#fleechin writes

[fleechin]

This is my 2024 @portal-secret-santa for @villafordefeatedvillains, they told me they were a huge fan of stuff that combines Portal and Half Life, as well as Caveline and Cave x Breen, and also Portal Stories Mel, so I had the idea of a bunch of different scenes I could do. In the end I found myself doing a sort of in depth analysis of Breen, Cave, and Caroline all together and comparing and contrasting their histories and perspectives. This gave me the chance to reference Mel and even some stuff with Entropy Zero 2 (which I know they didn't mention, but it's kinda the gold standard when it comes to combining half life and Portal and I have a tooooooon of headcanons about Caroline's role at Arbeit, so I just knew I had to bring that in).

There's some slightly suggestive stuff with Caveline and Cave x Breen (mostly Caroline's imagination running wild - who can blame her?), but nothing NSFW though.

But there you go, enjoy and a happy 2024 Holidays!

        Part 1: According to a Small Fish

The year was 1975. 

A crucial year for many people, perhaps, in ways that each and every one of them could recount. War stories, scandals, a casual fling with a one time lover that would eventually become the story to recount to future generations. The one who got away. A flame that nostalgia and the shitty marriage you’ve found yourself stuck in leaves you hoping to maybe, just maybe, rekindle. You wouldn’t get it, you say to your nieces, nephews, kids, grandkids, even your spouse before he or she leaves for good this time. You weren’t there. 

For one man, who absolutely was there, it was the start of a career that would jettison him into notoriety. The fact he knew. The extent he did not. 

An applied science and research facility, especially as prestigious as Black Mesa, would immortalize him, at least in some fields. Watch any documentary about the next Einstein, open up a textbook about the first man on Mars, and there was a good chance the name Wallace Breen would have appeared outside of the footnotes once or twice. Maybe they’d even interview him.

 No one could have predicted how ubiquitous his name would have become, not even him. And yet, although deep down, had somebody come back with, say, a time travelling boat, and told him just how he would save the world and unite the human species with its benefactors, a part of him would have believed it. Imagined the escapades he would have gone through to get there. 

For now though, Wallace Breen was on the path to greatness. He’d just become the new administrator of Black Mesa, and he was ready to clean house. Standard safety regulations that kept Black Mesa out of the news more than once had proven to be more of a nuisance than anything. There was no such thing as bad press, provided you can drown it out with achievements. Scientists frequently insisted that their equipment had limits. Limits that couldn’t be stretched or tested, lest they break something. Lest they accidentally create something. 

Breen understood that limits were meant to be broken. If the technicians were unhappy with the machines they had, they could simply do what he was paying them to do and build a better one. Would people complain? Of course. Right up until the very end they complained. But they could not argue with his results. The Hazardous Environment Suit, before he’d arrived, was nothing more than a modified spacesuit, useless without a clunky power cable that was perfect for tripping on. Neither jack-of-all-trades, nor a master of one.

But Breen saw potential. Standardization of the parts, emphasis on compactness and multi-use. People objected of course, we need this component, they shouted, but they quickly shut up when they realized just how comfortable, mobile, and applicable the brand new Mark II suit was. 

But as always, this was no time to celebrate. The cable had been reduced already, but the next iteration of the suit needed its own internal power supply. Humanity’s worst base instinct, aside from the urge to reproduce, that old tyrant, was complacency. It needed to be forced into action in order to survive. 

The underground nature of Black Mesa had made him think a great deal about fossils. Calcified impressions of remains of beasts that, had they known what came before, would have thought themselves the pinnacle of evolution, the end of geological history. If only they had bothered to look to the stars. 

Humanity could not make the same mistake.

        Part 2: According to an Old Shark

For another man in Michigan, 1975 was a very different year. 

Cave Johnson had been the talk of the town for more than half of his life, for better or worse. In the beginning, as a shower-curtain salesman, perhaps the biggest lesson he’d learned was how to sell anything and sign his name on it. It brought him wealth, power, fame, all the things he needed to retire.

But that was an easy life. The life of a showman who wanted nothing more than to make a nickel or two. And last he looked at his TIME Magazine interview, his name wasn’t PT Barnum. 

Even during the war, he’d read up on what scientists were up to. The big names, Heisenberg, Einstein, Schwarzschild. Lots of Germans. Though he hadn’t read their exact papers or browsed the formulas, he knew they were onto something. Wormholes, warping of space-time continuum, nuclear decay. He had only one chance to board the underground train to wherever they were going. 

And so he hopped on board and went down, down, down. 

