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Portal 2.5 Reader Insert Chapter 19
By: bdaybear30

All of the different eyes stare at my me. Probably because of my little outburst.

The one with the purple disk walks forward and puts his hands on his hips in a very effeminate gesture. “The nerve! I can understand you not knowing THEM.” he says motioning to the others around us. “But, how can you not know about ME?? I’m only the most important person in this whole facility!”

My eyes narrow as I quickly become annoyed at this new person. “Well, I don’t know how IMPORTANT you are now, but I was here before your technology was thought about and we did pretty good back then.” I tell him trying to knock him down a couple of notches.

His smug voice doesn’t change and he simply replies, “No. I don’t believe you. You’re just jealous of my amazing … ness.”

Another person comes up and pushes the purple one back by his chest. “Come on, ya jerk. Lay off the girl.” he says with a low gruff voice.

He holds out a hand for me and helps me to stand up and I start wiping the dust and dirt from the fall off of my clothes.

“I think it’s about time we get some introductions going.” says the man after I am finished.

“My names Rusty.” he tells me pointing a thumb at himself. He is the tallest of the bunch and has light brown hair that is in a short close cut style. His eyes look like a mixture of light brown and a dingy yellow, which match the colored part of his clothes and his disk. Along with the normal clothing, he is also wearing a harness that someone would wear while zip-lining. It even has a hook on the back.

Rusty nods towards the rude man. “Mr. Prissy, over there, is called Ego.”

“It’s ‘Egor’. Like Igor, but with an ‘E’. ‘E’s are better.” he replies rudely. “Hey! I am not prissy!” he squeals in a high pitched voice.

Egor has long, black hair that reaches his waist and it is tied back with a small dark purple, elastic band at the base of his neck. A few strands of hair that aren’t quite long enough to be held in the string frame in angular jawline. He also has, guess what, purple eyes and clothing.

“ANYWAY.” Rusty says walking over and helping the burning man wipe off the remaining foam from his clothes before he ruffles the man’s mousy blond hair. Burning man looks up and smiles at him gratefully with his large, almost white, silver eyes. Rusty turns back to me and says, “This is Urek. He is really good at doing research, but his cooling system wasn’t installed properly, so he tends to overheat if he does too much.”

“Unfortunately, it usually happens right before I make a big discovery.” he says sadly in a thick Russian accent I didn’t notice before. He quickly recovers and gives me a large smile. “But no matter. It is nice to meet you.”

In the corner farthest from me, there are three people sort of hunched together. It seems they are trying to comfort the man that scared me from before.

Rusty removes his arm from Urek and goes over to the corner where the others are sitting. “Oi! You three! Get over there so you can meet her.” The three quickly jump up and stand at attention in front of him. Rusty sighs and puts his hand to his head in a face-palm. “You don’t have to take it that seriously.”

He moves so that he is standing behind them putting a hand on the first man’s shoulder. “This fella with the hat is Quent.”

The hat Rusty is talking about is a tan, cowboy hat. Quent has dark red hair and sharp green eyes, which match the rest of his ensemble. “Howdy.” he says in a country accent while, lowering his head and grabbing the brim of his hat.

Rusty moves onto the next person. “Seems you already met Cosmo, here.”

“Space. Space is sorry. Space sorry for scaring not space.” Cosmo says in a short high-pitched voice. I guess ‘not space’ is supposed to be me. He has golden blonde hair, orange-yellow eyes, and his clothing and disk are a bright yellow.

I start to rub the back of my head as I say, “Sorry I screamed at you. I was just a little bit startled.”

Rusty moves onto the pink man. “And last, but not least, this is Ingus.”

Ingus has short and somewhat spiky dark brown hair streaked throughout with strips of bright neon pink that, guess what, match his eyes, clothes, and disk. “He means well, but his memory function got a little bit … repeatedly hit by a hammer.”

I guess that’s why he was muttering off facts that didn’t quite sound right when he was comforting Cosmo.

