smash_logs | (no subject)

"Oh, I can catch!" At first, he seemed perplexed about the question, but the realized why he was asking a second later. He moved in beneath Wheatley and stretched out his arms. "Wanna count to three or something?"

"Count of three, then. I'm going to pop off my rail, and you're going to catch me."

Wheatley sort of had a complex about this--he knew that detaching from the rail wasn't going to kill him, but he didn't quite fancy busting himself up on the floor. "Promise, okay? Because I haven't had good luck with this in the past."

Despite that, however, he scooted backwards a little, preparing to launch himself.

"One...two...three! Catch me catch me catch me catch me--!"

Pit wasn't expecting him to launch like that, so he needed to race over to the spot Wheatley's trajectory was going to land him if he wanted to catch him. He stumbled backwards and twisted around to grab the core, but instead, lost his footing and tumbled forward.

"Whoaaaa no!"

Shoot! He failed to catch him! And he said he would and everything... But then he felt something thud against his back.

Okay, maybe he did catch him. Just... not with his arms. "Ow..."

"Ow!"

He rolled onto the floor with a clunk, destined to never be caught properly. Wheatley didn't seem to broken up about it, however, blinking his shutters a few times and appearing to shake it off.

"Well, it was--good effort. Go on and pick me up, then."

The angel groaned, disgruntled with both himself and Wheatley's unexpected launch which was TOTALLY UNFAIR, not to mention the shooting pain that would take a bit to wear down. But he decided to just leave his complaints at that and push himself up to scoop Wheatley into his arms before standing.

"Hey, you feel a lot lighter than you did when you fell on my back, that's for sure," he remarked. lifting him up and down a few times like a snow globe.

"Okay, okay, that's enough. Careful, I'm not--not a toy."

But he seemed satisfied enough, at least. "On we go!"

The pair of intrepid adventurers left the library behind to more promising pastures. He crossed campus and entered the dormitory building. Once inside stepped over to the middle of the floor and halted there, eyeballing the floor beneath his feet. He began to kick at the edges of each tile until he felt something budge in the slightest way.

"It's right here," he said on a wispy breath, remembering the time Falcon appeared from the floor, decades ago in his memory. "I'm gonna set you down real quick." He gently placed the core on top of the adjacent tile and began to work his fingers at the one he'd been nudging with his toes to pry it away from the floor all together.

"Right, no problem."

Wheatley had no problem waiting, at least a little bit. Especially if the reason for being set down was for his be-handed compatriot to make good use of the appendages he did not have. In the meantime, he'd use his handlebars to scoot himself closer to the hole in the floor, rolling on his side and attempting to peer inside.

"Dark down there, innit?

"Yeah, it's gonna be pretty dark," he admitted. "But that's okay! I've still got some torches in my inventory. From the simpler days."

What on earth was he talking about? And why not just upgrade to a flashlight like a regular person? Best not to question it too much. Pit noticed the core's precarious position and abruptly stopped pulling the tile to free his hands for worst-case scenario rescue catches. "Hey, don't get so close to the edge! You're gonna fall down!"

"Oh! Hang on, I've got--"

And LO! With a click, Wheatley's optic shone with the force of a car headlight. He seemed largely oblivious to his teetering over the edge, even when Pit brought it to his attention. He was far too busy proving himself useful, you see.

"Got a built-in flashlight! Pretty handy, yeah?"

Edited 2013-11-22 07:29 (UTC)

"Haha, neat! It's like an industrial laser pointer!" No, it wasn't. "You don't happen to run on batte-"

Wheatley fell into the hole.

"Oh no! Agh, I warned you!" he called in through the dark opening. With haste he dragged the tile across the floor and dove in, gripping the rung of the ladder and using his free hand to slide the cover back in place. Once that was done, he didn't even bother climbing down- he leaped, slowing his descent with the grace of wing flaps.

"AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--"

THUNK.

"Ow!"

It was a good thing Wheatley was made of sturdy stuff, and he seemed to bounce back, albeit with a significant amount of flailing.

"Oh, god. Ow. Not dead, though! If you were--if you were wondering."

