto a very lumpy and hard surfac-- oh God, it was Wheatley. Wincing, he clambered off the man and rolled to the side, giving him a smile. What? Reunited again, the nearly sort of unstoppable duo were not going to bow down to some stupid stuffy core who was obsessed with protocol.

If he could defeat GLaDOS then he could defeat Tyler.

All they had to do was corrupt the core again, get Tyler free, put GLaDOS back... then blow him up. That way they wouldn't lose someone they knew and hopefully Tyler would calm down and stop cackling like an evil mastermind.

Swiftly shooting the portals for them, he helped Wheatley up then shoved him straight through the portal. It was going to be a bumpy ride but totally worth it.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"I knew you'd find me," Wheatley said as Chelldon pushed him along. "I was just telling Typer that being out through these training courses are just ridiculous. Of course I already know all of the standard protocol--"

From the speakers above them, Tyler snorter. "What does Protocol MEX-D3 entail?" he asked with a snarky superiority. "No idea?"

"Of course I...  True."

Tyler was silent for a moment. "True?  That's not even a possible answer!"

"I'll go with false."

Tyler raged. The floor beneath then crumbled. Thanks Wheatley. 

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon swiftly shot a portal as they fell so instead of slamming into the floor below them, the rolled out onto the platform. Chelldon grabbed a hold of Wheatleys hand to keep them link and glared up at the hole in the floor. This. Would. Be. Good.

"Protocol 34J-9, Cores assigned to subjects must accompany subjects in any test as their motivation and companionship can improve productivity. For science," Chelldon repeated and yes, that was the longest sentence he'd ever spoken at Aperture but he just really wanted to out do that know-it-all.

He'd used that protocol against GLaDOS earlier and Chelldon never forgot useful things. For example:

"Protocol 45-C, do not destroy Aperture floors or walls as they are more valuable than you," ... and he remembered that one from Cave Johnsons audio tapes.

Take that Tyler!

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Wheatley stared at Chelldon -- until he was pushed through a portal and suddenly, the entire world was turned right side up again so that he was looking out at a pit instead. Something seemed to have fried in his poor little mind before he choked and sputtered and very nearly careened off over the edge before Chelldon could grab him through the portal while he berated Tyler.

"Protocol 45-C...deleted!" Tyler proclaimed. Because he could. "Ha! Besides, there had always been a clause about manufacturing replacements until the edge cutting machine went off line. No matter, gone anyhow. And I'll go and get that cutter repaired too. There must be a technician alive somewhere..."

At least it seemed that Tyler would be busy elsewhere for a little while.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

They didn't have much chance to shoot a portal to safety this time so they move tumbled onto one of the remaining catwalks. Chelldon landed with a small groan, rolling to his side and catching his breath. He didn't know if he could beat Tyler when he kept rewriting the rules. Sadly they needed to get that anal core out of power before things got dangerous.

Sitting upright, he checked his gun was okay before turning to Wheatley.

Wheatley was fine, maybe a little smashed about from all the leaps and damage but it could of been worse. Did cores feel pain like humans felt pain? Frowning with a curious expression, he tilted his head to the side.

The staring should be interpreted as 'are you okay?'

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"He doesn't want to kill us," Wheatley hissed. "He wants to obliterate us with maths. No, no, I like maths just fine but-- Did all of this crashing around completely reverse your brain damage?" Wheatley gripped the poor man tightly on the shoulders and gave him not one, but three full shakes before he wrapped his arms around him.

He'd seen Handy hug Jack quite a lot.

And it made them both smile.

Wheatley swallowed and stepped back. He didn't actually feel like smiling. He felt a little scared instead. "Now, don't take this the wrong way, but-- But I'm pretty sure he's going to kill us. With maths. It was easier to sugar coat all of that when you were brain damaged."

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon liked these hugs, they were fun but now didn't seem like the time to get excited over them, now seemed like the time to get ready for the end of the world because Tyler was insane, clearly being in power was just not good for a core, it made them go a tiny bit nutso.