At the mention of hammers Ingus, who had been muttering to himself, got louder and started to have a small freak out. “Hammers! Hammers are evil. Hammers are notorious for being jerks. They are also are known to have plans to take over the world.” he says quickly, working back down to muttering as he speaks. Cosmo takes up the position of comforter and rubs his back until he has calmed down again.

Rusty walks back over to take his place by Urek. “Well, now you’ve met the whole gang. Who are you?” he says nodding towards me.

“Um, well. I am – (name) –.” I say putting a hand just under my neck. I lift the portal gun and put my hand underneath the front before nodding to the front and saying, “And this is GlaDOS.”

All of the guys become silent and stare at the impaled potato. They just stay silent and stare at her for a long while.

What the heck? “Um … everything okay?” I ask trying to get their attention without success.

“- (name) -. These are them. These are the voices I heard for all those years.” says GlaDOS staring back at them with a wide eye.

My own eyes widens as I realize the meaning of what is going on. “But, how? I thought you said that they were in your head.” I ask.

“Their VOICES were.” she clarifies. “The scientists were told to work as efficiently as they could. To follow those instructions, they set it up so that their minds were wirelessly connected to mine, but they had their own bodies to house the thoughts they were pumping into me.”

She continues explaining. “They did this so that, if they needed maintenance, then they wouldn’t need to come into contact with me directly and they could have other jobs that fit into their personalities. ‘Killing two birds with one stone’, as they say.”

They go back to their staring contest for a while. Considering how I haven’t seen … anyone else blink, this could take a while.

After a while, I can’t stand the silence anymore. “So, … um … how did you end up in here?”

Rusty’s eyes narrow in anger. “Ask her.” he growls form deep in his throat.

I give a curious look to GlaDOS, wanting her to explain. She sighs. “The wireless cores didn’t quite have the strength that the scientists were looking for. So, they also attached spheres to me that contained many more AI’s, just like them. Inside. This effectively multiplied the amount of voices and input I was getting.” she says explaining the procedure.

“Your sister, Chell, destroyed me before by removing these spheres and throwing them in the incinerator. This caused my systems to begin resetting themselves. The first one’s being the ones I was using to try and … to kill her.” she says stumbling slightly with her words.

She regains her composure quickly. “She took this opportunity to launch rockets at me and put me into the state you found me in.” she explains slowing down a bit at the memory of Chell … her other daughter.

She shakes her eye back in forth, like how someone would shake their head to clear their mind. “Anyway. After you woke me back up, I had quite a bit more freedom than I did before. I wasn’t being forced into the neutral test instruction program. I still had these specific voices in my head, but, as I said, they weren’t as strong. So, I decided, that rather than just destroy them, I could wait until I figured out a way to remove their influence from me and have them continue their work.”

“We didn’t appreciate that.” Egor chips in. “When that blue idiot found us we thought he would help us. We were all made together. But, he acted really weird and paranoid. So he kept us locked in here.”

I get an idea and look out the front of the glass and look at the aerial faith plate that launched me before.

Yep, it looks like someone was taking it apart and trying to reconfigure how it functioned. Maybe that’s how Wheatly figured out how to make the plates launch me sideways instead of forwards. There is a large pile of faith plates and pieces of faith plates stuffed into a back corner. He must have been working so hard to try and make them work.

He probably realized what GlaDOS didn’t.” I say. The group looks to me. I guess it’s my turn to explain something now. “The reason GlaDOS is in this potato is because, we figured out a way to switch her out for Wheatly. He must have thought that if he can do that to her, then you guys can probably do the same to him.” I explain thinking it through as well.

“And how can you say that MY purpose was just to make YOU stupid! I am much more important than just that!” Egor says interrupting my train of thought and exaggerating his words while motioning to himself and GlaDOS.

“Oh, shut up, Ego!” Rusty says at him angrily.

Egor’s face becomes bright red with anger. “I told you, MY NAME IS EGOR YOU STUPID PIECE OF SCRAP METAL!!”

Rusty walks over and gets right up and in his face. With Rusty standing a full head taller than him, he had to look up and stands on his tiptoes to try and stand even with him.