The angel bent down to lift him from the ground again. "If you were dead, you wouldn't be able to say, 'Ow!' so much" He shone the beam of light around the drab walls of the bunkers, landing it on crates full of REALLY old food and water, blankets, coats of dust, lights that had burnt out and could no longer be switched on... but were there any signs of GlaDOS having resided here?

"Kinda creepy." It was weird, remembering it being a little different the last time he ventured down here. The dim fluorescent lights had been on, and maybe the lighting situation could change everything about a place. "If you see anything, let me know. I'm not sure what I'm looking for."

"It's for your benefit, mate," he quipped, glancing from side to side and casting the flashlight beam around the dusty room. "I mean, if you'd been the one to fall down the hole, I'd want to know if you were dead or not."

The bunkers were much less exciting than he'd pictured--Wheatley had half-anticipated a miniature Aperture, but this was just a bunch of dusty tarp and cans. Maybe the little mini-Aperture was down the hall.

"Should be, ah. White panels, maybe. Not walls like this. Let's go down a little further, eh?"

"Sure." Pit tread forth across the dusky cavernlike room into a corridor. He kept advancing until anything noteworthy or white and wall-like caught their eyes- something that wasn't an expired food can. And boy, did Pit have his eyes peeled. He had a craving to feed his curious mind.

Wheatley scanned the corridors as they went deeper, looking for any telltale sign of Aperture technology. He wasn't sure how deeply She'd rooted Herself, how far Her reach extended, but he was certain they'd find something eventually, if they looked hard enough.

And there it was--he caught a flash of white that, upon closer inspection, appeared to be the start of paneling.

"There! There, that way."

"Ohhh boy, that sure looks like a thing!" Pit exclaimed as he picked up his pace into a half run, catching onto Wheatley's piqued response. "It really does remind me of the renovations. It's almost nostalgic."

AND A THING IT WAS.

No sooner did they round the corner than the bunkers took on a very Aperture-esque quality, and Wheatley began twitching his handlebars in excitement.

"This is it! This has--this has got to be it, I bet if we keep following this corridor, we'll find where She was hiding."

"Then I'll take you there!" Pit exclaimed as he marched on ahead like a good chauffeur, curiously eyeing everything that tethered his interest. "So you don't know what she... I mean, She was hiding, but... do you have any ideas?"

"Well, I'm sure it'd--She'd have to be in a big central room somewhere, Her body is--was not small."

Luckily, the bunkers were a bit more straightforward than Aperture's usual layout, and they soon came upon a room littered with computer consoles and equipment that had seemingly fallen into disrepair with GLaDOS' department.

"Wonder what She was even doing down here...I mean, besides plotting a hostile takeover of the school."

"Normally staff members either live in the on-campus apartments or out in the city somewhere," Pit mused. "Maybe she thought she'd be more secretive here? I mean, she WAS planning on taking over the school." And she did, of course.

"Yeah, that was--that was probably why she was down here in the first place," he replied, optic making quick movements around the room they'd stumbled into. It was stark white panels, but littered with equipment that was clearly abandoned when its owner got Her robot butt handed to Her.

Her robutt, if you will.

After a moment of scanning, Wheatley seemed to settle on something slumped in a corner. "Hey, what's that--what's that over there?"

"That?" There was really no question about what he was referring to, since his optic beam was shining directly on what it was that currently caught his attention. Pit obediently hopped on over toward the interesting mass.

"It's..."

"Oh, god, it's got no head!"

INDEED IT HAD NO HEAD. From what he could see, it was some kind of chassis--all smooth and white and gray with hands and feet but NO HEAD. That was kind of horrifying.

"She must've killed him, whoever--whoever he was. Or she. Maybe it was a girl robot."

"Really?!" Pit exclaimed at first, clutching onto Wheatley's head in reaction to the horror. His hold slackened as he thought something over. "Can robots survive without heads? Because, I mean..."

He held Wheatley up higher, then accidentally shone his optic beam into his eyes and quickly averted Wheatley's shiny gaze.

"You're kind of like a robot head, aren't you? You don't have a body. Why, I bet you could hook yourself up to a robot body if you had one wired up correctly to yourself. Wouldn't that be cool?"