#hev suit back at it again!

[halflifebutawesome]

BEHOLD! FOR THE SECOND TIME, THE GBVRAI LINEUP! now with another weird old dude!

waves my hands around vaguely I wanted to make a nicer looking lineup and more coherent post actually explaining the au. I've now made 2 gbvrai lineups but never a plain old hlvrai lineup. Whatever.

There's a complete AU explanation and individual character profiles (?) under the cut! check it out! ASK ME ABOUT IT !!! SMILES!!!!!

The basic gist of this au is that the science team, are a group of ghost hunting paranormal researchers. The Ghostbusters. You mightve heard of them. This isn't a 1 for 1 au where certain characters take the role of others, it's more just. What if the science team existed in the Ghostbusters universe. They're just the Ghostbusters now.

On a particularly odd case, they bust a ghost that seems... off. It's sentient, it's talking back, and it's psychokinetic energy is off the charts.

Thinking nothing of it, they return to the firehouse and prep the trap for containment disposal. Gordon's the new guy, so he's the unlucky dude who's been assigned the job of disposing of the traps. All the while the ghost will NOT shut up. It's weirdly powerful and seems mostly unbothered. It's name is Benry, and he's a little freak.

the ghost containment unit has been unstable for a while, overfilled with ghosts, but they have to dispose of Benry somehow, so they go ahead with it.

In this AU I'm kind of combining the Resonance Cascade with the Manhattan Crossrip (the Manhattan crossrip is the big scary ghost event that happens at the end of GB1). Basically what happens is that Benrys weirdly powerful ghostly energy, combined with an unstable ghost containment unit, tears a big rip in the fabric between the ghost realm and ours, letting all sorts of ghouls and specters free.

Imagine the Resonance Cascade, with all the aliens getting out and ravaging Black Mesa, but it's a bunch of ghosts getting out and ravaging New York. Gordon and the rest of the team have to fight their way through the ghost filled streets of NYC, and close the crossrip.

Heres some closeups and more individual info/thoughts for the gang!!

GORDON FREEMAN! The new guy. Again, this is less a direct 1 for 1 swap au kind of deal, and more just putting these guys in situations. Gordon's HEV suit, tho, I wanna talk about.

In Ghostbusters canon, they DO have a weird fucked up hazard suit. It first appears in the TRGB episode "Xmas Marks The Spot", where Egon uses it to travel into the ghost realm. I know it makes another appearance in the comics, in a way that's more HEV-esque, but I never finished the comics so idk. It's real tho.

I imagine here that the ghost containment unit is more like the reactor in half life, where it's hazardous to be around for too long, probably bcos of like. I don't know. Concentrated psychokinetic energy. Sure. In any case he needs to wear the HEV to use the containment unit.

My design here is taking the chest piece, helmet, gloves and belts and modifying them to look a little more HEV-esque.

Bennyyyy. Benrey benry beny. He's a ghost, as far as they can tell. It would be more appropriate to call him an entity of sorts.

He's not a ghost simply for the fact that he wasn't ever human. He wasn't ever a living person that died. He's some pure, really powerful, concentrate entity/being that leaked through from the ghost realm. He looks like. A guy, for the most part, but he's a mimic. Something pretending to be human. He's been around for a while, and has settled into this form. He's mostly corporeal, but can phase in and out as he pleases (noclipping) Switching from corporeal/incorporeal when it's funny.

He met Tommy when they were both a lot younger, Benry being fresh out of the ghost realm, and have been bestfriends ever since. ☝️ my au my weirdly specific tommybenny dynamic. Dw about it

TOMMY & SUNKIST!!!! Tommy has grown up around ghosts his whole life, and is pretty in-tune with them. This is proven with his bond to Sunkist, who's decidedly not a real dog, and his longtime friendship with Benry.

I gave him the goggles cos. Tommy's my fave and Ray's my fave and I think they're fun. Also cos if it WAS a 1 to 1 swap I would def have Tommy as Ray. Anyway. He's been a part of the Ghostbusters since he was little, like I said he grew up with them and around them. He's really knowledgeable about ghost types and physics. He knows all the ghost rules.

Sunkist isn't like. His dead childhood dog cos that seems. Kind of sad. Instead she's kind of a church Grimm or hell hound. An entity taking the form of a big huge dog that Tommy befriended when he was a kid, and has now kind of bonded to him. She's pretty corporeal as far as ghosts go, and can interact w the physical environment pretty well.

DARNOLD ^^ my friend darnold. Darnolds not usually super involved in the actual ghostbusting, and prefers to stay behind. He's more of the research and tech kind of guy, he studies the readings and takes measurements.

He's interested in psychokinetic energy and ghost residue and all sorts of like. Ghost sciences. Why some people stay behind, why some people just seem to die and disappear, the properties of the ghost realm and the ghosts themselves. Corporeality and degradation of personhood the longer someone's been a ghost.

When the Resonance Crossrip happens, he opts to stay behind and observe the effects of the insane amounts of ghost energy on the corporeal world.

Hes also a transfer over from the ghost engineers! That's a fun thing for me. I love the ghost engineers idc frozen empire gave me everything I wanted

FORZEN. Forzen is... the same thing as Benry. A mimic, something taking the form of a normal ghost to blend in or hide in plain sight.

He came through with the Resonance Crossrip, but obviously like. He knew Benry before (we WERE bestfriends..). He's not as powerful, which is why he wasn't able to sneak through when Benry did. He's also not super corporeal. He can only interact with the physical world if he's exerting a LOT of energy. Prone to flickering in and out of vision.

Upon coming thru the Crossrip, he kind of just. Decided to hang around the firehouse. Didn't wanna go much further, for fear of being ghostbusted and sent back into the containment unit. The source is the last place they'd look for him!

Darnold, who's holed up in the firehouse, is more than delighted to meet a ghost who's sentient and willing to cooperate to do some tests and experimentation to get never before documented results. They bond and they're cutesit. ☝️ DARZEN WIN. hi splash 👋

Dr Coomer and Dr Bubby are two of the three original founders of the Ghostbusters! They've been around for a looooong time. They're also married obviously but that's like a given.

They helped found the Ghostbusters, having met in college while both were studying parapsychology. I imagine their like. Parapsychology -> Ghostbusters pipeline was very in line with how GB1 starts, where they used to work in an academic environment before getting kicked out and founding the GB.

They're also both. Psychic. Because frozen empire has once again given me everything. Coomers got some like. Idk something that lines up with his self awareness in HLVRAI, maybe prophecy? Vauge visions of the future? Bubby has pyrokinesis. Duh.

and... Mr. Coolatta..... Tommy's dad...he was one of the founders along w Coomer and Bubby and at some point he. Died. And is now a reeeally really powerful ghost. maybe from the exposure to ghost energy or smth?

Now hes got gman powers and just kinda hangs around. Pretty corporeal and solid and. Present. For lack of a better word. But he IS a dead guy. Used to be human.

This is why Tommy kind of grew up around ghosts and knows alot about them :) Mr Coolatta is pretty benevolent, and mostly just kind of spooky and fucked up.

And that's. About it? I believe?? PLEAAASE ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS I have so many thoughts. I've been working on this for like 2 months now. Lol.

[thegameartist03]

after five years my brain decided to get me back into hlvrai by inventing a What If They Were Dead au.

warnings for the content ahead! this is a darker, grittier version of hlvrai with a lot of mentions of death, severe injuries, fatal disease, and body horror. this is also a real life version of hlvrai where the characters aren’t ai and they aren’t in a video game.

the general idea for this au is that on the day Gordon arrives at Black Mesa for the big test, every character in the main cast (except for Tommy and Darnold) through a series of unfortunate events ends up dying. then, the Resonance Cascade occurs, and the energy it releases removes the boundary between life and death and puts almost everyone and everything in the facility in a state of undeath. for some, this turns them into essentially zombies, for others, they become horrible fleshy monstrosities, but for the lucky few that are the Science Team, they’re brought back to life! mostly.

all that said, have a character lineup!

i have a longer post going into detail about what happens to each member of the Science Team, but the basics are this!

Benrey (who started out as a normal human) jumps early off one of Black Mesa’s very unsafe elevators and sticks the landing so badly that he straight up dies.

Coomer is one of many clones, and because of all the issues with cloning he had to have numerous cybernetic implants to keep him alive. his body started to reject these implants, including in his brain, which swelled up and led to his very sudden death.

Bubby is still a pyrokinetic test tube baby, and although he had a period of time where he was able to survive outside of the tube, his body has deteriorated so much that when he tries to escape Black Mesa at the end of his life his organs collapse on themselves and he dies.

Gordon Freeman is notoriously bad at getting to work on time as well as making sure the helmet of his HEV suit is secure, so when the Resonance Cascade begins with him at the epicenter, he trips, his helmet pops off, and he takes a beam of radiation to the face before getting thrown back by the explosion and cracking his skull on the wall. and, you guessed it, he dies!

off to a cheerful start, aren’t we? but don’t worry, they all get brought back! with varying and somewhat terrible consequences.

the Xen crystal used in the test opens unstable gateways to Xen, a dimension that is both lifeless and deathless, which releases shockwaves all over the facility and creates a variety of undead monstrosities that take the place of the aliens from the original series. this ‘Xenergy’ that changes people is also what, through pure coincidence, revives the Science Team in mostly alright condition. it has consequences though- each of them can regenerate whatever damage they take and are prevented from dying, but it resets their bodies to a state before they died and they have individual problems that get worse over time.

Gordon is the least affected and can take any amount of damage without experiencing a reset because he was at ground 0 and absorbed a ton of Xenergy. however, this excess Xenergy is constantly arcing out of him and creating anomalies (see: duplicating pigeons, survivors acting strange, etc). Gordon is in complete denial, does not realize he or any of the other Science Team members died, and thinks that every scientist or security guard they come across that doesn’t look like a practical effect in a horror movie is still alive and fine (a small number are, but they don’t stay that way for long).

Coomer was brought back to the state he was in briefly before he died, so the Xenergy is constantly resetting his body- and as a consequence, his mind- whenever it starts to degenerate again. it goes so far to alter time and space when he does something like jump down a pit without a rope. this causes the ‘glitches’ he experiences throughout the series. there’s a way he can reduce the resets, and that’s by killing clones! Coomer is able to steal compatible parts from his clones to replace his own failing organs to give himself more time, which also gives him more awareness about their situation.

Bubby can regenerate damage and thanks to the Xenergy, he’s in good enough shape to walk around for a little while, but over time that changes. the longer he’s out in the air and moving around, the more he begins to decay and get closer to the point where he’s basically a beached whale and his body collapses on itself. he can mitigate this problem by consuming a key ingredient from the test tube fluid he was kept in- soda! between soda breaks it does get harder and harder for him to walk, so he’s often either leaning on something trying to play off his discomfort so he doesn’t look weak or getting carried by Coomer.

Benrey’s got the worst of it. his ability to regenerate damage is really high, he can survive being riddled with bullets and taking a laser beam to the helmet, but the Xenergy doesn’t keep his body in a locked state. as time goes on, he goes from pale and sunken to outright decaying. think Jack Goodman from An American Werewolf in London! he can’t find any way to stop or reverse this, and he has to watch himself as his body slowly falls apart.

there’s also the Sweet Voice, which both Coomer and Benrey have. Sweet Voice occurs when there’s an excess of Xenergy in the body, especially after regenerating damage or being reset, which then takes on a color pattern based on the electricity in the nerves and is expelled. it corresponds to an actual color spectrum from Xen, which is why it can be translated.

