Adapted into web novel format on Dec. 4, 2011 at 12:46 AM MST
Corrections made on Dec. 27, 2015
Portal 2 spoilers and Payback influence ahead.
Click here for chapter 7
"Danke, dummkopfs," said Medic sarcastically while taking a bow. He then thrust his Ubersaw against mental inhibitor #2 again.
Kshzzzt!
The inhibitor signals scrambled to show a normally-inaccessible room in an indoor base known as Junction.
"Yeah, like it even matters," began Haruhi. She was standing in front of a RED supercomputer system with her hands on the counter. She bobbled her head around as she continued, "The problem isn't so much when you found out about it, it's what you're going to do about it!"
Behind her, a British voice repeated, "Pull me out! Pull me out! Pull me out!" It came from a blue personality core that looked exactly like GLaDOS's logic core that spewed out a list of various unorthodox cake garnishes. However, this core was a personality core of different programming inside a prototype body. His name was Wheatley, and his "head" was spinning out of control.
Kshzzzt!
"The healing is not as rewarding as the hurting," Medic spoke.
A loud electronic blare and a bright flash came from the inhibitors once more.
Heavy walked down the stairs beside stage left. "Yes. Come along now," he called. He turned around and saw the blonde-haired girl with blue eyes, who had let the Engineer play on her keytar, take a few steps from behind the stage building.
"Umm... I came to see your club!" she called.
"Witch!" Francis shouted.
BANG! Kshzzzt!
An explosion occurred inside mental inhibitor #2, causing more scrambled signals. Medic groaned in frustration as more clips appeared onscreen.
Admiral Ackbar quipped his famous line. "It's a trap!" he yelled.
"A trap?!" Mio repeated. However, her voice wasn't really hers. She also felt her left arm raise, with Neru's dropped shotgun in hand. She then involuntarily spun the shotgun around her index finger and caught the grip with her fingers. Mio looked at her left arm in confusion as she pointed the gun outward and fired.
KBLAM!
"Aah!" Mio yelped as she let go of her gun and it clattered on the floor.
"Ugh!" At the same time, the cloaked Spy took the brunt of the shotgun's precise fire.
Pyro, who was watching inhibitor #3's viewscreen, groaned. "Help me capture!" he mumbled, and whacked the inhibitor with his axe once more.
PING!
The blonde-haired girl giggled and seemed to agree. "Let's go! For sure!" Her name was Tsumugi, and she was a keyboardist. Her bandmates, however, called her Mugi for short. Tsumugi was believed to have masterminded a Halloween prank on fellow bandmate Mio just over two months ago, where she inexplicably snarled like an infected-zombie known as a Witch and scared the bassist out of the room.
Heavy began a hearty laugh as the inhibitor signals scrambled.
Kshzzzt!
"Don't laugh!" Tsumugi suddenly replied. Her voice was still soft and sweet, but it wasn't really hers.
Heavy reacted with a surprised yell. He did not expect Mugi to tell him something like that.
Tsumugi placed her arm against her chest and looked up in thought. "I... saw the end of the world."
Pyro yelled.
"I do not understand," said Heavy.
Mugi took a quick breath. "I was so scared, I needed to be alone."
"This is true?"
"So I tried to run away from here."
Pyro groaned.
"SYMBOLISM!" a young British man shouted while raising his arms into the air.
"What was that?" the Critic asked. He looked around for a bit.
"Ohhh," whispered Zoey, "that witch is not happy."
Pyro yelled and swung his axe against the inhibitor again.
CRASH! zzzt! zzzt! zzzt!
Pyro had jammed his axe's blade into the side of inhibitor #3. The damaged area began to give off rapid electrical sparks.
"For your own safety, do not destroy vital testing apparatus," GLaDOS's automated warning played.
"Oh, you dumba**!" A video clip showed Danny shouting while inside his car.
"For the love of..." Pyro mumbled again.
"Ngah! My skill is wasted on this team!" complained Medic once he saw the damage.
Pyro returned to inhibitor #3 and took his flamethrower out of his inventory.
Pfffft! A burst of compressed air sprayed from the flamethrower onto the inhibitor.
Kshzt! BZZT! "Security warning!" GLaDOS's commanding voice announced.
Pyro did not want to see what could come next.
On a grassy field just beside the stage, Konata was in front of Scout. She held a familiar black hardcover book in her right arm. Although there was strange writing on the cover, there was no doubt that Konata was holding what was known as a "Death Note".