Purchasing the salt mine had been easy enough. Building everything was challenging, but he had no tolerance for doubters. Hiring had definitely eaten its share of the budget - scientists were happy to come along, but Olympians had convinced themselves that they deserved even more silver dollars than the big ones around their necks. War heroes were a hit or miss, some were more than happy to brag about their tales, and others wanted nothing more than anonymity after what they’d been through. Cowards.

And then there was Caroline. Where would he be without her?

Starting off as another one of the many girls he’d hired to man the typewriters and do the formulas that the Men Upstairs were much too important to think about, she’d made a name for herself by interning with him, and eventually applying on a whim to be his assistant. He took one look at her file and made his decision. It took even less time for them to become more than business partners. 

Could he have settled down? Married her, taught Cave Junior the ropes of Aperture, gotten a picket fence somewhere and called it a life? Maybe. But Caroline didn’t seem like the kind of woman to want to quit like that. That just made him like her even more.

Cave and Caroline had taken Aperture Science Innovators to fame and infamy alike, assuming one believed that there was even a meaningful distinction between the two. Cave Johnson did not. The Quantum tunneling device and Repulsion Gel had quickly become household names. Unfortunately, so had Melanie Flanagan. 

So what if her sleeping pod had failed and locked her in deep sleep? She’d taken one for the team! She contributed something to the world beyond almost bringing home a Silver in 36! Did you? Not that the press had cared about that. They could talk about Aperture, and their impression of its inner workings all they wanted. None of them however truly understood the nature of what one journalist had so pretentiously dubbed modus operandi aperturae, Aperture’s Way of Doing Things. They wouldn’t complain so damn much.

They’d managed to survive the Senate hearings in ‘68, but their reputation, and by extension their finances, were a whole nother story. The nerve of actually paying people, especially these people, to do what Olympians had desperately applied to do not that long ago… 

Black Mesa had already been a thorn in his side, but now, with Aperture’s Reputation in the gutter, it wasn’t like anyone would have cared. The courts might have cared about IP theft, but the public didn’t, and besides, what lawyer could they afford? 

But alas, there was Science to do. Repulsion Gel was already showing promising results, and with the moon landings along the way, Johnson saw the potential for a true Aperture revival. Black Mesa would never see it coming. Especially this fresh meat of an administrator of theirs. He knew how to read a book, but only Cave Johnson could play ball.  1975 would not be a year of stagnation.

        Part 3: According to an Octopus, or a Medusa (Whichever you prefer)

For one woman, 1975 was the beginning of a new Era. 

Her work in the past decades was paying off, even if her boss hadn’t seen the extent of it yet. Her greatest invention, the portal testing chamber, had become the gold standard. The existing portal technology was already well beyond what the folks at Black Mesa were even dreaming of – and she wasn’t just guessing, corporate espionage was a forte of hers. Zero point energy field manipulation, while never progressing beyond lifting small objects directly in front of the user, had been thought impossible by most of Black Mesa’s top “experts”.

Even larger-mass teleportation was still in Aperture’s favor. The Borealis Project, while largely considered a failure by those who worked on it closest, had proven the possibility of teleportation, and the remoteness of Arbeit Communications, whose acquisition she’d managed, had kept the worst of it a secret. Even the few Black Mesa spies she’d caught didn’t know. And she knew how to get them to squeal.

This new hire at Black Mesa. He was cute, naïve, still seeing himself as the man who would guide the world to greatness. All of the idealism, and none of the experience to boot. She knew the drill. Start off cordial, try to befriend him, juuuuust long enough to get him to show any weaknesses he had. 

He’d even visited Aperture a few times. Each time he’d found something to comment on - always just the thing to get on Cave Johnson’s nerves. Johnson’s strategy, nine times out of ten, was to copy another well known Johnson (who people quickly learned to never ever ask him about), that is to say, get right in their faces. Too close for comfort. Had he and Breen gotten any closer, they might have kissed. That would be fun to see. 

She thought about that way too often. Breen talked a big game, but Cave Johnson’s mouth was a beast unto itself. That sad excuse for a man would never know what hit him. Was it healthy, normal, to be thinking about her boss and his rival making out passionately? Yes, she decided one day as she took a drag of a well earned cigarette. Yes it was.

Oh, but things got heated all the time, of course. For all his talk of “evolving humanity beyond its basest of impulses”, Breen was more than happy to indulge in a shouting match with his rival over the phone. She’d taken the liberty to write down some insults she thought of throughout the day. What could she say, it was great stress relief.