I look around and the others have all slowly moved back into the back corner and are just watching the scene unfold. Even Urek is sitting on his knees and covering his ears with his hands and closing his eyes.

On top of everything, another tremor shakes the room but everyone else acts as though nothing happened. They just continue with this pointless fight.

I step forward and use my forearms to push them apart with all my might. “Stop it!” I yell. “This is getting us nowhere!”

Both of them stand much taller than me, but they have the same look of surprise across their faces.

“I don’t know everything that happened in the past, but I DO know that fighting is not going to help anyone and I am not going to die in the oncoming nuclear annihilation because YOU GUYS ARE HAVING A SPAT, LIKE AN OLD MARRIED COUPLE!!!” I say working up to a yell to try and get my point across.

Both of them stare at me in disbelief.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I want to get out of here so I can save the guy I love, get everything worked out with my mom, and be able to live my life in peace! If you don’t want to join me, then fine. Stay here and fight, make it full MMA fight to the death, I don’t care! But, if you DO want to join me, then we all have to work together! GOT IT?!” I tell them with a loud and authoritative voice I didn’t realize I had.

Everyone including GlaDOS stares with surprise and astonishment.

“Love?” I GlaDOS asks in a small voice.

My eyes widen as I realize what I have said. I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying. I just said whatever came to me. But now that I think about it … yeah. “I do love him, don’t I?” I ask, more to myself than anyone, with a small smile.

They all just stare at me still in shock until Egor speaks up. “If you are so determined, then how do you expect to get out of here?” he asks.

Wait, what?

I look up and find that while we were yelling, two metal plates have slid over the top of the glass box we are standing in. They are mounted a good few feet taller than I am and they look to be made out of the same plates as the non-portable walls from the testing chambers.

I walk to the back of the container and see, through the glass, that there is a sensor mounted near the top of the adjacent wall. It must have gone off when I was launched, opening the box. And once I was in it triggered the locking mechanism to reseal this prison.

“He’s got a point.” Rusty says actually agreeing with Egor. “We’ve been trying for some time now and you can guess how far we got.”

I take a closer look at the cover. Two, very solid looking, doors. “Do the doors slide or flip open?” I ask the group.

Quent actually decides to speak up for once. “They slide open, darlin’. Make a big ol’ racket when they do.” he says is his thick southern drawl.

I smile at him with gratitude for the information before I go back to my investigation. ‘Okay, they slide. That’s good. Then I know it’s not an arm that just picks up the dang things. That would be harder for me to get around. Sliding … sliding.’ I see that several parts of the top are rusted. GlaDOS probably didn’t think it needed cleaning, after her wake up call, if it was just going to hold these guys.

I take an extra close look at the corner. ‘There!’ Through a crack, I can see the track of the ball bearing mechanism that must make the doors slide. I look closer and find that the system has been redesigned so that there is a lock consisting of a rod that goes through the top and bottom pieces, holding them in place. On further examination I find that there is one of these in each corner.

I quickly begin to look around the cell frantically. ‘Come on! There’s gotta be something!’ I think to myself.

I gasp as I have another idea. I hand GlaDOS and the portal gun over to Urek and I untie the sleeves of my jumpsuit removing the empty water bottle and the picture of Mom from my little hiding place. I refasten the picture and tie the sleeves back to where they were.

“What on earth are you doing?” Egor’s says with a cocky attitude. I run over to where he has now moved to lean against a wall and pull him forward. “Hey!” he yells. I pull the elastic band out of his hair taking as few strands out with it. “OW!! What the heck?!”

“SHHH! I need to concentrate.” I respond.

Not worrying about him anymore, I unscrew the cap of the water bottle, quickly shoving it back into my sleeves. I stretch the ring of purple rubber over my thumb and my index finger and place the cap in the middle, creating a makeshift mini-slingshot. I line up the cap with the rusty metal rod in the first lock that is halting our escape.

“What is that supposed to do, make the idiot come and let us out for making a lovely ‘dink’ sound?” says Egor, breaking my concentration.