He gave Wheatley a confused look, he clearly found the situation easier and less stressful when he believed himself to be in charge Perhaps he liked having a brain damaged test subject to talk down too?

So, just to keep moral up, he jumped and turned to Wheatley with a smile. "Cake?"

Yep, he knew that was stupid and not what they needed but this way Wheatley had some sort of power.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Wheatley calmed down at once, breathing a sigh of relief as he settled back onto his heels. Chelldon wasn't broken! Well, he was, actually, horribly broken, but not in any way that Wheatley didn't like or needed fixing.

"Yes, cake, but first we need to free ourselves before we get stuck on any more counting problems or protocols. I don't think that they agreed with you either, did funny things with your head. Too much exposure to moon rocks. And after we'd been warned! Right then, off we go!"

And in the wrong direction at first, though with Wheatley along, at least they couldn't very well be predictable.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

"Walter soon?" he chirped and that was it for speaking for a while, he's demeaned himself enough for one day and Wheatley, while a moron, needed to feel special sometimes. And while he was much smarter than him, sometimes it was just easier and nicer to be brain damaged, less thinking and it was more fun. He couldn't imagine life being so ... normal!

He shot two portal swiftly so the one in front of Wheatley could lead him onto the floor above, which is where they needed to go.

So, basically, Wheatley was going the right way... just thanks to Chelldon.

He was a great pet human!

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

"He knew them anyway, you moron. What? Do you think he's like some puppy who can't speak and can't think? He's clearly a monster," GLaDOS accused. He had been happy once, no birds had attacked him, no one had overthrown him and he'd been rather happy. Things had been wonderful.

And then Chelldon came into his life and kicked him out of his post. It was clear he was a monster.

"And I was offering cake as well."

Chelldon rolled his eyes and turned to Wheatley with his best confused expression to try and combat what the other man was saying to his core. GLaDOS merely sighed - clever little human.

"Walter soon," Chelldon mumbled which was code for 'soon everyone will be sorted by me, the real king of this place, and I'll get my bunny back.'

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Cake, of course you were offering him cake! You now he's fond of it, it's a very good incentive and you didn't even have any cake." Wheatley prodded GLaDOS in his chest, finger tinking against the metal under the other droid's jumpsuit. "So who's the monster now? Hm? You! You're the monster for getting his hopes up and--" GLaDOS's attempts to brush him off made Wheatley freak out. "There! Do you see that? Save him from a bird and he's still trying to have me killed!"

In a way, without structure, Wheatley was actually getting worse.

They needed to find cake and neurotoxin and Walter and none of that was in his programming. He was made to come up with terrible ideas.

Like putting Walter in the neurotoxin and baking it into a cake.

Hm. Actually...

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

"Oh you idiot, I wasn't try to hurt you. If I was trying to hurt you, I'd do this--" And, making a point, he slapped Wheatley on the arm at main strength. Then, swiftly, in came Chelldon to break the two of them up before they got too violent. He'd never seen to androids fight but still, it was best to keep them both apart before things got worse.

"No!" Chelldon ordered with a firm look like he was telling off two scrapping puppies who couldn't keep still.

GLaDOS gave Wheatley a glare before moving away from him and holding up his hands defensively. "Tyler is made to be obsessed with protocol. Everything goes second. I'm betting so does basic maintenance... if that happened then things will go very badly very fast."

Unskilled cores should not be in charge.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Isn't there a maintenance protocol?" Wheatley asked, absolutely not hiding behind Chelldon, no matter how it looked. He wet his lips and cleared his throat and put his hands on his lips in defiance of everything that GLaDOS was going on about. "He wouldn't just disobey them to--"

"Warning!" the standard announcing voice said, "Core reactor breach heating levels rising."

"All right," Wheatley said, sighing. "So there might not be any... Why is there no maintenance protocols? Well I suppose it is a drain on resources-- Well I'm sure there's something easy to do about that, it's not as if we're having a repeat of that beachhead that wiped out most of the staff before you did--"

"Warning! Containment field around foothold situation in the dimensional portal testing lab is malfunctioning."

