#askapsec

You could always translate Cave’s Lemon Rant into Dutch. ;)

((No one wants to play Math, Math, and More Math. :D ))

(( Was actually at a slight loss for this one, so it’s very confusing! ))

- - - -

Logic woke from what felt like a coma, not that he had anyreal point of reference in such regards. He felt as though he’d been hit by atrain and, in trying to hold his aching head, quickly learned that he wasstrapped down to a metal examination table. The thick, industrial kind thatheld true under his weight.

He blinked the stars out of his eyes to further examine hissurroundings. It was one of the multiverse Apertures, one he’d only visitedrarely. Things were darker there, everything built to last much longer. Henoticed the facility’s resident human and security expert standing over him,stroking a mangy cat for one reason or another.

The android struggled against his bonds to no avail, notingwith some sense of curiosity that she was rather versed in the securing ofandroids. Logic glared up at the woman smirking down at him.

“Good morning, Cecil. Good to see you’re not dead yet.” Hersmile only grew as he scowled.

“You have no right to call me by that name, I am Logic toyou.”

The cat in her arms purred, stretching and squirming ontoits back. “That’s not what your file says and, since you’re in here, you’reunder my law anyway.”

Logic’s scowl grew to more of a bare-toothed snarl as histhrashing renewed, eliciting a breathy laugh from his captor. “Don’t wearyourself down yet, I haven’t even shown you why I’ve got you tied down.”

“Allow me to guess.” He stared up at an industrial-gradelaser, one used to cut out chassis portions for both turrets and cores. “Youintend to bisect me.”

The way her smile only continued to grow both terrified andbewildered him.

“I like the classics, and it’s a pretty great way to go outif you ask me.” The laser activated in that moment, beginning the agonizinglyslow crawl towards Logic’s funzone. “And I’ve never seen an android get cut inhalf. You think you’ll cauterize, or what?”

The smell of burning metal only set his struggles to new heights.“I do not know, and intend not to find out.” If he could sweat, he would be. “This is not a good idea.”

“Oh, I think it is, Mr. Fournier. The boss man’s had enoughof your stealing.”

“Oh, come on!” Now, the android was moreannoyed than anything. “They were just bags of flour, you have the same wheatup top-“

He was silenced rather quickly by another look from her,where the smile had transformed into more of a frown. A very large,disconcerting frown. He swallowed down his nerves.

“I meant it when I said this was not a good idea.” Beforeshe could shut him up, he continued. “I am full of explosives. Enough todestroy this chamber before you could so much as escape the resulting cave-ins.”

That was reason enough for a pause. “Seriously?”

“Is it a risk you are willing to take?”

She stared him down for several seconds…. and then shut downthe laser with a sigh, dropping the cat so that it could leave and rest up forfuture supervillain needs. The bonds on his hands released just as a PartyEscort began stomping its way in. “You’re getting a pat-down and a stomachpump, then we can try this again.With a gag.”

The child, being around eight years old, looked up at the women, blinking a few times and staring at her eyepatch, wondering already how she could have got that.

((Alright, well, happy birthday @askapsec! Thought I'd try writing this. Whatever the hell it actually is. :P))

“Oh! Oh!" Wheatley piped up. "C-can I have thews?”

“…what, precisely, are thews?”

Riley’s grin managed to reach her ears. “Ya mean you don’t know, Pinkie?”

“No.” The Fact Sphere’s answer was just a little too quick, and he glared daggers at the adventurer as she leaned back in her chair, still smirking like the cat that inherited the cream factory. “The Fact Sphere knows all definitions, and was merely being rhetorical. A thew, or thews, is a special variety of shoe designed for small children with a precocious lisp.”

((Our muses get together and raise some hell! Was what this was, way back when you actually sent the prompt. :P I had at least two ideas for this - will stick the other one up in the next couple of days, but first~))

"And these turn the spotlights on and off. To cast the world into illumination, and to show where the toilets are.” The man gestured a grubby hand to an array of rusted switches on the bottom of the dashboard. “Watch out for number four, it’s broken. Do you understand?”