I look at him with clear annoyance and anger across my face. “It’s not going to do ANYTHING if you don’t stop talking.” I say, voice dripping with venom.

“You can’t tell me what to do!” he yells at me. “I am the most impor-mmph!”

He continues his rant until two pairs of hands come up from behind and cover his mouth, cutting it short. The hands drag him backwards until he is against one of the walls with Cosmo and Ingus sitting on either side of him, keeping their hands over his mouth. Once both of them have a solid grip and Egor stops fighting too hard, they both look over at me with large innocent smiles that make me smile as well.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and wait a few seconds before releasing it. When I open my eyes, I raise my slingshot again and crouch slightly.

I can feel as I slip into my natural instincts. Everything around me seems to stop moving. I feel as an unseen energy begins to surge through the air. I hear nothing but the slowed beating of my own heart. My eyesight sharpens, zooming in on my target like a camera lens. I adjust my aim ever so slightly. My focus reaches its peak and I wait for the final command.

‘Release’

I let go of the band and send the cap shooting upwards. It makes a soft ‘ching’ as it hits the small piece of metal right on the dot.

Everyone stands silent and still for a moment, waiting for something. After a few short seconds, a small creaking noise breaks the silence. I watch as the rod snaps in half.

“Yes!” I rejoice. “It worked!” The others all look at me confused. I walk over to the corner where the now busted lock is.

Apparently, Cosmo and Ingus had loosened their grip and Egor pushes them off before standing up and brushing off his chest, although there is nothing on it.

“That is just wonderful.” he says walking over to where the cap landed and picking it up. It seems that the impact was tough on the bottle-cap too. It is distorted and half ripped apart. In other words: useless. “You wouldn’t happen to have any more of these, would you?” he asks raising an eyebrow and slightly pouting his lips.

I ignore him and ask, “Quent, Rusty. Think you can give me a boost?” pointing my thumb up towards the corner.

Both of the men look at each other before shrugging their shoulders. “O’ course we can do that for ya, missy.” Quent says with approval.

They walk over to where I am standing and bend down onto one knee to my sides. They cup their hands forward and I place my left foot on them. I put my hands on their shoulders and push upwards. I stay bent over and hold up my right foot making sure that they can hold my weight. They both give me a nod showing that there are just fine.

“Okay, on three you both launch me up at the same time.” I instruct.

Quent and Rusty’s eyes widen as they hear this. “Wait, we don’t know if you did anything!” Rusty says worriedly.

“One.” I say slightly bobbing myself up and down.

Urek, who has stood watching everything quietly, decides to speak up. “Is she insane?” he asks GlaDOS with a frantic and worried voice.

“Two.” I start bouncing more making the guys start to bob with me.

“Guess she’s not takin’ ‘no’ for an answer.” Quent says raising his hands with each bounce, effectively helping to make me bounce higher and making Rusty join in.

“Three!” I yell.

Both of them lift me up and launch me into the air. Just before I make impact with the doors, I bend over slightly so that my shoulder blades and back will hit first, and use my hands to pull down and protect my neck.

I feel as my back makes contact with the metal door that was attached to the lock. The door gives way as soon as I hit and is forced upward. There is just enough hang time for me to reach my arms out and lean my upper body onto the clear platform that actually makes up the walls of the box.

The lid of the box comes crashing back down onto me with a heavy thud. I use my body as a wedge to make sure that the box doesn’t close again.

I hear GlaDOS gasp at what I just did. “Are you okay?” she asks sounding genuinely worried.

“It’s not comfortable and it’s kind of hard to breath, but I’ll survive.” I reassure her.

“She really is insane, isn’t she?” Urek asks to no one in particular.

I bring my hands under my chest and push myself upwards making my body begin to slide through the crack that I’m creating. I stop when the edge of the door is resting on the back of my knees. Then, I turn around by my waist and lift the lid up with my hands enough to get my legs out without letting the top fall back into place.

I put both of my hands underneath the plate and crouch down so my arms are between my legs and the door is just about closed. With all of my strength, I pull the covering up and the momentum causes it to lean towards the opposite side.