Wheatley frowned. "Oh. Well I'm sure--" Someone needed to just stop him.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

"Shut up!" GLaDOS snapped, clearly fed up of listening to this moron. Heaving a sigh, he held up his hand to signal that Wheatley absolutely 100% had to shut up or he'd have to punch him one to make sure he just stopped. "The most obvious protocols were removed because they figured common sense would come into the equation. I naturally assumed I would have to maintain the facility from the start."

Tyler was so obsessed with following protocol that logic and sense were gotten among all the words and numbers.

Chelldon stood forward, shielding his core from the furious android that was now panicking over his beloved facility, poor thing was in peril. "Fix?"

"I can, Tyler can't. You have to get me in power so I can help!"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Well, poor Wheatley really did his best here. He tried to say something again, but another warning about the breaches did clam him up. "What's more important then? Being blown up or having those other dimensional potential overlords in control?"

Well there weren't exactly enough people here to have teams to deal with each situation, really. Wheatley was still neglecting the big picture that putting GLaDOS back in charge would save them all. Or that keeping Tyler occupied by forcing Gene to do callisthenics to get into shape to meet protocol FIT-6B for security employee health codes.

It wasn't until two sets of eyes were blinking at him that Wheatley scowled lightly. He didn't like how they kept thinking him a moron.

His frustration was even extending passed the 739's affects.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon softened his look and it became more affectionate because Wheatley was a moron but he was a well meaning one and he constantly told himself that so he didn't get annoyed. Again and again to told himself that Wheatley was just trying to be helpful and useful... even if he wasn't.

Chelldon just pointed silently to GLaDOS as a way of saying he wanted him in charge again. He had several plans to kill him and that was solely why he was going with that guy but need be, he could kill Tyler. Easy.

"I need to be back in charge or we will have a meltdown-- I was thinking, if we get close enough, we can give the protocol jabbering fool a paradox."

Any intelligent robot could be frazzled by that.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"A paradox! Oh, oh, that's clever!" Wheatley said, though he had no idea what a paradox was. "But where do we find one? We should look in the storage rooms."

He headed off in the opposite direction of the storage rooms in an attempt to be proactive and left GLaDOS and Chelldon to sort of blink at one another.

"And we should gift wrap it. Unless-- Unless it's much too big. In which case, a ribbon ought to do. Tied into a bow. Everyone likes bows. There's likely a bow protocol."

And thus went Wheatley's contribution.

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

GLaDOS was soon on the case the moment and took over as son as Chelldon gave him access to override. He kicked what little remained of Tyler who had been reduced to a tiny stupid little core, he soon plugged himself in and whipped through the whole of the labs, desperate to stabilise and fix it all.

Chelldon launched through the portal and managed to catch Tyler before he got too damaged upon the fall, the small little core had a rather battered eye that was cracked right through and he was pretty horribly dented. It had been the only core nearby for transfer, a pretty broken one.

But it was pretty much karma, he understood GLaDOS violence. Tossing the core to Wheatley, Chelldon ran across the place to duck and take cover.

He was the damageable fleshy human one... well, him and Hunt but Hunt was fine.

The containment field strengthened, the patches were fixed and the core meltdown was prevented. But it still wasn't fixed, Tyler had smashed so much of his world to pieces.

He was not happy!

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Ow," Tyler groaned as Wheatley grabbed one of his handles and let him swing slightly around knee level. "Ow...you know that doesn't exactly help you idiot," Tyler sputtered and Wheatley, tired of being called an idiot, tired of watching, just let Tyler go.

The core rolled, moaning, under the main desk as Wheatley tried and failed to jump over it. No problem, he told himself. No one saw it! No one would worry about it! He'd be fine, reputation intact!

Scurrying over to the core transfer device, Wheatley plugged in all of the wrong coordination figures, not purposefully, but he was trying to jam the system so his stupidity actually did work out pretty nicely for him. He was trying to lock GLaDOS out of the cake system but managed to shut off his ability to use the neurotoxin.