In the past, her way to cope with whatever Cave Johnson had thought to do that day (and there were many of those days) was to find a closet she’d snuck an old couch into, and scream as loud as she could into the pillows. Over time however, that strategy (and her vocal cords) began to work less and less. Thankfully, now she had her own brand new punching bag.

As far as she knew, the two rivals had never come to kiss each other. Or if they had, she hadn’t gotten to watch. What a shame, she thought. Her insight on this man, however, had come to pay off. She’d learned the ins and outs of what made this man tick. And she’d learned to play her cards right.

“Doctor Breen”, as he always insisted on being called, certainly knew how to talk to important men in suits. Securing contracts, making connections, slow incremental steps, even she recognized he had a talent there. But even he fell victim to that age-old need to be known. Anyone, if they talked just the right game, could string him along whatever path they wanted, and he’d go willingly. 

 So why didn’t Caroline do the same? She’d been the impetus and the drive to acquiring Arbeit after all. Even after Cave Johnson would go on to keel over with his lunar fascination, secrecy became the new modus operandi aperturae. But therein was the true difference between the two: while Breen understood the value of confidentiality, or rather that it had some non-zero value, Caroline understood that secrecy was meaningless without obscurity. No one would ever try to investigate you if they did not know who you were.

She’d cut her teeth on Aperture’s operations and ownership of the Arbeit facility, its existence and location kept secret even to most employees of Aperture, and the extent of its research kept secret to most who worked at Arbeit. Cave had let her turn it into her own little playground, perfect for thought experiments and ideas that even her boss might not have approved. 

It was her idea however, long after Cave Johnson and his ways, to run Aperture on that principle. You never quite know who you’ll have to hide this from later on, she insisted. If time travel exists, they’re already listening in.

Caroline ended up being far more right about that, and about Wallace Breen, than even she could have imagined back in 1975.

[fleechin]

A Day at the Shop

Here's my Portal Secret Santa 2022 for @genericdragon, she said she really likes cores, especially fan made ones, so I decided to make a thing about Virgil. I have a bunch of headcanons about Rick and Craig, so I incorporated them into this as well. Finally I had to add Ego core too, since she mentioned him a few times.

AO3 Link

Full Text Below:

Virgil stretched his handles. 

Not really for any useful reason, to be truthful. They hadn’t been rusted over, and stretching them wouldn’t have fixed that anyway. He remembered hearing somewhere that in humans, stretching was a good way of moving around muscle fibers and keeping joints flexible. That might have been applicable here, but the only way cores could increase their handle flexibility was with some grease, and maybe a motor upgrade. Stretching would probably just wear out the hinge.

No, Virgil was stretching because he was tired. It didn’t make much sense, but that was the modus operandi aperturae . Aperture’s way of doing things. More specifically, Aperture would design robots with humans in mind, so much so that when they acted like robots instead of humans, it was seen as a failure. It was why cores could yawn and shiver, despite not having any need for either function. Fortunately, they had been decent enough to program a sense of humor into some of the robots. Un fortunately, Virgil did not appear to be one of them.

Looking up at the clock, Virgil sighed. 2:00 AM. Cores didn’t really need to sleep, at least not for more than 10 minutes while their CPU cooled down and their drivers updated. But Virgil really felt like he could use a long human nap. Usually a visit to the enCORE Club or some TV with Craig would do the job. But it didn’t make the shift any easier.

The testing bots had been particularly obnoxious, according to Her. Not only did they decide to destroy each other a record breaking 11 times in one test chamber, one of the Oranges got caught in the gears of a crusher mechanism, jamming a gear and blowing out part of the test chamber. And it was one of Her favorites too. Then came Glitchy, Caroline bless him , who had his eye fall out at random, and then blew up right after. In his workshop. So that was fun.

He’d almost gone up with Mel. At times he wished he had. Maybe he could have seen what was out there. Whether all those rumors were true. He’d built a rig that made cores able to fly, like a helicopter, but hadn’t tested it much. Either way, he couldn’t bring himself to actually go with her. Maybe it was nervousness, maybe he was afraid of burdening her. Whatever it was, he hoped that she was okay.

But griping about it wouldn’t fix anything. And besides, Virgil enjoyed what he did, if for no other reason than that he was programmed to. And with that stretch-and-ponder out of the way, he went and looked over at his next client. 

 This core had seen better days. Its eye was open, but its optic was deactivated. Its lower handle was disconnected on one of its hinges, leaving it hanging by a thread. One of its main hull pieces - that was the best non-technical term the scientists had a chance to come up with before getting gassed - had come loose. 