The ringmaster looked expectantly at his new employee, and rested his hands on the head of his cane. The dented metal squeaked, under his white gloves. He wore a hazmat suit, with a gasmask, a taser and a nasty-looking pistol holstered to his belt - dealing with the crowds he did, it paid to be practical - but over the top of it was a long, tailed suit jacket, with sparkles trailing down the sides. An assortment of company ties, one black, one sky-blue and patterned with clouds, one glittery - adorned his neck. 

"Mmph…" The figure sat in the swivel chair, clad in jet-black if scuffed kevlar body armour with a bone-white gas mask on its face, gave a quick thumbs-up. Staticky, regulated breaths came from the nozzle of the mask. The ringmaster raised an eyebrow, like some thin black worm had learned to rear up.

"I know you boys tried to overrule us a while back, but I simply have to admire your work-ethic.” He grinned, flashing the teeth beneath his curled little moustache. “I’ve got a couple of you working employee retrieval tonight!”

"Mmph." The Combine soldier nodded, as if deliberating this. Its ivory-black eyes remained utterly soulless. Not for the first time, the ringmaster quietly wondered what was under there. Something that might once have been human, he guessed, before some tragic and painful experiment. 

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

"Well, if that will be all, I’ll leave you to your work, impresario!" He gave a grandiose bow, before twirling on his heel and flicking his hand in a dainty wave. "It’s time to light the light~!"

He strode out of the booth, and the door whooshed shut behind him. A few bolts surged into their locks, with a chorus of whirring, and the bulkhead door sealed itself shut with an imposing clang.

The Combine soldier wrenched his mask off as quickly as he could, sweat beading down his face from the heat of it, and gasped. He could still smell the miasma of death, that had clung to the innards of the mask and crept up his nose. He opened the empty tear-gas canister on his belt, and hastily tipped his glasses out before putting them back on. He leaned back with a sharp creak on the chair, and caught his breath.

Right, Wheatley decided. That’s Phase One sorted out. 

Wheatley’d received a rather unorthodox complaint from a distraught-looking subject a few days ago, that two of her friends had been kidnapped in the middle of testing. Running this by Trix, and looking through the testing feeds to see if there were any other instances of this sort of thing, brought up seven examples in the past week. 

She’d followed, cajoled and more often than not threatened any leads she could find, and eventually the pair’d been led to this place: the [REDACTED] Bros’ Circus, one of the many pulsing tumours of life that’d sprouted down in Old Aperture (although not inside anyone’s body, like some of the more literal tumours). Trix had incapacitated one of the newer Combine recruits, with a lot more vindictive triumph than was strictly necessary, and peeled it from its suit so Wheatley could wiggle in. Now she was off dealing with the rest of the place’s security forces, until she could loop back around and find where the subjects were being kept.

Wheatley’s part of the plan was simple - get in there and keep the show running until Trix’d sorted everything out. Right. He cracked his knuckles, giving his fingers a quick waggle for luck. Now all he had to do was press the…

…the red button? Or was that the one he WASN’T supposed to press, except for emergencies? Maybe it was the green button, or you were meant to turn that dial up to…the fourth switch had been important, was it that one?

…oh.

Wheatley swallowed, shifting in his chair in his isolated little block with something oddly akin to stage fright. He rolled back his chair and looked up at the monitors, above the dashboard and the top of his head - most of the performers seemed to have finished getting ready. The wall in front of him had a thick glass window in front of him, grimy but not quite opaque. He wiped at it a bit, and peered through. There was an audience sitting in the ring outside. There were a LOT of them. They were starting to look impatient. He could just about make out the ringmaster, striding towards the centre of the ring to introduce the show and glancing up to his booth, quickly and meaningfully.

Quickly, he hit the switch for the spotlights. The ring was flooded with light, and the ringmaster bounded into it like the showman he was, flicking his battered scarlet top-hat atop his head expertly.

"Ladies! Gentlemen! Variations thereupon!" He beamed. "Tonight, for your entertainment, a dazzling display of death, delight, delirium and derring-“

Wheatley sighed, relieved, and rested his hands on the dashboard. He heard a button go click beneath them. He pulled his hands back, frantically, and stared.