Tommy hasn’t been mentioned yet as he isn’t among the dead, but then again, it’s been a long time since he could be classified as ‘alive’. Tommy is actually working at Black Mesa for a sort of internship; not to be a scientist, but to get practice at running the ‘family business’ as he likes to call it. Tommy, G-man, and Tommy’s dog Sunkist are psychopomps- they guide newly dead souls to the afterlife. Black Mesa was the perfect opportunity for Tommy to get field experience on his own, as the company had a very high death rate and asked very few questions. his dad was already doing business with the mysterious Longevity Department, so it only made sense that Tommy practice his job in the facility. what he doesn’t expect is for a seemingly harmless experiment he was set to oversee to go so horribly wrong it upsets the balance of life and death and kickstarts a global apocalypse. he’s stressed, he’s overwhelmed, but at the very least he’s got a few friends that kinda sorta made it. he has no idea how to solve an entire facility full of employees whose souls are now trapped here, he’s just an intern after all! so he makes his new job keeping an eye on the Science Team and trying to keep them sane and alive and not zombified as they attempt to escape Black Mesa.

i’ll probably have a couple posts sometime after this going into more detail about everything, but this is it for now! my motivation for this is probably gonna wither away like every other project i’ve started so i’m gonna post what i can while i can.

if you have any ideas or questions, feel free to ask!!

[tumfullofblue]

Hey idk if u take requests but I saw u in the half life tag and saw that u do nsfw so. Can I perhaps request some Gordon content. But like specifically w him being mostly mute. Other than that u can go wild I’m just starved for Gordon content >.<

✿ ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ Your wish is my command, Nonnie! Although I gotta say, I feel very nervous about writing for Gordon Freeman himself, let alone NSFT, but hey, first time for everything! I hope you enjoy this sweet little ficlet!

Very innapropriate use of HEV armor and possibly drugged??? Gordon! If Xen fauna counts, ofc. ᵔᴥᵔ

Getting out of HEV suit was always quite challenging task. Definitely not one man's job. But you have done it so many times, it felt as easy as breathing. You had to convince Gordon to let him help you the first time - he just shook his head and it took him almost an hour tearing away plate after plate. You have done it faster. And much more gentle. And even though he didn't say a word, warmth in his eyes was the only praise you needed.

The base was quiet at this hour, only a few resistance members patrolling outside and the hum of lights filling the corridors. Gordon has returned... even more silent than usual. Breathing sporadically and immediately setting his path to medical block. Of course you were there - your job was never finished. Glancing at him, you immediately knew that something was wrong. You ran towards him and he signed too you just two words.

‘Inhaled something.’

Gordon didn't resist when you started to drag him back into your room at the far end of sick bay. He was breathing hard, and even with his glasses on his vision was foggy. He only remembered how he'd stumbled into the bloody xen fungi infested building where mushrooms were growing in such huge colonies, covering an entire corridor. Even through the filter in his helmet, Gordon was hit with stifling sweet and dangerous smell. And though he quickly left the infected house and changed the filter for a fresh one..... he knew he'd inhaled too deeply. He felt it in his blood. In his lungs. In his very being.

He let out a deep groan, but shook his head when you asked if he was in pain. He followed you like a puppy on a leash. You sat him down on the bed, quickly looked into his eyes, touched his skin, horrified at how hot his forehead was. How could you tell what he'd inhaled?

«I'll try to give you the standard antidote and I'll… I'll go there myself, you just tell me where to look,” you barely took a hand away when his own locked its fingers around your soft wrist. His bright green eyes burned with some kind of fire. He didn't look sick. And he was definitely feeling much better.... now that you were near him.

Such a pretty little nurse.

“Alright… then let’s get you out of HEV suit at least. You’ll cook alive in that thing,” he allowed you to do that, letting go of your wrist when you thought he was just protective of you. Your fingers switfly pressed on seams and plates, taking the right sleeve of first. Gordon stared at the wall through you, grabbing the blanket on a bed so hard his knuckles turned white. His blood was boiling. He saw more colors in this dully lighted rooom than in a rainbow. And then there was your smell. Goddamit, you smelled nice. He shook his hand again and let out a grumble when your fingers touched a bruised spot on his shoulder. That acted as good as a cover up for his groan as any. He couldn’t think about you this way. You were his friend. You trusted him. Besides, you were so young!..

The fungi definetly affected him. And he wasn’t even scared. Wasn’t in pain. Gordon took your arm just when you were about to start undressing his lower torso. You gasped softly when he just moved it to his cheek and… nuzzled into it. His stubble tickled you and you saw his eyes closing in what one could only describe is bliss. His mouth open slightly when he turned his head to press a kiss into your open palm. Shiver went up your spine. Usually quitre reserved and ever so closed-off scientist now was acting this affectionate. You didn’t know what to think of it. You saw him raising a hand and signing. ‘Need you.’ You thought you mistranslated it. But another open mouthed kiss, then another and his lips started their path up your arm. Moving away the sleeve of white lab coat, teeth grazing the sensitive skin. You had no way of knowing what was going on in his body now. How the fungi spores were moving faster and faster and his mind was reeling. His only cure… could only be a connection he craved so desperatly but until now didn’t had courage to act on those insincts. “Gordon, w-wait,” you protested weakly. Another gasp escaped your lips when his other hand wrapped around your waist and in one swift motion he pulled you on his lap. Letting your hands rest on his strong lean shoulders. Your own heartbeat skyrocketed. Tongue darting out to wet your lips. All of the sudden you were feeling warm, too. Gordon looked at you through his glasses, his eyes shining like two gems. The One Free Man was enchanted by you. Your hands trailed up his shoulders, neck and rested on his cheeks. The kiss was quick to come. Your lips crashed into each others, you were both touch starved and hungry for affection, and Gordon was acting like a depraved, helpless man, thanks to the spores in his system. He quickly took control of a kiss, your nose bumping into his glasses a few times. Letting out a frustated huff, he took them off and you once again admired his beautiful clever eyes. The second later and you closed your own, the pleasure of his tongue dancing with yours almost overwhelming. His hands roamed over your soft shoulders, the collarbones, down and down, cupping your breasts. You let out a whine and Gordon swallowed it. Just like you were working on his suit, he quickly undressed you of lab coat, getting it on the floor. Your hips twitched against your own will. His suit was cold and hard, but you were desperate for any kind of friction. Gordon noticed it, how you were practically grinding yourself on his thigh. Naughty girl. His hand cupped your breast and squeezed it under the thin fabric of your shirt. Earning sweet moan from you. You were quick to move faster. Even though you were suppose to help Gordon, it’s been too long since you had someone… since you touched yourself… with an almost dark smirk, the man placed his face to the nape of your neck, one hand squeezing and rubbing your chest, the other on your hips, pushing you down, dragging you nice and slow over his leg. Your panties were soaked long ago and you were making quite the mess. You moaned again, babbling mindlessly on how good you felt while Gordon made sure to pay attention to your sweet beautiful neck, placing quick kisses and bites there. Grabbing not just your chest, but your waist, your stomach, your thighs. Guiding you faster and faster. His mind was roaring – he finally got what he wanted for so long. To see your face contorned in bliss, so close to heaven. He grabbed your chin and made you look down at him again. He wanted to see you come undone just because of his thigh. He kissed your neck, listening to the wet sounds happening down there. Chuckled breathlessly and… you moan, shivering, hips now buckling without any rhythm, your head hanging heavy as you tried to breath trough your orgasm. Gordon kissed the sweat from your skin again and looked into your eyes. ‘Good job. Now, again.’ As he signed your eyes widened. It would take at least a few more orgasms from him AND you to get the fungi spores out of his wisdom. And you were never shy of a job.

[anons-has-hlvrai-aus]

Vortal Incarnation [Chapter 1]

Observation Terminated

Next Chapter

Summary: Gordon Freeman declines the G-Man’s offer and faces the consequences of those actions. Twenty years later, a vortigaunt with some of Gordon’s personal effects shows up outside of the City 17 train station, and it only goes downhill from there.

Word Count: 3,972

Ao3 Version | FFN Version

Notes: If I had a nickel for every time I wrote a story about a guy named Gordon Freeman turning into an alien…you know the rest of the meme. One of a handful of Half-Life related projects that has been bouncing around in my head for at least a month now. The rest will possibly get releases while I’m working on this and Metamorphosis, or they might not, we’ll just have to see. Notes are hard rip. This project is also one of two AUs in which Gordon is a vortigaunt! I’ll see about getting something written up for the other…maybe…possibly.

Between binding himself to a man he couldn’t trust, and certain death…he unfortunately would have preferred certain death. After all…he’d gotten lucky with everything else these past two days…either he got lucky again, or his luck ran out. It was a significantly more trustworthy gamble than whatever the man in the suit had prepared.

At least, that’s what he’d told himself when he backed away from the door of the tram and politely declined the strange man’s offer.

“Well, it looks like we won't be working together.”

The words, etched with sparsely concealed disappointment and anger, now repeated in Gordon’s head like a scratched-up vinyl record while he lay crumbled to his side in a pool of his own blood. He was almost totally blinded. His glasses had shattered spectacularly and gotten into his eyes. One side of his vision was totally gone while the other was blurry and red. It was either a miracle, or another sign of his “luck,” that he wasn’t dead from the head trauma he was suffering from.

The HEV suit was utterly destroyed. He could feel the breastplate split in so many parts that it scratched at his exposed fingers if he brushed against it with more than the faintest touch. His legs had lost their feeling long after the suit’s morphine supply had run dry and long before he’d finally tripped up and fractured something from his dominant hand from the impact.

The aliens he’d been confined with had seemingly decided against the use of their biological weapons in exchange for chasing him around with the vague threats of violence just long enough for him to finally lose his footing; after that, they’d gotten their anger out in any way possible short of an actually painless death. Gordon figured that if they were smart enough to hold grudges, they would obviously want to take their sweet time tormenting him over the loss of their leader.

He’d heard them snarling between themselves in conversation, likely debating how else to prolong his suffering, but that had been so long ago now that he wasn’t sure if the silence was them quietly relishing in his pain or from his ears being destroyed without his knowledge.

Gordon had to wonder if he was even still alive at this point. He wouldn’t have to wait long for an answer.

His confirmation that his body hadn’t failed him quite yet came in the form of something flipping him onto his back and dragging his body along the ground. It wasn’t the big guys, this felt like something closer to his size, like those alien slaves with the lightning powers.

He seemed to guess correctly as he now heard a group of the worker species chatter in their strange tongue while they took Gordon away. He would have fled the moment he heard them if he had the strength for it, having rapidly learned to jump for cover at the first sign of their presence; he didn’t even have the strength to jump out of his skin, now.

For a moment, he was sure he heard one say “Free Man,” but perhaps he was imagining it from all the exhaustion and blood-loss.

Consciousness began to slip from him, but he tried his damndest to keep himself awake, despite the pain that coursed through his body. He knew if he let go now, he likely wouldn’t wake up. He doubted that anybody was looking for him, or would find him if they were, but he felt compelled to veer away from the clutches of death regardless.

As strong as his will was to live, however, the same could sadly not be said for his body, now catching up with all of Gordon’s injuries.

As his heart gave up, a voice spoke to him. It was a guttural voice that didn't belong to anyone he could remember, but for some reason it felt familiar and like he’d heard it very recently. He hadn’t time to ponder where or when he’d heard this voice, only the time to hear its one message to him:

“The Free Man will live.”