It looked beyond repair. But as far as Virgil was concerned, looks meant nothing. Well, except for when they did. First order of business was to hook it up to an external power supply. After finding the right socket, Virgil flipped the switch on the external battery pack. Before long, the seemingly deceased core began to move.

Virgil was usually a little bit excited to guess what color and pattern the optic would be if the core in question was unpainted and deactivated. There were occasionally little details that would help him figure out before he actually saw, but even he had been wrong before. Besides, it put a little joy into seeing what was effectively a corpse of himself. This time around, however, Virgil let out a groan as the optic flashed green, and displayed a square grid pattern with a decidedly large black rectangle in the middle.

“iIIIIIiiIIi Dint MEEeANta LAuch YA I SWEaR!” The core finally finished whatever he had meant to say before deactivating. “Oh shoot, I’m back here. How’s it hangin’ doc?”

Virgil sighed. “Hello… Rick. How have you been?”

“Shoot, I’ve been good. Been a while, ain’t it?” 

“It’s been… two days. Which, for you, is a lot, yes.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Anyway, you able to fix me up?”

“Wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t.” Virgil’s optic reset to default, and began spinning. “There we go, you won’t feel a thing.”

Virgil paused for a second. He hated to pry, but knowing Rick, he just had to know what led him here every time. “So… what kind of adventures have you had recently?”

“Shoot, I don’t remember much, but Pinkie and I did stop by the club a while back. Saw my ex Lydia there. Next I remember, I was singin’ along the tunes and then I wake up here.”

Virgil’s upper eyelid plate lowered. “Uh-huh, and how about you…. ‘Pinkie’?” He looked upwards towards the adventure sphere’s pink eyed companion turned documentary filmmaker, who had been noticeably silent until now. 

Without moving his optic, the fact sphere replied, “The adventure sphere received several hits of Volt Supreme™ at the enCORE club, and tried to improvise an unsolicited solo during one of Loose-Screws Louis’ songs. After being kicked out, he spotted his fifth ex-partner, Avery, who he mistook for his seventh ex-partner, Lydia, despite multiple attempts at correcting him. In an attempt to show off his “rail spinning” skills, he collided into Avery, incapacitating both cores.”

Virgil sighed. That explained the similarly damaged red painted core next to him. So much for an easy break. “You know, Rick, I wonder if maybe you should take a different approach to dating. Not much of a point of having partners if they keep dumping you, y’know?”

“I mean, I guess you ain’t wrong, but a lil’ somethin’ new is always fun. ‘Sides, I can flirt just fine. Speakin’ of, how’s ol’ Rainy?”

Virgil’s lower eyelid plate raised, and he chuckled nervously. “Ah, haha, yes. Uh, Rainbow Core and I are doing well. He touched up my paint job the other day.”

“Shoot, ain’t that something. Still though, you guys got it easy. It’s tough when you’re designed for danger.”

“Whatever you say, Rick.” Before Rick could elaborate any further, another voice from the shop entrance chimed in, “Indeed, dating is never an easy thing. You never quite find a partner that’s as good as you are.”

Virgil looked over, only to see a purple eyed core wearing a large button. He sighed audibly. “What’s the issue today, Onathan?”

“Oh, it’s pretty serious if I do say so myself. Take a look at my button.”

Virgil squinted. “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

“Isn’t it obvious? There’s a smidge of oil on the left side. It’s blocking the number sign, this is a major identity crisis! How will other cores know I’m number one?!”

Virgil sighed again, and briefly reflected on the irony of how often he did it despite not having lungs. “For Caroline’s sake… seriously, Onathan? Just wash it off. Find a tap or something. Geez.” Onathan pulled back and slid out of the door, nervously mumbling to himself.

Pulling back, Virgil then looked over at the adventure sphere. “Looks like you’re all set and ready to go. And, just a tip, maybe go easy on the volt shots. I’m sure you don’t want to have to see Chuck about railing while intoxicated again.”

Rick tilted his optic. “Eh, I ain’t afraid of him. But actually, I gotta go see Ray about another adventure course I’m buildin’, so see ya.” The management rail connector lowered and attached itself to Rick, who sped off past Onathan, out of the repair wing.

Virgil looked down at Avery’s hull, and back up at Craig. “I think after this last one, I’m gonna take a break. You interested?”

“Usually the adventure sphere spends several hours with the testing core at a time. In other words, I think I’ll be free for a while.”

“Perfect. You have no idea how long I’ve needed this. Oh, and by the way, remind me to tune you up whenever you start working on that next episode of your documentary.”