A trapeze descended from the ceiling, without anyone attached to it, and whirled around and around in a lazy circle. The ringmaster sputtered into confused silence, as the bemused audience watched it circle round and round. It appeared to be getting lower and lower.

"Aha." The ringmaster shot Wheatley’s booth a look that could kill not only him but a few of his closer relatives. "Please! Calm yourselves! We appear to be having, minor technical difficulties…”

Wheatley was panicked. That was a very bad frame of mind for him to be in, because Trix’s mission was now in jeopardy and it’d be HIS FAULT and that meant he’d try anything. Everything. He muttered something to himself, flustered and unintelligible curses, as he frantically clicked a few buttons to try and get it to stop.

The lights went out, as did the hard-light shield cutting the audience off from the stage. An android, one of the simpler models, started beeping from its ledge near the trapeze, and promptly leapt for a trapeze that was still spinning aimlessly around the ring. It landed in the centre, and promptly smashed.

There was laughter, and some sarcastic clapping. The ringmaster stalked off stage, gripping the gun on his holster. He was moving towards Wheatley’s booth.

The former core panicked, and pressed a friendly green button rapidly. A few barks of canned laughter and the sound of a slide-whistle played, before the tune for the clowns started playing. Wheatley heard a screech of panic, from the dressing-room monitors - clearly the clowns weren’t ready yet, and the small group of frantic mantis-men hastily fitted on their multi-coloured afros. 

Wheatley started to hear boos. Clowns, trapezes - those were all well and good, in their way, but by now someone really should have been killed already. He saw a few audience members point to his booth, with amusement. There was a furious rapping on the bulkhead door.

And then Wheatley saw it. The Big Red Button. That HAD to be important. His hand slammed down on it -

- and he heard cage doors start sliding open. A LOT of them.

A pair of beautiful abominations prowled into the ring first. They were the general shape of tigers, except coated in sleek striped chitin and with the legs of crickets for hindpaws. They stared, with faintly-glowing yellow eyes, at the empty centre of the ring. They growled, mandibles twitching, just before the trapeze swung back round again and clubbed one of them to the floor. That provoked a roar, just as the lights snapped back on.

You went out in front of the People, got your food and you didn’t get whipped. That was the deal. The scars on the tigers’ thin bodies showed it wasn’t a very good deal, but it was all they’d ever known. Now there was no food, and to cap it all off there appeared to be whipping.

The winded tiger got to its feet, tail lashing furiously. Nobody’d noticed the hard-light shields were down yet, too distracted by prowling tigers and the bear-like dogs barrelling through the gate after them, until one of them lunged on cricket legs and pounced its way into the front row of the crowd. It snarled, hungrily.

And the crowd went wild. 

They screamed, and panicked, and the smell of fear whipped the tiger up into a frenzy as it clawed its way up the rows of seats. Its cellmate joined it, followed by the bear dogs, and before Wheatley knew it all kinds of things were bursting through the gate and leaping for freedom. A chimp in a labcoat, grinning vindictively and yelling curses as it flicked obscene gestures with both hands. A herd of ponies, coated with eyes and whinnying. A gigantic snake, and a few big ocelot-like cats. A lion with a lizard’s frill, a flock of dinobirds and a velociraptor with a guitar on its back. A six-legged elephant, wedged in a hole halfway up the aisles and trying to smash itself loose, bellowing. A few battered battle-droids, trailing chains. 

The crowds receded like a wave, screaming and shoving each other in a desperate stampede for the exits. A glob of something with octopus tentacles poured itself loose. Wheatley heard tubas. The three mantis clowns flounced into the ring, before promptly screeching and trying to flee as the octopus tore at their baggy pants. There didn’t seem to be much left - a humanoid duck was awkwardly clambering over the rail, grabbing a spilled bucket of popcorn, and flanked by a dog in an Aperture Space Program suit.

Wheatley could hear bolts on the door being loosed. In desperation to salvage SOMETHING of the mission, he hit the last few buttons he could. A small chorus of painted turrets started singing, above the clowns’ music.