And as the last syllable escaped the lips of this familiar stranger, so too did the final breath of Gordon Freeman.

-

Between his responsibilities with the Resistance and his duties as a Civil Protection Officer, Barney Calhoun was a very busy man.

He didn’t particularly like his Civil Protection job, but he was good at it. He’d had to do some unsavory and cruel things to keep himself away from suspicion, but the illusion of unshakable loyalty had given him a good reputation with his coworkers at City 17’s primary train station. Anything he said could be trusted, and anything he wanted to ‘handle’ was his to take.

A sigh escaped his throat as he stood idly in the interrogation room he was sharing with one of his morally bankrupt coworkers, whom he had mentally codenamed as ‘Snitch’ with how quick he was to rat out any civilians he thought were acting out of line. Barney had heard somewhere that Snitch had his brain surgically destroyed by the Combine; he was willing to believe it, if only so he didn’t have to consider the possibility that a human could naturally decline to that point of cruelty…that he could possibly decline to that point as well…

Barney focused his attention to one of the monitors in front of him to see a passenger train arrive at the station. There was nothing noteworthy about the new arrivals that he could use to warrant one of his ‘surprise interrogations’ for recruitment, such as a history of legal but subtly rebellious behavior, but that thankfully meant Snitch wouldn’t be pulling anybody aside for a petty excuse to beat the shit out of them, either. No interrogations also meant no excuses to get Snitch out of his hair, unfortunately, so he’d have to listen to the man brag about how he was probably going to get promoted soon.

After a couple of minutes, there was a knock at their door.

Snitch opened the spy hole to see another of their coworkers, turning to look over at him after they had shared a brief exchange between themselves.

“They need some more hands next door.”

“Go for it.” Barney told him.

“Not gonna join us?”

He shook his head.

“You’re going to fall behind on your quota if you’re not careful.”

“It’ll get done.” He assured with feigned cruelty. “I’ve got my ways.”

Snitch shared a glance with the other officer before sliding the spy hole shut and backing out of the room.

Precious seclusion at long last.

He cut off the cameras in the room and pried off his mask with a loud, deep sigh while he watched the passengers of the last train file through the station.

“This shit was much more tolerable in Black Mesa…” He told himself.

One of the monitors pinged him about his room’s lack of camera feed, which he quickly acknowledged and hand-waved as being part of the room’s regular maintenance routine, which wasn’t far from the truth. This room didn’t agree with something about the Combine’s camera setup and was prone to spontaneous blackouts; to the frustrations of the almighty space empire, the only solution that seemed to work was turning the cameras off at semi-regular intervals, so that was now a permanent maintenance requirement for this room. So…one point for the glorious fickleness of machinery!

He smirked a little over the inkling of freedom he got from such a strange little coincidence. He didn’t have anything to report to the Resistance today, so he would hold off on calling Doctor Kleiner for now. The man was busy anyways and wouldn’t have appreciated being distracted. Instead, he would monitor some of the cameras that lined the outside of the train station. They were there to catch anybody trying to sneak in or out of City 17 through the train station, but nobody had tried anything of the sort for years now.

Monitoring that area was still a requirement, of course. Due to the lack of commotion behind the building, Barney’s computer was oftentimes the only one listed as checking these cameras when he popped in on them, not that he actually used them to check for humans. He spent more time getting a dopamine boost from watching crows meet up than he did looking for people trying to sneak around, but he was technically following protocol when nobody else was so this somehow earned him popularity points with his peers. One point for…laziness, he supposed?

“I bet you guys haven’t even noticed the world’s gone to Hell…” He said when the first camera caught a small murder of the little black birds. “Lucky little fuckers…”

Somebody knocked at the door again, Barney took this as a hint to put his mask, and the cameras, back on.

He opened the spy hole to Snitch.

“I’ve finished cycling them, they’re online again.” He huffed, knowing his coworker had only been sent back to nag him about the cameras.

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked behind Barney at the monitors. “Birds…” Snitch scoffed.

“As always.”

“Nice to know your years of experience are paying off…” The venom in his comment could be heard through his mask’s voice filter. “You should accept those promotions, you know. You could be getting compensated big time to watch birds from the fucking Citadel by now.”

“Do you want in, or not?”

“What’s wrong?” Snitch chuckled at Barney’s attempt at deflecting. “Scared of a few body mods?”

“Do YOU want to be the one that gets ‘bird-watching duty’ in my absence?”

The man backed away from the door and shook his head. “Hell no. Nobody else here would be caught dead checking those cameras.”

“I rest my case.”

“Enjoy your birds, you fucking weirdo.” Snitch pointed at him before turning tail towards the front end of the building. “You’re wasting your time.”

Barney, wanting to get the last word in, decided to tease the man before he left. “One of these days, there’s gonna be something other than birds out there, and I’m gonna be the one to find it.”

“Like hell you are. I’m going to harass citizens near the rations dispensary.”

“Not even going to pretend to be modest today, I see.”

“Fuck you.”

With Snitch gone, Barney let out a small laugh and returned to his crows. He switched through the cameras a few times. Some had more crows than others, but definitely no people.

After a couple more minutes of flipping through, Barney had more or less gotten his fix of corvid shenanigans for the day. Just before switching the screen to someplace interior, he noticed something…odd.

There was a blind spot beneath every camera, just small enough that one could never hope to fully utilize it to evade being caught during surveillance. There was something hiding in one of those blind spots, and it was driving the crows crazy.

Barney fixated on the blob of movement at the bottom of the screen, switching screens to see if any of them had a better view.

Soon, the blob moved further away from the wall and into a clear shot for Barney to process what he was seeing.

There was a vortigaunt outside.

How the hell did a vortigaunt get all the way over here? He didn’t think they were teleportating in from Xen anymore, but maybe he would need to double check that?

The vortigaunt was…wearing something. It looked like…was that Uriah?

No, no it couldn’t have been.

It was stupid for Barney to assume that any vortigaunt wearing a lab coat was Uriah.

And obviously it wasn’t him, because while the lab coat this vortigaunt was wearing was draped over his shoulders, it was obviously fitted for a human. Barney couldn’t speak for any other vortigaunt scientists, because he didn’t know any others, but he knew for a fact that Uriah had his coats modified to fit his longer arms. So at the very least, Barney was pretty sure this Vort wasn’t somebody he knew.

But that just led to more questions about who this was and where they’d come from…

Kleiner said something about trying to get that teleporter of his working not that long ago, hadn't he? With how spontaneously this guy had shown up…were they connected to that project somehow?

Had Kleiner taken some poor vortiguant from Black Mesa East or White Forest and made them the subject of a test? It was morbid to think the older man would haphazardly throw something alive into that machine after the last time but…then again, Last Time had involved that cat…

Barney shuddered.

He wasn’t going to rule out “test subject” as a possible answer for who this vort was.

Upon further investigation, this guy didn’t even seem to be aware of his surroundings. He not only seemed clueless of where he was…he seemed clueless of how he’d even gotten here.

Barney saw that…and the first thing that came to mind was when he escaped Black Mesa with Doctor Rosenberg and had experienced that “Harmonic Reflux” thing. Yeah, Barney had known he jumped through a portal the first time, but getting caught in the reflux made him so disoriented that he very nearly forgot how he’d gotten to the places he’d ended up. If it was that bad for Barney after only a couple of bad teleports…how bad would it be if it was that vortigaunt down there?

The Kleiner test subject theory was becoming more likely…

Of course, this guy could have also just been drugged or something by the Combine.

He’d have to go outside.

That vort may have been safe right now, but if they started wandering into the city, they would definitely be captured and tortured, and Barney simply wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let that poor fella be taken into custody.

He slowly reached over to cut off the cameras again, then hesitated. No, that wouldn’t do. He needs to wait before cutting off the cameras, to keep it realistic.

He stepped back towards the door, keeping an eye on the screen to make sure the vortigaunt didn’t go anywhere, then bolted into the hallway and out the back.

The back door was heavy and slammed loudly against the exterior wall. Crows scattered everywhere as Barney approached.

“You-!” He said with a commanding tone, pointing a finger at the startled and confused alien. He paused, trying to remember what the ‘correct’ term to use was while in-character since vortigaunts hardly counted as citizens in the eyes of the Combine. His mind failed him, and he decided the ‘formality’ wouldn’t matter here.

“Come with me.” Barney motioned towards the door he’d just come through and then walked around to shove the vortigaunt inside.

He ignored any questions he got from his coworkers as he kept pushing the vort forward into his interrogation room…which was locked.

Damnit.

Barney knocked at the door, the spy hole opened in front of him.

“Where the hell did you run off-?” Snitch started to whisper before seeing the ‘detainee’ he was dragging along. “Son of a bitch.”

“…Told ya.”

“Just get the hell inside.”

The spy hole slid closed, the door swung back open, and Barney’s new friend was escorted into the interrogation room.

“…Need any help with this one?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

Snitch didn’t complain. He and Barney didn’t get along, but he still respected him enough to take what he said at face value. As such, he stepped out of the room once more.

Barney mumbled to himself while cutting out cameras, and then pulled his mask off.

“H’okay…” He sighed, “we’re safe to talk for a little bit…”

The vort drearily looked at him. Either his suspicions that they were drugged were correct, or they weren’t much of a talker.

“Hey, are you…can you understand me alright? Nod your head two times if you can.”

They tilted their head, as if trying to process the question, before awkwardly nodding their head twice.

“Okay, are you able to speak?”

They waited a bit before shaking their head.

“I see, sorry about that…” He was terrible at reading VSL, so getting the vort to sign for him was off the table for now. “Do you know where you are, or how you got here?”

They took significantly less time to answer this question, shaking their head again for both questions.

“Alright. I’m gonna do what I can to get you to connected with people who know you, okay? Just gimme a second…”

Now that Barney was up close with them, he at least had a better idea of this guy’s distinguishing features. If they were part of the Resistance, maybe somebody would be able to recognize them from his description and explain what happened to them that way. It was worth a shot…

The first thing Barney noticed was the eyes. They kept their three, secondary eyes closed at all times; whether this was a preference or a result of the vort’s condition was yet to be determined. He was also able to note three specks of yellow in the iris of their main eye that formed a vague triangular pattern, which would prove especially useful for identification. Along the back of their neck were the remnants of some fins or external gills, apparently vortiguants had those in abundance during youth and they were supposed to fall out during adulthood. Barney rarely saw any vortiguants that didn’t have at least a few of those frills somewhere on their body, but they were usually frayed and fragile. The frills along this vort’s neck seemed pretty healthy, suggesting to Barney that maybe this one was on the younger side.

Their abdominal hand fell limp, but it didn’t seem to be broken, at least. In fact, this vort looked about as healthy as he could have imagined a vortigaunt to look, which shouldn’t have been possible if they had been on Earth for a while.

The vortigaunt, unfortunately, kept their lab coat tightly wrapped around them using their two primary hands, making it difficult for Barney to find any notable birthmarks or tattoos. He didn’t want to be intrusive by asking them to undress just so he could find out, so…

“Is it okay if I check your pockets?”

They nodded again, this time pausing to squint at Barney. Did this vortigaunt…know him somehow?

The vort suddenly winced and clutched the side of their head.

“Woah, hey now!” He pulled them aside to a nearby chair. “If you’re trying to remember something, let’s take it slow…I’m sure it’ll come back to you naturally…”

The vort leaned back in the chair, the tension in their shoulders notably diminished once they did so.

