I will be honest, after going through room after room of test chambers, I was getting quite bored. Not to mention that GLaDOS's constant taunting of Chell was now simply getting old. Sure, behind her back, Chell and I laughed once or twice at her weirdly specific threats, but after that, she just kept throwing plain regular insults, which had no actual weight behind them. Like seriously, even the girls agreed with me that Chell is anything but fat, and she clearly said to me that she remembers her family worked here before this whole mess. Chell didn't seem to really mind it after I confirmed to her that, yes, she is skinny and, to be frank, a bit malnourished.
We started to test out the capabilities of my Tool Gun, so we actually did something interesting for once in this place. GLaDOS, of course, was really against the idea since this meant that Chell was having fun. She tried multiple things to stop me. First, she tried to simply remove or destroy the thing. It didn't work out since all her static disintegrator walls were quickly disabled or destroyed with the help of said gun. After that, she switched to a different tactic. She tried to turn Chell against me by complimenting me and comparing me to her, so she would either be jealous or disheartened. This approach of hers was much more effective. Chell didn't fall into jealousy, but she was quite depressed, feeling inferior to me, and this became an even bigger problem when she figured out that, due to my dimensional travel shenanigans, I am practically free from this place whenever I want to be.
I managed to explain to her that while that may be true, I am now connected to this universe, so if I want to come back here, I need a good place for my avatar to be placed when I am not present. I also suggested to her that if we manage to upgrade the portal capability of the Portal Gun or make something similar, then she could even follow me to my universe and live in the Citadel with us. After I managed to counter this plan of GLaDOS, she didn't really try anything new. Instead, she seemed a bit impressed by me and my creativity during the tests, so she wanted to see what I could actually do with the Tool Gun or just by using my body.
During our trials, I also found out that Mei decided to go back to Japan for now, but she did reroute the video feed to her personal computer back at UA. I didn't really mind Nezu finding out. If he wanted to hurt me or my friends, he could have done it countless times by now. Also, with how much he sacrificed and done for us, he deserves to know, especially if I would need to spend short amounts of time away from UA in case I am needed somewhere in the known universes.
I suppose not everything GLaDOS said was unimportant since I managed to find out that Chell had her birthday yesterday. After we found out, we took a break and threw a quick celebration. Due to us not being able to do much by ourselves, I just used my Tool Gun to make some balloons appear for the birthday vibes, and I even managed to make live fireworks and sparks come out of the walls with its help. Of course, GLaDOS was not happy and immediately started the sprinkler system in the chamber to make it stop. However, this only really made things worse, as the chamber suffered a temporary blackout due to the walls and electrical circuits getting burned and then soaked by our combined efforts. While GLaDOS tried to get the power back on, Chell and I noticed that through one of the broken walls, Wheatley was looking in. He nodded towards us, and we instantly understood that he had a plan, so I removed my projectors, thus allowing GLaDOS to finally turn off the sprinkler system. When she did that and the power came back up, Wheatley rerouted it quickly and opened a hole through the wall of the test chamber. Thanks to Chell's quick thinking, we rerouted one of the Hard Light Bridges present in the test chamber towards the walkway so we could escape.
GLaDOS, of course, noticed this immediately and tried to stop us, first by trying to convince Chell that we were already near the end of the tests and even saying she had a present prepared for her in there. She was a bit tempted by it, but knowing GLaDOS's history with surprises, we didn't take the bait. Wheatley had the idea that we should shut down the neurotoxin and turret production line so we couldn't be overwhelmed by her.
Eventually, after countless turns and even drops on the walkways, we arrived at a more open section of the laboratory. Unfortunately, this had the downside of GLaDOS being able to put obstacles in our path. First, we were locked in an area packed with hostile turrets. I felt a bit bad about these guys, but in the end, we destroyed all of them and continued our escape. We thought we were almost in the clear after we got rid of the turrets that popped out of random rooms near our way, but oh boy, we were so wrong.
It seems that GLaDOS stopped messing around. When we arrived in a large, almost empty room that contained the elevator, she started closing in the walls in the hope that we would be crushed to death. Fortunately, we did make it to the lift before the walkways collapsed. But this wasn't my proudest moment, I admit, since I almost got us killed when I turned the wrong way, and they had to pull me back so I wouldn't fall down to God knows where.
When we exited the elevator, we found ourselves once again at a security door checkpoint. The great thing about it was that GLaDOS couldn't reach us now. The less great thing was that we had obviously arrived at an unmaintained part of the facility, most likely near the border where GLaDOS still had her jurisdiction. We first thought this was great for us, but soon found out that either GLaDOS's stunt with the walls had caused a huge amount of damage to the local infrastructure or it was just simply not maintained properly. At first, the second security door didn't want to open, and then even the lights went out.