And then the fireworks went off, haphazard and wheeling and aimless. Some smashed through the roof and went streaking into the upper levels. Some slammed into the seats, giving the elephant the final motivation to tear itself loose and lumber after the fleeing crowd. One hit the curtains, and exploded. Fire began to spread.

Wheatley’s door opened, with a whoosh. 

The ringmaster was snarling, more feral than the tigers had. His eye twitched and jerked. He pulled the gun from his belt, aimed it precisely at the head of the staring Wheatley before he could even think to react, and moved to pull the trigger.

"Hey, bozo, you got a knife throwing act?"

The ringmaster turned round, and promptly got two knives through his feet for his trouble. He screamed, and his shoes seeped blood. Trix sauntered in, casually stooping to yank her knives loose, and the man collapsed to the floor, sobbing.

Wheatley swallowed. He looked anywhere apart from meeting her eye. This was it, the bit that ALWAYS happened, where you admitted you’d cocked up and they shouted and had you Dismissed Immediately, and never asked you to work with them again. He supposed it had to happen, eventually, even with Trix. He’d just hoped it wouldn’t.

"I’m…I-I’m I’m I’m sorry…”

"What’re you talking about?" Trix smiled, raising her eyebrows for him. "You distracted them. Just like I knew you would."

Before Wheatley could say anything else, she’d hugged him, and he’d hugged her back with visible relief. She gave him a quick kiss to calm him down before leaning back, as he kept his arms around her.

"I took down all those Combine bastards and got the subjects out. So they can live another day before they all die in a test or whatever."

"Well, then, you’re the hero again then, aren’t you?" Wheatley smiled down to her, and got a little smile back. "Well done you. Just, um, I do have one question.”

"Yeah?"

"Why’d you need me in there? Couldn’t you have just, I dunno, let the show go on as normal and worked ‘round that?"

She paused for a second. “Well, I knew you’d be great at distracting them. Keeping the show running.”

Wheatley sat at the edge of the hot-tub, and mulled over his day so far.

He'd come back to his room after another day working in Aperture's Complaints Department, one of the busiest areas of the facility. He'd listened, and made tea where applicable, and tried his level best to help the complainers out if he could (usually by sending an email up to someone who could actually DO something, or at least whose job it was to do something), and hoping for the best. He at least hadn't been fired yet, which was a marked step-up from the last few thousand careers he'd been bounced through.

Then he'd been accosted by a too-tall grey figure with a pair of admittedly-neat sunglasses, who was holding a couple of snakes. The eldritch being had muttered a surly rhyme in his general direction before checking its watch and poofing away. Apparently, much like the rest of Aperture, it had a deadline to meet.

When the smoke cleared, he'd looked more or less the same. The only clue there was anything different about him was that his skin was a lot paler than normal, and his eyes were a lot brighter. Bolts were barely visible under the skin in his jaw and neck, and glowing blue neon trailed from his eyes and streaked down to his chin. 

PLUS, he'd gotten all his software back, which was a nice bonus! He'd tried to rig up his GPS again but it kept asking him to check Manuel, who was a perfectly nice gel-production machine but was probably busy, and might get a bit offended. Getting his thesaurus and word-finder back had enabled him to compliment a passing scientist on her innate chlorinity, which was so far from moronic it was brilliant, and he'd been able to play some Angry Cores in a partitioned section of his consciousness on the way home. PLUS, his stride was quicker - by half a metre every second and a third. He'd counted!

Then he'd got home, and there was a giant turtle in his hot-tub.

Somebody - presumably the turtle - had actually turned the hot-tub off, so now it was basking with its eyes closed in a pool of cold water, arms stretched out along the sides. The general, skinnier and streamlined shape of its humanoid physique, and the pair of lumps on the front of its shell that frankly raised an alarming number of questions, indicated it was a female turtle. It wore a blood-red bandana, that drooped over one eye. A thin strip of metal with swivel-chair wheels attached lay propped up against the wall.

Wheatley'd backed away quietly, and nervously. He'd grabbed the net-gun, crept back over to the hot-tub and was just about to try and shoot it when the turtle's eye had snapped open. Hastily, water swishing around its glinting shell like leaping dogs, the reptile'd raised her arms with a hurried "Chill out, man!" Bubbly fists clutched a pair of lean, sharp sais.