“There we go, just relax. Now…let’s take a look…”

The breast pocket was searched first, with Barney able to find a rolled up tie inside, stripped with red and black.

“Heh, I hope you’re just holding this ridiculous thing for a friend.” He joked, getting a silent chuckle from the disoriented vortigaunt. “I haven’t seen a tie like this in a long time…”

As he rolled the tie back up and returned it to his owner, Barney’s gaze was drawn to a familiar angular emblem on the opposite breast of the coat…

“Black Mesa.” He whispered.

The vort, seeming to regain a hint of cognizance, raised a hand to possibly sign something, but they quickly seemed too lost to form anything and instead clutched their lab coat once more.

Barney frowned. A jacket this pristine couldn’t have come from Black Mesa, not after 20 years.

He pushed further thoughts to the back of his mind, figuring that everything would make sense once this vort was, at the very least, identified.

He checked the pocket closest to him this time, it was stretched from an attempt to fit something larger than was possible for the fabric and space provided, but the only thing inside was an ID, also Black Mesa issued if the pattern from the jacket and tie was anything to go by.

Barney pulled the card out with interest, hoping the card’s owner might lead a hint to somebody in the Resistance, maybe even somebody Barney knew.

He gave pause upon seeing the photo, having to will himself to read the name next to it:

Gordon Freeman, Ph.D

The picture, of course, had a youngish man with a dorkily stoic face staring back at him, dark green eyes almost glowing with a hidden sense of mischief.

Barney sighed and used a free hand to wipe away the tears that pricked at the edge of his eyes.

Was it wrong for him to still be grieving? Twenty years was a long time to have your best friend be dead. He knew the vortiguants talked on and on about how ‘The Free Man will return’ but it was hard to believe them when the only thing Barney could see when he thought of that name in connection to those words was his best friend being dragged away by a pair of armed troops, bragging about how they were going to hide the body.

Hide the body.

His best friend’s body.

There was a picture in Kleiner’s lab with Gordon’s face on it, very grainy and nearly impossible to make out who was who, it had done nothing to replace the image of Gordon’s unconscious form for the past 20 years. Looking at the ID Card in his hands, however, pushed away the dread of that mental image; Gordon had always been so careful with his stuff, or even with stuff he had been entrusted with, and whoever had held onto this little piece of plastic had done well to put just as much care into keeping it pristine as Gordon himself would have. It was a perfect picture for Barney to reminisce over, any worries about where and when Gordon died were secondary to the flood of emotions Barney felt seeing a clear glimpse of his best friend during life.

He didn’t know if this was supposed to be a sign from the vorts, or a gift from them, or whatever…but it was relieving to look at.

“Gordon Freeman…” he sighed longingly.

Curiously, the vortigaunt looked at him attentively.

“…what?”

They looked at the ID, then back at him, trying to mirror the stoic expression on the card.

Barney pursed his lips, looking at the ID again, then at the lab coat.

They looked at him expectantly.

No.

No, no, no.

There was…no way.

“…Gordon?”

There was NO way in Heaven, or Hell, or Earth, or Xen, or wherever the fuck the Combine came from…

The vort nodded.

Eyes widening, Barney checked the lab coat’s final pocket, immediately finding something plastic that formed a thick frame. He pulled it out.

Glasses.

Not glasses for a vortiguant, although Barney was sure they existed, but for a human. Black rimmed glasses. The glass itself looked like it had been shattered long ago, but the frames were completely fine.

“Gordon??” He asked again, desperation and hope welling up in his throat.

They…he tilted his head in confusion, but nodded again regardless.

“Oh…” the air caught in his throat as he put the glasses back into Gordon’s pocket. He had to control his breathing just to make sure he didn’t scream or burst into tears from the revelation. “…my god, it’s…you’re…” Barney couldn’t help but let out a short laugh.

Gordon Freeman was a vortigaunt. He didn’t know how, but he was. How could he not laugh?

Gordon squinted, once again trying to recognize him.

“I guess it has been a while, hasn’t it?” He didn’t wait for his friend to try any sort of reply “…it’s me, Gordon. It’s Barney…”

[vinegar-rights]

Mmmmngggg now im thinking abt frenrey.. i wanna write headcanons okay oaky

Benrey’s sweet voice comes out with a lot of force when he experiences big emotions, he tries not to vomit basically (and fails) whenever he and freeman kiss at first.

Gordon has had relationships in his past and has had some experience while hes benreys first everything

Benrey thinks that being an asshole and getting gordon riled up counts as flirting. Its the only way he thinks he can get gordons attention

The boss fight was benrey being reluctant to fill the role as the antagonist. He kept asking freeman to go back so everything can stay the same as it was. Like restarting a game before the end so you can experience everything again and again, like getting the perfect run… get all the achievements and badges to get the perfect ending. Slight angst aside benrey really loved all the attention he got from gordon. Since he was the big bad he knew he was all that gordon thought abt lol.

When benrey gets flustered his face gets all hot and a deep color, it then spreads to his ears and shoulders. Gordon doesnt blush that easily, he does like the rare sight of benrey’s usual straight face demeanor melting into a flushed color.

Benrey has tried and failed trying to get gordon out of the hev suit. Its physically impossible to get someone out of something thats integral to the game no matter how touch starved both of them are. Hed claw at the chest piece pitifully in the hopes that there’d be a glitch and feel anything other than metal and rubber.

Benrey is several inches shorter than gordon, he can shapeshift to whatever height he wants but its just a preference.

[thinking-outside-the-giftbox18]

please tell me more about your au with benrey x gordon x barney

like I want to know how benrey and barney are specifically, i'm very curious

I am SO SO GLAD that you're asking about my lore/ship because I want to share more about my goobers and their universe!

Note: I do NOT know the entirety of Half-Life. I was making lore for my TSP (The Stanley Parable) universe which is a part of a multiverse. I watched HLVRAI by mistake when I mistook Benry for Barney and I just love HLVRAI and Benry that it’s hard not to put it in the lore.

About the Ship - GeeBees:

A proper love triangle where all three love, respect, and care for each other.

Gordon (he/him; FTM) is curious and everything about Benry fascinates him. Barney and Gordon are childhood friends and had become lovers after HL2 with Barney helping Gordon recover. Gordon would much prefer both his lovers safe and unhurt but understood that that'll happen once the Resistance finds a bigger base for shelter. Now, he stays at home taking care of himself and helping when needed, otherwise, he'd cuddle Benry and Barney when one or both are back home. He enjoys giving and receiving physical affection to his lovers and despises silence, so it's a blessing to have two lovers who make all the sounds they want around him. He was the reason why Benry sleeps between him and Barney after Benry warded off G-Man one night.

Benry is healing with Gordon and Barney for the better, he helps around with them and the Resistance base, and his affection is reciprocated and returned tenfold, it’s worse in a good way when Gordon and Barney proudly one-up Benry’s weirdness. He adores Gordon and is happy that he doesn't find him weird in a bad way and it does surprise him at first back at the simulation, but he grew to love his curious yet freaky nature of Gordon as he'd too learn new things about himself (like his true form(s), shapeshifting and purring). Barney and Benry just GET each other as they've experienced being left in the background and Barney could easily pick up Benry who is fine with being carried by hot people.

Barney had always been taking care of the two and making sure to not lose Gordon again, because of Benrey, Barney feels validated on his feelings and anxieties while also letting Benry help him around, though he does like to lightheartedly tease Benry. Barney and Gordon being childhood friends helped a lot on their relationship and meeting Benry somehow strengthened their bond as the duo became a trio. Benry and Gordon would pay Barney back for taking care of them by taking care of him too. Benry even helps by shapeshifting into Barney to take his place at Combine when Barney's unable to work. And when Barney's anxieties get to him, Benry can purr and sing some blue balls into his mouth to calm him.

More on the Giftverse AU and how GeeBees got along under "Keep Reading" cuz' this is too long ^^;

If you or anyone reading this has questions, reblog, comment/reply, DM, and even ASK me because I'd love to tell more! ^^

I have AUs for this ship, just to let you know ^^

What happened in this AU?

The interesting things that happened BEFORE that: 

Benrey and the Science Team (Tommy, Bubby, Dr. Coomer, Darnold, and Forzen) were put into a simulation that would later be HLVRAI.

Gordon and Barney are childhood friends who managed to stay in contact and meet again in Black Mesa.

After Black Mesa put Benrey and his Science Team in the simulation, they all were put into this sort of hibernation until a player arrived and dons the in-game HEV suit as “Gordon Freeman”. This happened 3 times, according to Benry, and the gameplay is different each time. Before being put in the simulation though, Benrey took and hid a master code of the simulation which lets him do whatever he wants with the map and story of the game. The first “player” (2010) was a guide who helped take the Science Team around the Black Mesa map, and Benry named them “Puter”. Sadly, Puter’s data and memory were erased to make way for the second player (2020) “Feetman” and started what we all know as “HLVRAI” and Benry changed the story and gameplay of the simulation because he thought it was boring.

The third player (2030), after the simulation erased the data and memory of the game model, is both Gordon and Barney who exchange because Gordon takes mandatory naps to recover from his PTSD and morphine rehab, and Benrey feels hope on leaving the simulation just to see them face-to-face.

After the events of ResCas and Gordon waking up from Stasis to Half-Life 2, Gordon gets together with Barney and maintains a platonic/sibling bond with Alyx, who then gets taken to Stasis by G-Man. Gordon HAS witnessed Eli dying, only to see him fine yet grieving Alyx’s disappearance (2020). That made Gordon DESPISE G-Man.

How GeeBees met?

Gordon and Barney reside together in the White Forest Resistance base. The apocalypse is nearing its end (2030), but Gordon and Barney are more happy about being a couple after so long. One day though, Gordon opened the door to G-Man who gave him an errand of the day: Play a game and retrieve something important, and as he appeared, he left suddenly. He also left a Playstation 2 console in a box by Gordon’s doorstep, and Barney helped Gordon set it up while unsure of what G-Man was planning. Along with the console was a VR set and a game CD with a blank cover and “Half-Life VR” written on the disc with black marker.

Gordon put on the game and the headset, he expected anything but a shitty yet semi-accurate environment that was the entrance of Black Mesa. Barney, who was behind Gordon and watching the TV screen, couldn’t believe it either. Gordon was starting to panic as he remembered all that happened during the day ResCas happened and Barney and Gordon were trying to figure out who was sick enough to make a game on the thing that started the apocalypse and what would they say to Eli and Issac. All their worries were halted after they heard a deadpan voice “hey. can i see your passport?”. And that’s when their lives changed for the better.

Long story short: Gordon and Barney take turns playing the game with Benry and the Science Team guiding them, Gordon’s worries about the game lessened when important events that had happened were changed into something more lighthearted. After playing the game (which Gordon and Barney didn’t want to do), Benrey managed to get him and the Science Team into Gordon and Barney’s shared phone before Gordon and Barney could figure out how to get them out of the digital space. 

After that, Benrey stays with Gordon and Barney while everyone else wants to live elsewhere around the base. It was tough for the Science Team to come to terms with the fact that they were no longer in a simulation and that the ResCas was an actual event (and also the fact that Benrey is meeting the ACTUAL infamous Gordon Freeman who he first heard from the researchers before he was put into the simulation) but in the end, they want to help the Resistance.

More does happen after, Issac adopts Bubby as his brother (Bubby being cloned from Issac), Tommy helps with retrieving Alyx and another OC of mine out of G-Man’s Stasis, and Benrey helps Barney by shapeshifting as him at Combine as well as getting to sleep between Gordon and Barney to keep G-Man away.