Wheatley, however, did have a solution before I could suggest my idea: "All right, you guys stay still. I have an idea. 3...2...1... Aghh! Oh bloody brilliant, what else did they lie to me about? They told me that if I turned my flashlight on, I would also die. They practically told me that about everything. I mean, why would they even build all this stuff in me if they didn't want me to use it? They were absolutely bonkers. Mad, I tell you." He then started lighting up our path, but before we could accidentally separate, I used the Tool Gun to attach personalized lights to our clothes so we could find our way back to each other. On our way, Wheatley was telling us some weird B-list horror movie script about this place, but to be honest, I didn't really care and just ignored him. Chell, on the other hand, got invested in it, so much so that she almost fell into the gaping abyss below us when we were supposed to jump down to another part of the broken scaffolding. Luckily, Wheatley managed to warn her before she could fall off, and I needed to catch her.
When we arrived at another drop, I stopped Chell and Wheatley so we could take a proper look at what was below us that was moving and making a lot of noise. With the help of a rope made with my gun, I climbed down and noticed that this was a factory assembly line of some kind. I signaled to them that it was safe and to follow me. They did just that, and we continued our search towards the turret assembly line. We made our way through passages with the help of portals and Wheatley, who lit up the path beforehand so we could see our destination. We only separated for a short while when we arrived at a massive pipe intersection that we had to climb down. Unfortunately, Wheatley didn't have a railway connected through here, so he had to go around, but he promised us that he would meet us at the end.
We didn't have any problems going through this whole place since there was no active danger. We only had to watch our steps since we were above a giant drop on actively moving conveyor belts. On our way to the turret quality control, we did meet another turret on a moving conveyor belt that was similar to Blinky in demeanor, but she was a bit more aggressive. Her literal first line after I got her off the conveyor belt, which was moving towards the incinerator, was "Get mad!" So, to keep up with my temporary naming scheme, I dubbed her Snappy for the time being. I also started to think about a possible direction I could take to upgrade them. However, I knew this was not the best time, so I waited. I only put Snappy inside the vault for safekeeping. I had already revealed it to Chell when I told her about my ability to move between universes, so she didn't freak out. The only reason Blinky is still on my back is that, one, she asked to stay there, and two, the camera is fixed on her position, and I don't want to deal with setting it up again.
We saw the shooting range where the turrets are tested to see if they are capable of fulfilling their jobs. We had to go through there with a portal, but it wasn't too dangerous with proper timing. We eventually arrived at the main quality control facility of the turret assembly line, where Wheatley re-joined us once again. He 'hacked' the door for us so we could take out the base model used for the diagnostics of the turrets. It literally blew up when we took it out of the scanning platform, probably because it overheated and had several other problems due to the lack of maintenance. We were happy for a moment, but it turned out that the machine could work from memory of the last scanned object that was accepted into the socket. Chell had an idea and went to grab a defective turret so we could cripple the production line by filling it with defective models. While she was away, I stayed behind for a bit and went up towards the main computer in this place. I started downloading everything that was connected with the production of the turrets, from materials to blueprints, and even the AI programming used for the weirdly sentient machines of this place.
When Chell returned with the new template for the turrets, we placed it in the scanner so its defectiveness could be used for our goals. I had a pretty weird idea that I wanted to try out, so when I was certain the scanner didn't need the defective turret anymore, I put it inside my vault so I could test something on it for later use. To keep on brand with the naming of these girls, I named her Sparky due to her sometimes letting out sparks by accident. After that, Chell and I went towards the door that Wheatley supposedly started hacking. I don't know if the door was already open or if he just miscalculated, but he somehow hacked it open by the time we got there.
After the door, we came upon a shocking sight that, in most cases, would not arouse any kind of emotion in me. But after hearing her story, it became important to me as well. We arrived at the Employee Daycare Center. This was the place where Chell had to evacuate from the neurotoxin, and now, connecting the dots, I could see why this place was flooded with gas. As we slowly made our way through, I looked at Chell's face. She had an unreadable expression, but as we went on, I noticed her hand shaking more and more. Finally, we arrived at a giant, overgrown potato plant that was hanging from the ceiling. At first, to lighten her mood, I wanted to joke about how it looked like GLaDOS, but when I saw her face, I didn't dare say anything. She was deathly pale, and there were tears flowing from her eyes, but she still didn't say or do anything. I had an idea of how and why this happened. I looked towards the presentation board, and just as I suspected, it was signed by a child named Chell. She had obviously gone into shock due to the trauma, so I just sat down against the wall opposite her presentation and pulled her head onto my lap. She needed a good rest after all this, so I gestured to Wheatley to keep quiet and closed Chell's eyes so she could rest a little bit. When I heard her heartbeat calm down as she finally slept after God knows how long, I too began to doze off after all. This was a really long day.