It had been Trix. He could tell from the voice. Ish.

Now she was sat in the hot-tub, occasionally making idle paddling motions with her two-toed feet. Wheatley sat on the side, eyeing the water carefully. He looked a little bit smugger than he should.

"Well. I mean, OK, I-I'm not gonna brag or anything..."

"Well, don't."

"...but~"

Trix sighed. Wheatley couldn't help himself, and continued.

"...I think I may have won the proverbial lottery this time 'round! In terms of people getting turned into...other people." He puffed his chest a bit, and faint whirring sounds came from within. "Sorry 'bout the net. By the way. Mistake on my part. We should, ideally, set up a code or something." There was a ding, as his speech-to-text converter popped up, and he smiled. "Should I 'er, write that down?"

"Don't say you're enjoying it too loud or you'll get turned into something else." Trix offered her own teasing grin, which widened with Wheatley's eyes, before sighing, gesturing to herself. "This bites. Totally not radical."

"...c-come again?"

Wheatley's eyebrows raised, and his head tilted a bit. He'd technically skipped the '80s (the 1980s, and the 2080s and a few more besides). Trix shrugged. 

"Means "cool", I guess. The lingo comes with the body."

"'Ah." Wheatley jigged the slang around a bit in his head. "So that's not...aww." He patted her on her armour-plated shoulder, fritzing a bit from the water-drops. "Is there anything I can do to cheer you up? A bit?"

"Well..."

Trix shifted again, hoisting herself out the water. Her stomach growled, under a few inches of thick shell, and her eye lit up hopefully. "If you could grab me some pizza, that'd be pretty gnarly."

"Alright!" Wheatley stood up as Trix did, hastily backing away from the ripples of water that blossomed from the centre of the hot-tub. "Um!" He offered a swinging little pump of the arm, grabbing the nearest slang phrase he could remember. "Swiggity, 'er, swowing, let's get going!"

"...babe, no."

Wheatley's face fell a bit, as Trix mostly hid her cringing and clapped him reassuringly on the back. "You-you mean that wasn't-did I do it wrong?"

"C'mon, dude."

Trix had her board-thing in her hand, and she tossed it to the floor before placing a foot on it. Her other foot kicked at the floor a few times, to build up speed, and soon enough she was rolling down the highway. Wheatley jogged, to keep up with her, and the joints in his legs whined.

"Wait a bit!" He puffed for breath, out of old habits. "Guess, that's some 'er sick shredding you're doing-"

"Not Shredding."

She bristled, instinctively, and Wheatley left it alone. She did a bit of a grindy trick thing when it came to the corner, and Wheatley gave an impressed whistle to cheer her up a bit. It seemed to work, and she tried a jumping kickflip as she rolled down the straights.

"Ha! Outrageous!"

Suddenly, a panel shuddered. Her eye narrowed. She ground the board to a halt and span round, flashing her sais, a second before a test subject broke from cover behind the panel and bolted behind her. She muttered her own curse, and tried skating after him. "Wheats, grab him!"

Wheatley jerked into action, and tried to cut the corridor off. The bloke looked like he had muscle - test-subjects often did, or else it was shot or dissolved off their skeletons very quickly. He spread his arms, ineffectually.

"N-now now hold on, mate-"

And the guy shoved him, hard, and kept running. Wheatley hit the floor, hard-

-and kept hitting it. Bits of him were rippling and shifting, his holographic skin flickering out to reveal blocky metal chunks beneath. Gears and wires and nests of rippling metal seemed to fight one another for space, as what looked oddly like car parts tried to haul themselves out like shrapnel put under a magnet. The warping screams of a computer being lobotomised echoed through the walls...

...and the transformation was done. A horribly-confused Mini Cooper, sky-blue with white features and a couple of fuzzy cores on the mirror stood in the corridor. Trix stared, and vacantly kicked her board aside. The radio crackled to life. 

"OK what happened?! What just happened?! I-I just..."

"Needs a little armour, but it'll do." She swung open the door and jumped in the seat. "Awesome moves, babe! Let's go catch that narbo!"

"...um, right! What you said!"