And this is practically fanon in my lore, but Giftverse! Gordon, Barney, and Benry get to meet their alternate AU versions of themselves.

Sorry this is too long, so here's Benry's "Gordon Freakman"

[just-a-random-person24]

MORE BARNEY'S MIND NOTES APON YE!

Episode 4

• sees a guard crushed by a barrel and just says ‘that's gotta hurt’

• points out a bottomless pit with no handrails near it

• “Barney Calhoun, crane operator!”

• likes pushing stuff cause it makes him feel strong

• assumes there's an earthquake, only to remember that New Mexico doesn't have earthquakes

• says evolution sucks because humans only got opposable thumbs instead of teleportation and the ability to shoot lightning

• when he reincarnates into something else, he wants to regenerate and have Wolverines claws. That's not how reincarnation works.

• hates MySpace cause it's a waste of time

• says he's like a ninja-pirate for running and jumping onto a ladder

• finds out steam is hot

•likes Star Trek more than Star Wars, but got off track while saying that

• gets his wrist caught on a ladder he almost falls down, hurts a ton

• assumes a dead scientist is asleep

• doesn't know why a scientist has a Spas-12

• dropped out of college

• very confused why the guards don't get a HEV suit but the scientist's do

• would be surprised if he gets out of Black Mesa without breaking any bones

• wants pizza

• damn counter: 1

Episode 5

• very confused about how the handicapped employees are supposed to survive a disaster, given all the ladders and bottomless pits

• thinks Barnacles look like a meaty spitwad with teeth

• tries to use the Barnacle tongue to swing only to get choked immediately

• got sewage in his mouth :(

• calls 1 person a massacre

• gets mad at aliens for killing a guy who probably owed him money, them says the aliens owe him money now

• “Barney Calhoun, debt collector!”

• makes a comment about a zombie body disappearing

• thinks the Vortigaunts are worse than the alien from Alien

• pulls a random lever to know what it would do

• thinks his situation is worse than Resident Evil

• reads a sign that says to keep explosives out of the canal, then does it cause it seems fun

• “rofl-freaking-mao”

• has no clue how long it has been, assumes its been a day already

• is not upset about the time-frame as Stark was

• SHEPHARD MENTION💖

• thinks he knew the guy the HECU threw down, also assumes that guy owes him money

• says he's never buying anyone a pizza again

• damn counter: 1

Episode 6

• very not surprised about finding another room w/o proper lighting

• thinks the pipes are made of asbestos

• finds where the ladder in Episode 3 goes, finds it very weird and annoying the ladder is purposefully made too high to reach

• finally encounters the HECU properly

• more ‘yarg's

• knows the passcode to one of the doors on the surface

• takes a dead guards vest

• wants to hijack said dead guards SUV and leave, then doesn't because the engine block

• knows he can't shoot a lock open because of MythBusters

• very confused why the HECU was shooting at him

• tries to shoot a panel to open it. Then remembers in Star Wars it closes the door, *then* wonders why it would do anything in the first place cause it would just break the panel

• falls down a ladder and gets knocked out

• oh yeah this series was made in 2009…

• very confused about why there was a turret in a random cavern

• is not disgusted by cockroach guts because he's stepped in so much other shit

• says he'll have a badass hardened personality when he gets out

• likes the sound of being locked in a padded room

• very confused how the valve closed off the steam

• says, something abt 2012? I have *no* clue what he said exactly it was quiet and he doesn't go back to the thought

• thinks all the water is from Black Mesa fixing their own plumbing

• gets Bullsquid acid to the face

• killing a lot of cockroaches for no reason

• sees a toolbox and thinks its a lunchbox

• very surprised at how explosive the explosive barrels are to explode a hole in the wall *and* the toolbox

• damn counter: 14

[sanvirtheobserver]

Taking Flight, Chapter 69: Coming In Hot

The halls and blocks of Shepherd's Watch are infested. Rows upon rows of machines stare aimlessly in a catatonic daze until the cries of a Ghoul draw them out from the halls. Stalkers corral the outgoing hordes as the Ghouls guide them towards the city with their cries, ready to continue the slaughter. In the courtyard, Brutes pound and tear cars and shipping crates into shards of scrap, which Grapplers then hoist and haul deeper into the complex. There, the Burners melt the refuse down into molten metal, which is then hammered and molded into components fit for assembly. Infernal contraptions construct a chassis over a pulsing rune matrix before its inner frame is flooded with dense ferrofluid. A newborn machine shrieks for the first time in its wretched existence. A radiant engine of infernal design glowed with the light of a thousand souls within a church inside the prison, now converted into a makeshift workshop, as the manic Doctor Ridley toils away at her next project. The mitre and stole atop her HEV Suit were caked in soot and metal dust after another hard day's work. She rushes towards the engine as it produces another soul gem core. She places the gleaming jewel within the shell of a rune matrix, one much more intricate than her previous design.

Ridley: Alright, now..........

She turns towards the newly constructed knight-like chassis laying atop her worktable, it's chest opened wide to reveal a black metallic reservoir. The matrix is carefully placed within the cavity. The fluid seeps into its shell until it reaches the core. Runes light up and move around as the matrix stirred to life, and a black pulsing mass of fluid and filaments takes shape around it before the chest closes shut.

Ridley: Yes......... Rise, my child.

She flips a lever, and the frame began to twitch and convulse with electrical power as it's's optics flickered to life. A sense of jubilance enraptured the doctor's twisted heart as her newest creation rose from the worktable to stand before her.

Ridley: YES! IT LIVES! IT BREATHES! THE GLORIOUS EVOLUTION HAS BEGUN!

Ruusul: With all due respect.........

She turns towards the red robed Orokin standing in the corner.

Ruusul: The whole "glorious evolution" shtick is starting to get a little stale.

Ridley: Excuse you! I'm on the verge of ushering in a new age of humanity here, just as it was envisioned by our-

Ruusul: Your lord and savior, Viktor. You've made that abundantly clear, already.

Ridley: Why I've never- HOW DARE YOU USE HIS NAME IN VAIN!? You should be HONORED to witness the dawn of the future. I say you should be a bit more grateful for that.

He strides closer to the delinquent doctor with a lethal glare.While Ruusul is a patient man when it comes to results, his tolerance for back-talk is much more limited. This became apparent to the doctor as she met his gaze.

Ruusul: And you should do your best to remember the ones who invested in your little project.......... doctor.

Ridley: Um....... I-

Ruusul: And keep in mind that this investment was made under the notion that you would cooperate to your fullest capacity to bring us the desired results, yes?

Ridley: O-of course, um......

Ruusul: As a fellow artist, I can admire the passion you have for your work, but one must not let that get in the way of the results they desire.

Doctor Ridley's defiance had now been swiftly doused by Ruusul's icy glare as he leaned in closer.

Ruusul: So let us not get TOO caught up in the moment, shall we, Doctor?

Ridley: Yes. Understood.

There it is. A smile took shape under his mask upon hearing the telltale sign of submission in her voice. The catharsis of seeing an arrogant accomplice knowing their place can be oh so intoxicating. But as he said, you shouldn't get too caught up in the moment.

Ruusul: Good.

He finally backs away, once again giving the doctor the space to breathe.

Ruusul: I trust your newest creation will be the well needed improvement you've been looking for.

Ridley: Of course. It will be done.

A rumbling from outside draws her attention to the monitors on her desk. Absolute bedlam is beginning to unfold as the Mercenaries are making their way towards the prison. Dozens of Jeeps and trucks ram through the oncoming hoard of machines as both Mercenaries and Operators open fire with everything they have, all while an Airship hangs above and rains hell from above with its Autocannons. On the Bridge, Meggy comes up to see Lucinia waiting for her alongside a RED Pyro.

Garnet: (Spletzer. You ready to roll?)

Meggy: You bet.

She looks back to see Mario coming up the stairwell along with Melony, Vale, Julia, and Noah all ready to go.

Julia: Alright, so what's the plan?

Garnet: (We're gonna be heading inside the prison. Marston's ground assault should keep them busy enough to let us slip in undetected.)

Lucinia taps a button on her PDA and brings up a holographic map of the prison.

Lucinia: Scanners are picking up a massive energy signature within the complex. Once we're inside, our objective will be to locate that source and shut it down.

Meggy: Alright, sounds easy enough. Everybody ready?

Mario: OH YEAH!

Julia: Affirmative.

Noah: Yes ma'am!

Vale: Just about.

Melony: Ready for action!

That's when Meggy notices something is missing. She heads back down to the Crew Quarters to see Tari sitting on one of the bunks. On the bunk across from her laid Uzi, who wouldn't be attending the mission on account of a headache and some dizziness. Tari gets to her feet and follows Meggy out of the room, where she spares one last glance at the remaining half of Zoey's frame.

Meggy: You ready?

Tari takes a deep breath before summoning her glaive.

Tari: As ready as can be.

Now that the preparations were done, the team heads out to the front deck. Tari and the siblings spread their wings, Melony begins to levitate, and Mario does his thing as his body shrinks beneath him and his head expands to a size large enough to carry three people. Garnet was amused at seeing Meggy climb atop the giant floating head, whereas Lucinia......... well, her face says it all.

Meggy: Don't worry! I brought parachutes!

Garnet: (I call shotgun!)

The Squad departs and makes their approach. The war zone below them raged with the clashing of man against machine, allowing them to slip past the bedlam without much of a hassle. Tari and the siblings circled the complex for a moment before finding their entry point in the northern courtyard. Tari and Vale are the first ones to approach as they land behind a large pile of cars, followed by Julia and Noah landing behind an adjacent heap as they survey the area.

Vale: I'm counting three Brutes and six Grapplers. Advise?

Julia: We need to secure this courtyard for Mario to land. Tari, you and Vale will take out the Grapplers while-

A quaking blast shakes the ground around them. The four almost stumble out of cover as the machines immediately encircle the sight of a large crater. The sight of a green haired woman and her mighty sword brought a smile to Tari's face.

Julia: Okay. Change of plans. Stand back and stand by.

A Grappler casts its hook and grabs her by the arm as a Brute comes charging in. A flick of the wrist is all it takes to wretch the Grappler from its post, sending it screaming through the air until it shatters against the Brute's armored frame in an explosion of black ichor. The Brute charges Melony while another attempts to seize her from behind, but she proves too quick as she vaults over one just in time for the other to come crashing in, resulting in a catastrophic collision. With the two Brutes left dazed after the impact, she closes in for the kill. Even their thick armored plating proved ineffective at stopping the divine steel from ripping through their frames as if they were flesh and bone. Only one Brute remained as it swung for her, only to be stopped with a single outstretched palm. Another Grappler attempted to snare her, but she catches the hook in the nick of time and swiftly ties it around the Brute's wrist. She dodges back as the Brute swipes at her, swinging the Grappler like a flail as it inadvertently smashed the other Grapplers in its attempts to crush Melony. Her blade blocks both its fists as they come crashing down onto her. The impact would've reduced a mere mortal to paste on the floor, but Melony withstood the blow even as the ground beneath her cracked and cratered beneath her. The blade began to glow with a light so intense, it began to melt the molded iron of her aggressor's fists. She sends the Brute skidding back with a single push, and a swing of the blade launches a disk of light towards it. The Brute attempts a block, but the burning divine light proves too much for the molded iron as it cuts through both its arms and rips through its torso with ease. Melony watches as the Brute's remains collapse into a heap of smoldering metal, and she takes the moment to wave to the others still flying above them.