Konata gestured with an upward point and said something... in a cute voice that wasn't really hers.
"At least one date a week," she offered.
"Uhh, no way!" replied Scout.
Suddenly, Konata let her notebook drop onto the floor and pushed Scout on his chest with her right hand. She pushed so hard that Scout dropped his bat and fell onto his bottom with a yelp.
Konata closed her eyes in a brief smile that was unlike her usual expressions.
"That was not you," Scout insisted.
Vrrak-bang! Green onion missiles launched in the distance.
"Huh? What was that?" a confused Konata continued in her cute voice.
"You will never do that." Scout had no idea why a cute nerd like her would act like a hyperactive blonde-haired model, and even she wouldn't act that way to her supposed serial-killer boyfriend. It was as if someone else told Konata to act something out randomly.
Konata bent over to pick up her notebook as the signals scrambled.
Kshzzzt!
zzzt! zzztzzzzztzzzt! Sparks were still flying from inhibitor #3's damaged area.
Pyro raised his flamethrower above his head in a victory roar.
"Schnell! Go get them!" Medic called as Pyro ran from the inhibitors. He chuckled. "I require assistance!" he called as he performed an elaborate Ubersaw thrust into inhibitor #2.
Pong! Kshzzztshshzzzt!
The persona's vector Vader mask appeared on the inhibitor's screen again. He gave out another cryptic clue in his synthetic voice. "As far as I know, that subject really likes saying her own name a lot."
"Papers, please." Medic still felt skeptical.
"It also seems her lyrics include the words 'melody' and 'singing', too."
Kshzzzt!
Of course, with Konata in the area, short pink-haired Yutaka had to be nearby. Sure enough, she was standing on the stone stairs beside the stage's left entrance ramp. Yutaka was nervously talking to Soldier and Demoman.
"Oh, yes! I know: you're the ones 'onée-chan' always talks about." Yutaka used the Japanese word for "sister" to refer to Konata, as she had always done, even though they're cousins.
Demoman slurred a bit and then turned to face Soldier. "I love ya, man," he said. Over a year ago, he was friends with Soldier before a seven-day war tore them apart.
Soldier was not kind in return. "Except I hate you." His uncouth behaviour had gone to his head, even though he won a prize for winning the war.
Kshzzzt!
Yutaka suddenly threw a double-handed punch and knocked Soldier over. She confidently spoke, "And that's for being so evil."
The Critic was let down by Yutaka's speech. "Weak!" he yelled.
The persona returned onscreen. "As for those missiles that the other group has been seeing," he told Medic, "I can say that in the case file, they were chasing her around as she flew with her ponytails."
The Nerd was shown drinking a green bottle. "Wow," he whispered.
"Why?" Medic groaned.
The persona continued, "And somehow later she actually took control of--"
Yutaka interrupted the persona as she spouted a better insult to give the jerk Soldier. However, the voice she spoke in really wasn't hers.
"You are a..." Yutaka threw her arms back and angrily glared at Soldier. "...a clorbag varblernelk!" It was an insult in an extraterrestrial language, and yet this young girl knew about it as if she learned it from, or otherwise was, an otherworldly character.
"Boo..." Soldier called weakly.
Kshzzzt!
Yutaka looked at Demoman and put her closed hands to her chest. "I'm so worried," she told him, in a voice that seemed closer to her own, but still wasn't hers.
"Thanks, mate!" laughed Demoman. It was kind of nice for her to be concerned about his condition.
The Critic thought for a moment.
"They are weakened!" Medic proclaimed.
GLaDOS's humanoid body came onscreen. She spoke in her regular computerized voice. "Okay, you didn't have time to stop, I understand." She placed her closed right hand on her hip and continued, "But that was actually important." superslinger2007 the persona was interrupted before he could say that "the subject took control of the missiles as if they were hers". GLaDOS seemed unnaturally friendly, although it may have been a side effect of being trapped in her human body.
Suddenly, the tip of her right hair-bunch floated in front of her. "Uh oh," she reacted. The hair-bunch, acting like an extra limb, pushed against one of the personality cores on her head, and then dropped back down naturally. The four miniature cores loosely spun around her head.
"Look, I don't like this any more than you do," she admitted, before electronically clearing her throat again.
kAhemkk.
"Prepare to capture the intelligence!" GLaDOS commanded in her authoritative voice, with both hands on her hips.
