Prototype

[msfcatlover]

(Okay, brand new here, no idea what I'm doing...Guess I just jump right in, huh? I think this is how to start a new group...)

[msfcatlover]

(I write in 3rd person story format normally, so just tell me if that's wrong, okay?)

Deep beneath the ground, miles below the testing tracks, at the very bottom of the old lab, were the old storage vaults. Inside one could find a vast array of various expirimental projects, in just as many levels of completion. They piled upon one another, wires and cogs, lights, wheels and cameras poking out seemingly at random.
And, here, in this forgotten place, was movement.

A girl in grey pants and a thigh-length discolored white coat fought her way out of a tangle of wires. She put her hands on her knees, eyes closed, and sighed.
"Well, isn't this a mess? How long have I been out, d'you s'pose?"
Her eyes opened again, teal orbs on a black backdrop. She looked at the heaps of seeming junk around her and smirked.
"Least I came to, s'pose. Least I'm alive. More than I can say for these poor saps, neh?"
Another sigh, and she straightend, white plastic flesh catching the light from above.
"Hundr'd percent need a smoke, though."

(Well? Is anyone else alive down there? Any other robots, any humans or animals? ASMFC needs company, guys!)

[msfcatlover]

(So...I'm just going to post a new one of these every so often. Get used to writing ASMFC, all that. Please don't let this end up being just me...)

It had been hours. Hours of wandering amongst the wreckage, fighting her way to the tops of the grusome piles in numerous attempts to get her bearings, and more than one long pause to sigh and stare at the mess. She'd managed to find an old box of grey-white metal tubes, each with a glowing red light at one end and the Aperture Science logo printed on the side. The box was clipped to her tool belt (in between the bandages and the needles) one of the tubes clasped between her second and middle finger. A fine white smoke curled from the back, the smell of tobacco filling the air.
She placed it against her lips and took a deep breath, then took it away before exhaling. The smoke swirled around her head like a halo.
"Well, it's official: I have no flippin' idea where I am. Haven't seen any of the others, either."
Another slow puff. She tapped the cigarette-like machine against the wall, rather pointlessly, since there wasn't any actual ash to knock out.
"And I'd say it was all pointless, 'cept if I don't find a charging station, I have..." She paused to run a quick calculation. "...eight days 'til my power runs out.
"...I s'pose talking to myself isn't really a good sign, but I don't see anyone else down here to hold up the other end of this conversation."
Teal optics flickered hopefully towards the ceiling, as though expecting someone to magically appear on the rusted-out catwalk above.

[msfcatlover]

She waited for a few seconds, before looking back down with a sigh.
"No, I'm completely alone down here, 'less there're rats, a'course. Just me and the rodents...so much fun..."
She knelt on what looked like a turret, winced, and tore out a wire.
"Sorry little fellow, but it's not like you're using it," She mumbled, lashing her sickly-colored green-brown hair into something resembling a high-ponytail. It had been bothering her since she woke up.
The cigarette had found its way back to her mouth, and her breath swirled the ever-thickening smoke out that much faster. She didn't seem to mind.
Once the deed was done, she gave the turret a friendly sort of pat, and continued on her way. The plan seemed to be to walk until she either found something familiar, or ran out of battery, which ever came first.

(Seriously, someone jump in by the next area. No one's replying to any of my messages. I'm lonely...)

[msfcatlover]

(...Please?)

She didn't have a counter like some of the robots, never had, for that matter, but was fairly good at estimating how long she'd been on based entirely on the percentage of her battery drained. And so, by her guess, it was roughly four hours after tying up her hair that she came out into the huge open cavern.
She froze, cigarette forgotten half-way to her lips.
"...Woah..."
It was warm, wet, and reeked of decay. The air was so poluted that every so often an arch of electricity found it dense enough to travel on (she watched one particularly nerve-wrecking purple spark turn one-hundred eighty degrees and head back the way it came, half way across the room.) The charred remains of countless robots dropped out of a tube and into one of those bottomless acid-pools the scientists had been so proud of. She assumed it went to an incinerator of some kind. Overhead hung some kind of giant metal orb.
"Sixty Three would kill to see this place!" A pause. "...Shame what happened to him. That glitch was a nasty way to go."
The device in her hand finally found its way to her lips, trembling between her fingers. The memory of her old co-op partner seemed to have shaken her up. Her free hand fumbled at the base of her spine.
Whatever she found there seemed to reassure her. The girl stood up a little straighter, hooked her thumbs through her belt, and stared up at the ball. Not just the ball, but the multitude of catwalks surrounding it.
"Well, nothin' to do but keep going. 'S not like I can die, or anything."

[hasuchan]

"Actually, it's quite possible to die here, and easy, too...sigh. I don't even know how many poor chaps I've seen run through here...they never make it to the next test."

[msfcatlover]

She paused, very purposefuly not turing towards the voice.
"Aperture devices rarely die; we can almost always be repaired."
She glanced, almost casually, in the direction of the speaker.
"Nice to know I'm not actually alone down here, though. You could have said somethin' earlier."

[hasuchan]

"Device, huh? What, exactly....are you, then?" Hazel came out from her dark corner. Her blue tank top was smudged and dirty, just like her brown pants. She held a portal gun at her side.

[msfcatlover]

"Aperture Science Medical Field Care Unit, Prototype #87."
She rattled it off, as impersonal as if she was identifying the wall, not herself. Her optics slid to the side, the teal glow emphasizing the ball-and-cylinder structure of the hand holding her cigarette.
They flickered back.
"And you are...?"

[hasuchan]

"Hazel. Hazel Wandell. I'm a test subject. What can I call you, other than Aperture Science...Field...87...er, what you said." She shifted her weight to her other foot and shoved her hair out of her face.

[msfcatlover]

"I'm programmed to respond to Medic, or Eighty Seven. Take your pick."
She turned her attention back to the distant orb.
"So, Hazel Wandell, any idea how one would go about getting up there?"

[hasuchan]

"Eh....I'm working on that. And just call me Hazel. That's what they all call me." She then began murmuring to herself about possible ways to get to the orb.

[msfcatlover]

"Hm." She tapped her lip with the cigarette, free hand propped on her hip.
"Well, how'd you get down here, then? I was tossed on the scrap heap."

[hasuchan]

"I've been a test subject a loooong time. Wheatley just woke me up one day when GLaDOS wanted to test, and I've been here ever since. You can say I take my time."
She continued glancing around the room. "I know the rooms preceeding this one like the back of my hand."

[msfcatlover]

Eighty Seven made a small, scathing noise in the back of her throat, grinding the cigarette between her teeth. "Oh, yes, Her. Stole all the fundin' from the medical department, that one; all the scientists sund'ly too busy whippin' up patches and cores for her programming to pay any attention to us."
She exhaled angrily.
There was a small pause. "I have nothin' but respect for the poor 'bots who have to put up with Her, but there were some really nasty malfunctions going around at the time, and no scientists to fix them. It wasn' pretty. Robots died. That's not s'posed to happen."