Melony: Alright! Courtyard is clear!

One remaining Grappler launches its hook, but Melony once again catches it by the cable and yanks it towards her before cleaving it in two.

Melony: Okay, NOW it's clear!

The siblings were astonished at the carnage they just witnessed. So were the others when Mario finally made his landing. As for Tari, she was just happy to see her friend back on the saddle after so long. Meggy and the others disembark from Mario's hat before his body shifts back to normal. Tari and the siblings emerge from their cover and regroup with the rest of the team.

Lucinia: Wow...... I gotta say, that was some premium sword work back there.

Meggy: If you think that was cool, just wait until you see her summons.

Lucinia: Her....... summons?

Mario: Yeah! Like those Pokemans cards! Show her, Melony!

Melony proceeds to demonstrate what Meggy means, taking out a notepad and sketching up some drawings of miscellaneous anime characters. The characters then erupt to life with an emerald hue, ready for action.

Garnet: (You guys are just full of surprises, aren't you.)

Metallic screeches can be heard in the distance. It looks like the courtyard won't be clear for long.

Melony: I got it covered here. You guys head inside.

With Melony and her summons covering the courtyard, the others get ready to head inside.

Tari: Let's put this nightmare to rest.

[cuddlecave]

New anon back again, with an AU idea this time…hopefully this’ll still be fun!

Hear me out—a fantasy/medieval au. Reluctant knight Gordn in his HEV suit orange armor has been kind of voluntold to defend the town in which he lives and works from various minor threats, with the occasional assistance of a super-strong warrior, a fire mage, and a man with a surprisingly powerful dog. (And the village potions master, perhaps)

When a massive deep blue dragon comes to nest in a mountain near the town, of course it’s Gordn who’s told to go take care of it before it “inevitably” comes to burn down the place and/or rob it of all its riches. So Gordn, feeling extremely wary, goes up to the top of the mountain…and is promptly startled by a vaguely annoyed dragon who would very much like to be Left Alone, Please And Thank You.

A fight ensues, and while Gordn is doing some damage to this dragon (it’s Benb. We all know this), he’s very visibly attacking despite being afraid, and also talking a lot at Ben, which nobody else has done before. So, Benb figures that Gordn might actually be willing to listen to him—which most humans aren’t—and decides that he has a great way to keep this human from hurting him anymore while he tries to think of how to explain that he doesn’t actually want to menace the nearby town.

He grabs Gordn in his mouth, tears the sword from his hand with a claw, and then gulps the small human right down. Not into his stomach, of course, but into a special pouch that dragons have for holding prey and keeping it alive for digesting later. (Benb’s not planning to eat Gordn at all, but he doesn’t know that…)

Gordn, as is to be expected, immediately panics and apologizes and starts begging to be let out. Benb, who’s feeling a little bit annoyed by the slashes to his wings (do you know how long those take to heal, man?), decides not to talk right away and just goes about settling down to patch himself up.

Unfortunately, by the the time he realizes that maybe Gordn’s *really* panicking, it’s too late, and now he’s got a human who’s just passed out from hyperventilating.

Congratulations, Benny boy, you’ve got some explaining to do when he wakes up!

(Also, Benb absolutely still talks like a gamer bro. This is a constant in every universe.)

P.S.: I just stumbled upon the “BM fleshpit” idea today and oh my goodness that’s SUCH a cool concept aaaaaa-

ooooooh i like me that idea. i'm picturing dragon benbl looking like a more classic-style dragon version of the big squid dragon version i designed for the leviathan au. and i'm also picturing gordn's armor as having, like bronze-orange designs on the mainly silver armor. maybe there's a couple sneaky lil lamda symbols in the designs too, hee hee.

also maybe tommy is like, a druid. his Powerful Dog is his main familiar or something.

also also YES i love the BM fleshpit <3 in the hlvoreai server, it's been expanded some with there being a point in time in which benbl rises up out of the ground (he's no where NEAR the size of the actual mystery flesh pit, just about as big as BM itself) leaving behind a big crater where there once was a dubiously ethical research facility. and then he eventually ends up becoming a wandering tourist attraction once it becomes clear to everyone that this big monster-thing is completely non-hostile/threatening. they call him the "Great North American Titan", or GNAT for short (which i'm amused by since 'gnat' usually refers to something VERY tiny, heh heh)

also the sci-team all live inside him at this point more or less. he's a mobile apartment complex! and the skeletons are weird lil symbiots called "calcimites" that look like a human skeleton at first glance but when you get a better look at them you clearly see "oh that is a fucked up human-shaped bug-thing"

also figured that fleshpit benbl has some ability to like, morph some of his flesh around a calcimite and then brainjack it to use as an extra mini-body. he make it convincingly human enough to walk around human towns and stuff with the team when they go on supply runs/want to get out for some sunshine and grass-touching

(this also makes it easier to kiss his comparitively tiny boyfriend :)c )

[py6oto]

art challenge i wanted to try !!

ft. the evolution of my gordon design.

one of my favorite artists, sapgoon, came up with this little challenge. i thought it would be super fun to try to imitate my old art styles- not only that, but it was also surprisingly easy. i guess they're still a part of me after all this time.

have you guessed my favorite character to draw yet?

i will go a little in depth about them under the cut !!

2017 (perhaps it should be 2018, but it's the same style for that, so whatever.)

-very dull colors, same face syndrome, completely black lineart, messy black/dark purple shading, extremely shaky fingers and little to no care for consistency. this is quite literally my very first art style, as 2017 is when i first began drawing digital art.

as you may know, however, hlvrai did not exist in 2017, so i never actually drew gordon like this. i just drew what i think i wouldve drawn back then, if hlvrai had existed.

2020

- this is the art style i had when i initially learned about hlvrai's existence! same face syndrome is still there, but i get a little bit better with colors and my hands finally stopped shaking. im not a fan of the design i gave him back then (i really couldnt make sense of the hev suit at all), but every artist has their ups and downs.

2021/22

- i begin to get confident and find my own art style, trying to overcome the same face syndrome and learning a little bit about color theory. its a very messy style, and its the first time i began keeping my hlvrai designs consistent through all my drawings.

2023

-present time !! im... not sure what happened. i definitely improved a lot of aspects, but i don't wanna jinx anything. just look at it! wow.

looking back i realize hlvrai has been very important for my art journey, encouraging me to push myself out of my comfort zone multiple times. and though i just began posting my art again recently, i hope i continue getting better and better in the future !!

2023.08.12

[decks-writing-blog]

Gordon Swap Chapter Thirteen: I'm Sorry

Chapter One

Previous Chapter

[A/N] The whole of this chapter was supposed to have been at the end of last chapter but y'all already saw how long that chapter is so it got split, ending my pattern of switching POV each chapter. Who would've thought Feetman getting something as important as a cool new alien hand would take so many words?

~

In preparation for the worst because merely hoping it would be a smooth ride wasn’t enough, they formed a loose ring around the elevator’s center. Theoretically they had every angle covered and thus could shoot anything as soon as it finished teleporting in.

“You gonna be okay with your new lightning hand?” Barney asked.

Tempting as it was to say, ‘no’ and continue to hide while everyone else took care of the enemies, there wasn’t anywhere to hide. And the lightning shooting hand did mean he could finally fight back again; he wasn’t defenseless anymore. He’d had some time to get a little target practice done while the Vonneguts; big teleporter had been firing up. Not enough for him to be confident with it but he wasn’t a coward and now that he could fight back, he would. “I’ll be fine.” He maybe even made his voice sound like he believed that.

“All righty then.” Barney moved aside to take his place to Gordon’s right. He sounded like he believed him too. “Everyone ready to kill some aliens?”

“It’s gonna be like a shooting gallery,” Tommy said. “Maybe. I don’t actually know that. But if you think about it like that, it’s less scary.”

“Maybe they won’t even attack us.” They’d been going up for a few minutes now and so far nothing had. Still too early to say for sure and maybe Gordon was jinxing it by mentioning it but it was technically possible.

“We did kill an awful lot of them,” Dr. Coomer said. “In fact, I do believe we killed more aliens than soldiers. And we killed the entire US military, remember? So surely they’ve run out of alien troops by now.”

“Didn’t we determine that they have two armies though?” Bubby said. “One for each our worlds or something. Which is why there’s been so fucking many of them every time we turn a damn corner. So probably we’ll…” He cut off as the air crackled with the now very familiar sound of an alien teleporting in. “See? Told you.”

As always, where there was one, more quickly followed. And as had been the case since joining up with the rest of team, there were indeed a lot. Gordon was ready though, lifting his new hand to aim at the one of the ones teleporting into his designated section. His friends were already firing, filling the air with the sounds of gunfire.

The lightning tingled in the palm of his new hand as it charged. It felt like it was in his bones, unpleasant but at least it was a weapon. As the alien, a balloon guy, he was aiming at finished coming it he fired it off and… missed. Giving it time and space to fire at him instead. He could dodge though and had the HEV suit to protect him if not. And he had enough practice with it that he could charge his next shot even while side stepping the barrage of energy orbs. That bolt hit.

Leaving a small trail of smoke behind, the alien fell. It hit the railing with a meaty thud, bouncing off to continue its fall down the shaft. A one shot kill on a second try! That was pretty damn good. Maybe other-Gordon wasn’t the only one of them who could be cool. No time to celebrate though, there were more still threatening them.

~

True to Dr. Coomer’s initial prediction, they were indeed attacked repeatedly. Hoping against it had indeed been futile. A fairly small moving platform being hard to land ground troops in on even for whatever powerful thing they were up against, it was entirely balloon guys. They didn’t look scary but Gordon had seen what they could do even without mind controlling any Vonneguts. They’d been the ones to kill his alternate. One good bolt of lightning from his hand was enough to kill them though. All he had to do was not miss.

It wasn’t terribly different than aiming with a gun. And the longer this elevator ride lasted with its waves of hostile aliens – the breaks between them shorter than ever, their adversary was getting desperate – the better his aim with it got. He could be a badass alien killer too. It was a literally an alternate version of himself he was admiring the combat skills of after all. Thus he knew for a fact he could be like that too. Except instead of guns he had alien lightning. He never had to worry about reloading, just charging the thing. As long as he kept the HEV suit charged using the batteries from the pack he and Barney had thankfully packed with what at the time seemed to be an overkill of supplies, he was basically unstoppable, right? With how combat efficient everyone else was too, everything was going to be fine! They had this fight in the bag basically.

And it was fine, everything was going as good as it could given the circumstances right up until it wasn’t.

One moment Gordon had been almost having fun shooting aliens out of the air, watching their limp deflating bodies fall down the elevator shaft, trailing smoke. The next, the suit’s speakers buzzed as the display inside the helmet flashed, indicating its systems were drained. He took a step back but he’d extended too far forward, almost to the railing.

Something hit him, he couldn’t tell what or from which direction, but with the suit being reduced to barely better than regular armor, it hurt like hell. Either by coincidence or purposeful targeted assault, he was hit again almost immediately squarely in the chest. He stumbled and fell, landing hard on his shoulder before flopping onto his back. Breathing was suddenly difficult and each gasp for air sent a fresh stab of pain through his chest. Blood bubbled up in his throat, hot and coppery.

He clawed as the HEV suit’s collar, trying to find the button to lower the helmet before he suffocated. Before he found it another energy orb hit him. He saw it come through the visor but couldn’t move to avoid it hitting him in the chest again. It was like having his hand cut off again except it was in his chest this time. The metal of the HEV suit dissipated it some but unpowered it couldn’t do much.