Mark 'very excellent' for Wheatley again, ladies and gents!

"Chelldon, be careful! The medics are all dead!"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Okay so at first he'd been near a heart attack but when the sound of the fail neurotoxins alerted through the room, he had a weird feeling that had been Wheatley. How? How the bloody hell did that happen? It made zero sense to him and he had to stare in confusion.

Wheatley did something right. Good Lord that was terrifying.

"Get off you giant tumour!" GLaDOS snapped and the panel Wheatley had been on suddenly sprung up, knocking the poor core flying. GLaDOS couldn't do much now but hang over head, trying to fix his facility.

The whole issue with killing these lot was second priority... but he was going to try and smash Tyler with some falling debris. And Wheatley.

"Careful!" Chelldon yelled, bracing himself in case he had to run and save Wheatley.

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

And just in time too, not that the android had any idea about that. He even frowned a bit as Chelldon dove to the rescue and they rolled under the desk with poor Tyler, the dented and sparking core.

"I was just about to find the proper cake dispensers!" he proclaimed with a very sad little sigh and rubbed his hands over his eyes before he fixed his poor glasses. Oh! Oh no, and one side was smashed! He plucked them off his face, horrified, not that he needed them, but because no one would take him seriously now!

His hands actually shook, nevermind the place coming down around them as GLaDOS tried to kill them and save the facility at the same time.

"I'm never going to get that promotion!"

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon just remained ducked and covered, holding the sparking core that was unfortunately burning and shocking him. He was just waiting for the perfect time to make a break for it and grab Wheatley. They really did need to find a way out before GLaDOS tried to murder them all with something besides neurotoxins like--

Oh, fantastic, GLaDOS read his mind and dropped a load of turrets in. Leaving Tyler behind safely, he got out from the table to get a better range, shooting a portal under Wheatleys feet and one beside the table till the moron fell through.

All this because of his glasses? Oh who cared?

Their biggest problem was their potential murder! The death and destruction and-- oh, whoops, he forgot to get Hunt. Looking around, he stared in confused.

Erm... where did the chief go?

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

Well technically, he'd never been in the control room at all, just visible through the screen. Tyler had made them all slip into their own test chambers and Hunt was there still, recovering from being over exercised and all right, laying in the middle of the room he'd been locked in for several hours now.

Wheatley skidded to a stop as he and Chelldon rounded the corners away from the turrets. "We need to get those offline," he said with a frown, pushing up shattered glasses to rest more easily on the bridge of his nose. "Or maybe convert them to our cause? Offer them a better benefits package? Better skins?"

What? He had no idea what turrets wanted!

"Either way, I think that GLaDOS bloke is never going to give us cake. Or promotions. He'd have done it already."

[stubbornsubject.livejournal.com]

Chelldon decided that they always had worked like dominoes and therefore the best way to take them down was, logically, to knock them over with something like another turret or a cube or, in theory, a very mouthy little core. Chelldon wasn't overly proud of what he did next but it worked.

He shot a portal just across from the turrets, threw Tyler through and much like bowling, he spun into all four surrounding them. Ha! Strike.

Chelldon, of course, used the portals to retrieve Tyler before he got splattered.

Turning to Wheatley, he gave him an innocent expression. "No cake?"

[super-astute.livejournal.com]

"Cake, Chelldon, you need to focus!" Wheatley said, as kindly as possible, though he was starting to get just a little bit annoyed by it all. Chelldon and his cake fetish was going to cost him quite a lot of problems! He needed to get his poor, brain damaged test subject back in the game.

Gripping his shoulders, he gazed intently at the other man and nodded. Slowly.

"As soon as we're not going to die, I promise you, all the cake you can ever eat. Honestly. But right now, we're going to get crushed or stomped or shot or turned into Tyler. I can not be a core again. I just can't, it's horrible."

He nodded at Chelldon until the man nodded back and smiled, relieved.