As it leans more and more I hear the lock in the other corner creak before snapping. This allows the door to fall the rest of the way off of the platform and to the floor of the much bigger room we’re in, with a metallic clang.

Everyone stares with open jaws as I smile and breath heavy from the exertion. After a few moments, I crouch down again and look at the non-believers.

“Any other minor problems need fixing?” I ask tilting my head slightly to the left, still breathing heavily.

They continue to stare at me for a few more seconds.

“You know you guys don’t really say much. You should really work on that.” I tell them reaching my hand down towards them.

Quent is the first to snap out of his trance and reach up to grab my forearm. “I like a woman with some fire in ‘er.” he says winking up at me.

“Be careful because one of those women are going to get you burned.” I warn him and grab onto his forearm as well and pull. I manage to get him high enough that he can grab onto the side and hoist himself up the rest of the way.

After he gets settled, we both reach our hands down. Urek steps forward next but he is a few inches too short to reach us. Rusty comes up behind him, bends down, wraps his arms around his knees, and lifts him up so that he is sitting on his shoulder. Urek is surprised but when he sees what happened, he smiles at him with fondness and thanks him.

Okay … I’ll have to ask about THAT later.

I take the portal gun and GlaDOS from Urek and set them to the side, before helping Urek up the rest of the way. This continues on for a while until, everyone is on the upper level.

After we are done, I walk over to where Egor is sitting and resting. He was actually helpful when him, me and Quent all had to work together to pull up Rusty, who let everyone else go first. He turns his head to watch me curiously as I sit behind him. “Please face forward.” I tell him.

He raises an eyebrow but obliges. I pull his hair gently away from where it had fallen around his face and brought it back into one long bunch. His eyes close as my fingers run through his hair. I try my best to let a few strands fall so that they frame his face like before, but it’s harder than it looks and I have to start over a couple of times.

His hair is really silky and feels almost real. ‘Almost’. It is very faint, but I can still feel the synthetic fiber that actually make up the man-made hair, reminding me that this is not real. Therefor not a real person.

Dad’s biggest project was leading his team in research into building human like mechanical structures. Hair, arms, legs. I remember when Chell and I would walk in and see him tinkering with a foot or hand and he would explain how he was trying to make better fake body parts for people who had lost their real ones. We were so proud to have a dad who was doing something that good.

I guess it was his research that led to these guys being created. I guess they wanted them to look pretty before they used them on Mom.

I shake my head back and forth to try and stop my train of thought. ‘I can’t worry about this now. There are more important things to be done.’ I think to myself.

I finish Egor’s ponytail with a flick of the wrist to bind the hair in his elastic band. “There we go. Much better.” I say smiling at him.

He opens his eyes and places a hand on the hairband, checking it. “Um, thanks.” he says ducking his head a little with a troubled look on his face.

I swerve my head to the side so that I am in his view. “Hey, you okay?” I ask concerned.

His head flinches back in surprise of my actions. “Oh … um … no. Just … about before … I … I’m … I’m sorry.” he says having trouble saying the words that I guess he has never said before.

“My god. You really are a miracle worker.” Urek says chuckling. Apparently, he had been watching the whole thing. The others begin to snicker and laugh at this and Egor’s face blushes before he stands up and stomps off with a ‘humph’.

I just shake my head back and forth before heading back over and picking up GlaDOS from where I left her. “You just keep on surprising me. And that’s a hard thing to do.” she says. “Where did you learn that?” she asks

I lift my head slightly and think. “Well, the slingshot was from me and Chell shooting at the raccoons that tried to steal from the garbage cans. Knowing about the mechanics of a drawer came from dad. And the jump, I did at my schools sport’s day.” I explain.

A series of tremors shake the room, knocking everyone to the ground. Ingus was standing near the outer edge of the cage, muttering something about gravity, and stumbled towards it.

I am just fast enough to push myself with my foot so, that I skid across the smooth surface towards him and wrap my arms around his head and back protectively and I press my face into his hair before we both fall over the side.

I twist my body so that my upper arm and shoulder, which are against my head, hits the floor first. This works to cushion the fall and both of us land safely. I keep my arms around him tightly as the tremors continue.