A hand grabbed his upper arm and dragged him across the floor, aggravating every hurt in his body. “You okay?” That was Barney’s voice. It sounded distant.

No. Gordon wasn’t okay. Every breath hurt more than the last. Blood still bubbled up into a foam in his mouth. Whatever was broken inside his body wasn’t just his lung though. Something was very wrong. Bad enough that injecting a med-pack into the suit couldn’t fix it? … Maybe.

“User death imminent. Seek medical attention.” Even the HEV suit’s battery for non-essential functions was shot, making the words drawl out of the speakers slurred. Which made them all the more unsettling.

This was how he died, wasn’t it? Drowning in his own blood, fighting futilely against it, every breath and movement painful enough to make him want to scream if he’d had the breath for it. He wasn’t a stranger to the thought but now faced with it, he didn’t want to die. Really, really badly, he did not want to die.

Barney said something more above him. He couldn’t make it out. Maybe there were more voices too. It was hard to tell. But hey, at least he wasn’t alone. He’d always feared he’d die alone. Despite that and the pain and wrongness radiating through his body, he still didn’t want to though. More than anything he wanted to continue to live. … It wasn’t a choice though.

He blinked open his eyes to find his vision no longer darkened and his helmet down. The pain was gone, his breath easy in his chest. He stood in a circular room made of gray almost black stone, atop a raised platform. A small set of narrow stairs led up to it. The elevator. They were back at the bottom.

He pressed a hand to his chest. His heart pounded hard enough to make his ears ring but… he was fine. Completely and utterly fine. As if he hadn’t been hit at all. Everyone stood around him except for Benrey who stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“He died again, didn’t he?” Bubby said. “That’s why everyone got all quiet, right?”

‘Again’? Right yeah, other-Gordon. He must’ve died too and reset to here to bring Gordon back. Which meant maybe Gordon hadn’t died at all. He’d just been dying and his alternate had just happened to die then too. Gordon hadn’t actually died. He couldn’t have because that was absurd.

“Um, ‘again’ isn’t the right word,” Tommy said. “Congrats Mr. Freeman, you reset time when you die too.”

“I did that?” No way, right? That was his alternate's burden to bear.

Speaking of his alternate, he was pulling Barney over to sign something to him before pulling him in Gordon’s direction.

While he did that, Dr. Coomer spoke up. “Watch out, Gordon! You should be extra vigilant when there’s no cover from enemy fire.”

“That was really me then?”

In front of him now, his alternate nodded. He gesture to Barney to speak. “Uh… he said he wants to apologize. He didn’t tell me for what but um, I guess its got something to do with you dying. Did you really die?”

“Um… yeah, I guess I did.” Gordon shouldn’t be surprised, right? They’d known it was possible. But still, it didn’t feel real. How could he have possibly been in so much pain, desperately clinging to life, and then suddenly everything was just fine.

“So it wouldn’t’ve mattered if Bubby had tested it?” Benrey asked, still standing at the stairs. “But does this count as resetting the race too or… what? I was making good progress.”

“Uh… no. It’s still on just… give me a minute, ‘kay? Please.” He needed some time to process that he was indeed fine.

“Hmm… first death, huh?”

“Yeah. Hopefully the only.” There was no guarantee of that though.

“’Kay. You got five minutes.” Benrey lifted a hand, spreading his fingers to indicate the promised five minutes. “If you’re not ready to go again by then, I get a head start.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, that’s fair.” It wasn’t but Gordon didn’t really care. In fact, Benrey winning would be just fine with him if it meant he didn’t have to face possibly dying again. He turned his attention back onto other-Gordon and Barney who’d had a sign language exchange during his side conversation with Benrey.

“He wants to apologize for letting you die,” Barney said. “He said that he was gonna try to make sure that that didn’t happen but then he got caught up in the fight and you seemed to be doing fine so he wasn’t paying as much attention as he should’ve and you died as a result and he’s sorry about it.”

“Nah, dude it’s… well it’s not fine. But it’s not your fault.”

Bubby butted in from the side. “How’d you die anyway? ‘Cause I still don’t remember this shit and it fucking sucks.”

“Um… internal bleeding, I think. I’m not really sure.” And he didn’t want to think about it too much. Watching other-Gordon die had been bad enough. Dying himself was something else entirely. “It hurt. A lot.” He couldn’t literally taste his own blood anymore but the memory of it and the way it had felt bubbling up in his throat was vivid enough that he almost could.

“The balloon guys shot him a whole bunch with their energy orbs,” Tommy answered.

Other-Gordon signed something else. “He asking if you need a break,” Barney translated once he was finished. “And that probably we can’t take a super long one but if you want to sit down for a few minutes, we can.”

“Wow,” Bubby cut in again before Gordon could answer. “He’s actually offering to slow down. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Dr. Coomer invited himself back into the conversation with, “To be fair, Dr. Bubby, dying is rather awful. And this is Gordon’s first death. The first one is always the hardest.”

“Eh, I guess that’s fair. Go sit down for a bit Gordon. I’ll have Tommy fill me in on what else I might’ve missed while we wait.”

Well, if both other-Gordon who rarely slowed down and Bubby who liked to complain when people slowed down for too long were telling him he could sit for a bit, he was well justified in doing so. He walked past them and back down the stairs, passing Benrey so he could go over sit with his back against the the wall. Far enough away from everyone else to create an illusion of calm.

Other-Gordon followed and hovered awkwardly in front of him.

“You can join me.” The company was greatly welcome in fact. He sat down next to him, close enough to be in easy reach but far enough that he wasn’t crowding Gordon’s personal space.

The silence was comfortable but… “You died… how many times?” Gordon asked after maybe about a minute, turning his head to look towards his alternate.

Other-Gordon shrugged before lifting his an index finger to start acting like he was counting on his other hand. He repeated the motion several times quickly before shrugging again.

“A lot?”

He nodded. Then he gestured towards where the rest of the group were still milling about on and around the elevator and repeated the counting gesture again. Much slower this time.

“Less since joining up with them?”

Another nod. He lifted his hands to make a heart. He appreciated them probably more than Gordon ever had.

“You were… alone before the swap and meeting up with them?” There were many clues pointing to that being the case, it hardly needed to be asked but Gordon wanted confirmation.

He nodded.

And here Gordon had been thinking he’d had it bad with losing his hand and all the annoyance his companions brought. He could’ve been alone during the initial fallout of the Resonance Cascade, dying over and over again because death was far more likely while alone in such a dangerous scenario. … Maybe other-Gordon wasn’t a stoic badass and had never been one. The need to get good at killing stuff had been beaten into him the hard way; it was that or die even more often.

“I’m sorry. That must’ve sucked.” Dying the once had been worse than he ever would’ve thought. He couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to do so repeatedly while also utterly alone.

Other-Gordon didn’t bother trying to give any kind of reply this time. He just shifted his gaze away. There was wasn’t anything Gordon could do to make it better, could he? Here and now, still so close to it all, wasn’t the time nor the place to even get properly into it. They had a thing they had to kill to end what they’d started, to put a stop to it.

“I’m sorry,” he said again because what else could he say? “This’ll be over soon though. Just a little bit more and then we can kill the thing and go home. Or, heck, if we’re lucky, Benrey will get there first and kill it for us. … Assuming he can anyway. He might not be able to since we have basically no idea what it is. So probably sitting back and letting him do all the work isn’t what we’re gonna do, huh? As nice as that would be.” Probably the wisest option would be to go into the fight with him and have him help. Even now though, the thought of depending on him for help grated.

Other-Gordon gave him a thumbs up.

Probably they should get a move on. The sooner this thing was dealt the, the better after all. They’d been in such a rush for a reason. But… just another minute or two couldn’t hurt, could it?

~

Next Chapter

[theancientdarkbeauty]

💚🦈- Blood, Garnet, Scarlet, Wine, Lipstick and Poppy

Alright, first, I’ll do Tera, my Half Life OC. The quick background on her is that she is a biochemical engineer who was testing the Biology Department’s HEV suit when the Resonance Cascade happened, and thus survived by pure accident. Being Australian however, she was able to hold her own against the space Australians. You don’t run into her during the game because the Military slit her throat thinking she was Freeman, but she survived! Barely! With the help of GMan and some science (and morphine from the suit). Anyways, onto the ask game

Blood- what would she do if she saw a stranger’s corpse: originally, pre rescas, depending on the place, she would’ve panicked. Whose body is this, what killed them, am I in danger as well? That kinda stuff. Unless it was like a funeral she accidentally got invited to (she would go to see if she knew anyone there and if she didn’t she would apologies) post ResCas, probably after stasis, legit that would’ve been just par for the course. Unless it had a Headcrab on it. Then she would stab the Headcrab (she hates those things)

Garnet- if they had to kill someone, what method would they choose: the most quick and painless way possible. Not a stranger to mercy kills after the rescas, she has found that shooting someone in the soft part right between the skull and the neck on the back of the head is the least painful and most sure fire way to kill someone, aiming up thru the skull ofc. If she didn’t have a gun on her tho she would snap their neck.

Scarlett- how does she grieve: She used to get real quiet, cuts herself off from people, silently reflect on times she had with the person. However, after the rescas, most all of her friends had already died, and she was in Europe now instead of America or Australia, so she just assumed that her family was dead, so she forced herself to channel the pain and grief into rage, helping her get through her rather extraneous circumstances. She really just needs a hug and a good cry smh

Wine- How does she act when she’s drunk: She’s a happy drunk, but is also a heavyweight. Think of it like Brooklyn 9-9’s “# drink Amy” system. She gets real fun (a little loud) for the first 5 drinks. After 5 shit hits the fan, but she knows her limits. (She gets really competitive at drink 7 is the problem)

Lipstick- What is her love language: she is probably physical affection and quality time. Poor girl didn’t have the time to spend with people to fell fulfilled in a relationship before the rescas, and probably never will again.

Poppy- Does she believe in a god: After meeting up with Gordon after the rescas, he told her about the Nihalinth, and so she believes in some sort of higher being, but not probably the Christian god. She is a woman of science after all.

Time for Jaws! You all know Jaws (hopefully) but if you don’t, they are this crime gremlin I made for Payday. Common traits among all Jaws are: extensive scarring, multiple mental disorders, propensity for explosives. But the main point is just they’re a crime gremlin

Blood- what would they do if they saw a stranger’s corpse: they probably put it there. If it’s a civilian, they’d probably swear a lot because that’s coming out of my paycheck but otherwise they would just leave it there, bc they don’t want their finger prints on the scene

Garnet- if they had to kill someone, what method would they choose: shoot them. Or stab them. They aren’t above murder, they do it often. Chemical weapons are also fun, but they aren’t allowed to use them anymore after the Safehouse accidentally got filled with mustard gas that one time

Scarlet- how do they grieve: violently. Lots of murder, lots of stealing. At the Safehouse, where they can’t lash out violently, they have this thing called a “stab pillow”, it’s a throw pillow they started stabbing when they were mad. Also they have their dogs for emotional support (Rexy and Tatsuya my beloved)

Wine- how do they act when they’re drunk: they mellow out a lot actually! Get really tired, but also usually have enough energy to play like drinking games and stuff. Very much a lightweight.

Lipstick- What is their love language: they are aroace, but with their “family”, it’s quality time. They just like being in the presence of people (they aren’t physically affectionate but very touch starved so think of them like a cat on occasion)

Poppy- do they believe in a god: no. God abandoned them.