Once the quaking comes to an end, I can hear people shuffling above us. “Oh my gosh, - (name) -? Ingus? Are you okay?” I hear Urek ask from above.

I move my head around so that I am looking up at him and answer, “Yeah. I think we’re fine.”

I look down and loosen my grip just enough to see Ingus shaking with fear and grasping tightly on the sleeves that are tied around my waist. It must have been the first thing he could grab onto.

I slowly sit up and gently bring him up to a sit with me and bring him back into a hug. I rest my cheek on the top of his head and whisper soft soothing words as I rub his back. I hope that this will let him calm down a little.

Quent can see this and turns to lower himself so that he is hanging by his finger, arms fully extended, before dropping down to the floor near us. Cosmo follows his lead and quickly drops down as well. Both of them run over and check on their friend and help us both to stand up.

“Well, now you understand the extent of what has been going on.” I say raising my voice as Ingus is transferred from my arms to his friends. “We need to come up with a way to stop Wheatly from destroying this place, and all of us along with it.”

“I might have an idea.” GlaDOS chirps up.

I pick up GlaDOS from where she and the portal gun fell. “We’re all ears.”

“Remember when we saw him earlier? He had attached all of those metal pieces to my chair.” she begins.

I raise my eyebrow in curiosity. “Yeah. What about them?” I ask.

“Well, what he probably doesn’t know is that those metal pieces are from the machines they used to attach the spheres to me. The same ones that corrupted my systems.” she explains.

My eyes widen as I realize what she means. “So you’re saying that all we have to do is-”
“Is attach more cores to him through the metal parts.” she says finishing my sentence.

I turn so that I am looking at the large group. “The only way this can work, is if you work with us. Please, we need your help.” I plead my case to the guys.

They look at each other silently asking the same question: will they help us?

“Looks to me like there ain’t much a choice to make.” Quent says walking cover to me and turning his face to speak to his friends. “Either we help the lady and have a chance of dying, or we die for certain tryin’ to run.”

The others start nodding their head and expressing their agreement with his statement.

“All right. Let’s do this.” I say holding up the portal gun with my other hand like someone from a movie poster.

I move through a door that is off to my left and into a much smaller room. It looks identical to the small room with the thousands of switches where Wheatly and I accidentally awakened GlaDOS.

“There. If you plug me in I should be able to take us right to him and take back some level of control.” GlaDOS says looking at the small elevated console. I attach her as carefully as I can to the input mechanism. The surrounding machinery whirs to life as she takes control.

That’s just dandy, but how are we supposed to get on the guy in there, anyway?” Rusty asks.

A small door opens off to the right side. “If you go through there, I will be able to send you in when – (name) – gives us the right opportunity.” she explains.

“You’re going to send her in alone?” Urek asks worriedly. The others look to me with their own faces of shock and worry.

I walk over and pat his head like a child. “It’ll be okay. I am stronger than I look and we have an advantage if he doesn’t know we are working together just yet. Besides, I would think by now, you would have realized that I much stronger than I look. I say giving him a smile and a wink at the end.

He gives me a hopeful smile before taking Rusty’s hand and walks him into the small adjacent room. The others follow them into the space as they walk by me giving me hugs or pats on the back with a quick ‘good luck’.

The door closes behind them leaving just me and GlaDOS in the room of switches. I take a deep breath through my nose and release through my mouth hoping to calm my vigorously beating heart.

“Are you ready for this?” GlaDOS asks genuinely.

“Yes. It’s time I put this all to an end.” I ask the familiar fire of determination returning to the pit of my stomach.

She looks at me very seriously. “Very well.”

The room begins to rise slowly and spin, similar to before.

“Before whatever happens, happens: I love you and I am very proud of the person you have become.” she says her voice becoming soft and sounding more like what mom used to sound like then ever before.

“I love you too, mom.” I say resting my hand against the side of the potato.

The room continues to rise and we near the upper hatch. It opens like a camera shutter and I am blinded with a bright light.

Here we go.