Anyways that was for both Jaws and Tera hope everyone is doing good! (Sorry if topics got a little dark both of them come from dark source materials)

[anons-has-hlvrai-aus]

Vortal Incarnation [Chapter 2]

A Non-Standard Specimen

Chapter 1 | Next Chapter

Word Count: 3,957

Ao3 Version | FFN Version

Notes: CHECK BOTTOM OF CHAPTER.

“The Freeman must awaken.”

Gordon struggled to process where the words spoken to him had come from or who they belonged to.

To be completely honest, Gordon struggled to process much of anything. His heart pounded within his ears whenever he tried to open his eyes, and he kept hearing a static-y noise in the back of his head that kept him from being able to focus on any of his other senses…

He knew people were talking around him, but it all came out muffled. He barely succeeded in prying open one of his eyes to figure out his surroundings…blobs of brown and dark red and bright blue came into the sliver of vision his body would allow before he had to close it back off. His sense of smell was useless, always had been when he woke up in the morning, so there was little point in focusing on it. His mouth tasted like…he wasn’t sure what that taste was. His sense of touch was…well, he definitely felt cold, it was the only sense that he could pin-down with utmost certainty. He even shivered a bit once he processed the sensation.

Somebody must have noticed the temperature’s effect on Gordon, because he quickly had something draped over his shoulders…Gordon immediately recognized the material when he pulled it tighter around him: a lab coat.

Of course! He could recognize the feeling of that fabric from anywhere. But…

For some reason, it felt like a lifetime had passed since he had last worn one, which didn’t make sense because he always wore one to work everyday (he even wore it underneath the HEV suit, because an hour of discomfort from having his coat under there was better than having to undress and waste time with getting that stupid underbody-swimsuit-thing on). Why his body felt like a stranger to the lab coat was beyond him, but at least it provided some warmth for his…wet…form…

He was wet. His whole body.

Just. Completely drenched.

Why was Gordon wet?

He hated that. He hated getting wet. And he also really hated how uncomfortable the word ‘wet’ sounded.

Hold on, somebody was talking again. He couldn’t make out anything, his ears still felt too much like they were made of cotton.

Somebody gently pressed his back to get him walking somewhere, he didn’t dare try to take anybody’s hands while he was still quivering from the cold. Hopefully nobody was bothered by that…he’d hate to be an inconvenience.

The pressure against his back ceased, which Gordon took as his cue to stand still for a while. It gave him time to wonder…where was he? What was happening? He remembered, in his rush at being late for work again, hitting his head against the door frame of his apartment. Maybe he got a concussion from the impact? Was that how concussions worked? He had a sneaking suspicion that he was missing something.

Suddenly, he was pulled back to the present by a tingling within his very veins, just as quickly gone before he could fully understand where the sensation had originated from.

His legs felt weak, and he fell backwards onto what felt like a wall to keep his balance. Noise surrounded him. As he took his time to breathe, his ears started to clear up, picking up the sound of…birds. Lots of them.

He forced one of his eyes open again, this time with much more success. He was surrounded by concrete and the backdrops of many buildings, at least he was pretty sure they were buildings with his slightly blurred vision. He could quickly tell that the birds around him were crows, and they did not like him.

Gordon pushed himself away from the wall once he felt strength return to his legs, allowing himself to walk around a bit to better assess the situation. The architecture seemed…well, given how messed up Gordon’s memory was right now, he could only settle on ‘Somewhere European’ at best until he could get the static out of his head. He readjusted the way his lab coat sat on his shoulders before stumbling around more in a dazed state.

A door slammed against a nearby wall, immediately grabbing his attention. A stranger in a heavy, black outfit and a skull-like mask pointed at him.

“You-!” They paused, then pointed at the door they’d come through. “Come with me.”

Gordon didn’t have much time to react, the stranger having walked around and promptly shoving him inside. It was cold as shit outside, so Gordon was grateful for that, kinda…

More masked strangers, who Gordon could only assume were security guards of some sort, were inside the building, looking at him with an oppressive sense of judgment. Has he done something wrong? He didn’t even know how he got here, nevermind what sort of punishable offense he may have performed.

They stopped at a door, his intimidating escort exchanging a hushed conversation with another guard on the other side.

The second guard shuffled aside, allowing the first to lead Gordon into a room that was…was…was that blood beneath that chair???

“…Need any help with this one?” The other guard asked, much to Gordon’s concern.

“Nah, I’m good.” Said the first.

The second guard left, leaving Gordon with an absolute stranger. He did his best to betray the fear coursing through him, which was surprisingly easy when his body was barely functional from whatever sleep had overtaken him.

The guard mumbled something about “privacy” while they did something to cut off the nearby cameras. Finally, they…pulled off their mask, letting out a deep sigh. “We’re safe to talk for a little bit…”

Gordon was, admittedly, taken aback. He was expecting torture with how roughly he was being handled.

The guard, masculine if he had to judge by the voice alone (his one eye still wasn’t doing much for him), seemed to expect a response of sorts. Not too surprising, most people expect somebody that can talk…not a legally deaf and mute man.

“Hey,” The guard spoke, “are you…can you hear me alright? Nod your head two times if you can.”

Gordon tilted his head. Now that he thought about it, did somebody give him hearing aids while he was unconscious? He’d never been able to hear this well from his left ear before, and his right ear was hearing just as phenomenally now.

Wearily, Gordon nodded twice at the guard. This situation just kept getting weirder.

“Okay, are you able to speak?”

Could he? Given how weird this was getting, he wouldn’t be surprised if somebody had given him functional vocal cords as well. He would prefer not to find out right now, however. So…no. No he could not.

“I see, sorry about that…Do you know where you are, or how you got here?”

No again, unfortunately.

“Alright.” The guard crossed his arms. “I’m gonna do what I can to get you to connected with people who know you, okay? Just gimme a second…”

He got close to Gordon’s face, seeming to make a mental note of something before walking circles around him to continue his assessment.

Gordon stood around awkwardly, curious to know what this man would ask him next.

“Is it okay if I check your pockets?”

His pockets? Well, he seemed to be a guard of some sort so…that wasn’t a particularly weird thing to ask. All of his pants had pockets, after all, and so did most of his shirts for work!

Although, the fact that Gordon’s skin didn’t feel like he’d been soaked in a lake anymore but could definitely feel a draft around the room…he was now feeling very self-conscious and actively choosing to not look at himself.

Instead, he simply nodded and decided to focus his attention on the guard in front of him. It seemed to do him well as the man started to come into focus. The man looked to be in his forties, and a very handsome member of his age group for that matter. He also looked…strangely familiar…

Did he know this man? Surely not. He’d remember a face like that.

Except…he was certain that he had, but couldn’t pin down why.

A migraine came unto Gordon, images appearing in his mind: the test chamber, Barney locked out of a door, a computer exploding, Eli looking at him with a mixture of fear and relief…

He clutched his head from the pain.

“Woah, hey now!” The guard pulled him over to a chair. “If you’re trying to remember something, let’s take it slow…I’m sure it’ll come back to you naturally…”

Gordon complied, and decided to lean back on the chair. His muscles all relaxed as he did so. Had they really been that tight? What had Gordon been up to?

The guard searched the breast pocket of his lab coat…pulling out a very stupid-looking tie.

“Heh, I hope you’re just holding this ridiculous thing for a friend.”

Gordon chuckled quietly. He wished it was just being held onto for a friend. He hated that stupid tie, and so did everybody else at work.

“I haven’t seen a tie like this in a long time…” The guard said, seeming to reminisce over it. Had this guy worked at Black Mesa? It was a massive facility…if this guy really had worked there, it wouldn’t surprise Gordon if maybe he had seen this guy in passing. It didn’t explain what he meant by having not seen such a tie in ‘a long time,’ though. The ties were issued to everybody, yes, but Gordon was of the understanding that they were a very recent inclusion, having replaced some other, equally-ridiculous ties before he was hired.

He got part of an answer as the guard looked over at the opposite side of his coat’s breast, clearly recognizing it as he whispered something under his breath.

Another migraine came, a flash of radioactive-green light, accompanied by the sounds of people crying out in fear and pain, pierced itself into his memory.

The test, oh dear god. The test!

He raised up a hand to try and communicate.

He was supposed to be getting to the surface.

He was supposed to be letting somebody, anybody know that there were people who were injured and dying and-

“This has already come to pass. That battle, for you, has long since been won…”

It…it was the same voice that had woken him up, or at least a similar one. Gordon couldn’t make heads or tails about where it was coming from, but it felt like it had come from his own brain. The words, for now, put him enough at ease to lower his hand before he could attempt communication with the guard.

Said guard frowned before searching through one of the jacket’s side pockets…an ID. Gordon’s ID!!!

The guard looked at the ID, fixated on it. He almost seemed ready to cry…

“Gordon Freeman…” he sighed with a longing tone.

Yes, that was his name.

“…what?” The guard seemed confused, which made Gordon confused. That was his ID, right?

He looked at it…yeah, it was definitely his. He looked back at the guard now and replicated the stoic expression in the photo. God, it was such a bad picture of him. Gordon had always looked better in group photos…

The guard looked at the ID again. Gordon maintained his expression, but he couldn’t help but squint a bit in annoyance. Was it really that hard to match somebody’s face with their ID?

A horrified expression began to creep onto the guard’s face. “…Gordon?”

He nodded in affirmation.

The man’s eyes widened, he hurriedly looked through the last pocket in his jacket and pulled out…

His glasses.

But…no, that couldn’t make sense. They were clearly his glasses but the lenses were in terrible condition. But also, if those were his glasses, then how was Gordon able to see so well right now, even with only one eye open? Had whoever that had given Gordon new hearing aids given him new eyes as well??

Gordon’s wondering had to wait as the guard asked him once more, this time with hope in his voice…

“Gordon??”

He was beginning to believe this was more than just an issue with his ID.

It did not stop him from confirming his identity once more, much to the tearful relief of the man in front of him.

“Oh……my god, it’s…you’re…” he laughed a bit as he returned to glasses to his pocket.

Why was he laughing? Did they know each other?

“I guess it has been a while, hasn’t it? It’s me, Gordon. It’s Barney…”

Barney?

Barney??

No…no way…

Gordon shot out of his chair to hug the man.

Dear god…Barney…he looked so much older now.

“How did this happen?” He asked as they separated.

Gordon could ask the same of him! People didn’t just age 20 years overnight, after all.

“I mean it, how did…” He gestured to Gordon vaguely. “…THIS happen?”

He didn’t…understand the question here. Was there something wrong with him? Maybe he got disfigured during the Resonance Cascade and that’s why he didn’t match his ID?

Barney could read his confusion and seemed to wince in thought over something. “I’m gonna take it you DON’T know what’s happened, then.”

He really didn’t, no.

“Okay…I’m just…” He looked around, took in a deep breathe to collect himself, then looked at Gordon. “So for starters…it’s been twenty years since Black Mesa.”

Oh. Shit. That alone explained a lot, actually. Maybe he wasn’t disfigured, just old. Perhaps he’d been in a coma. But that still didn’t explain how he got here and why his hearing and vision were completely changed.

“The look you’re giving me suggests that this is new information. So uh…next couple of parts. We’re currently someplace where I THINK Russia used to be. Also Earth is kinda under new management, and these new guys messed it up pretty bad while you were gone.”

New management?

Visions of alien invaders came to him, then a vision of a chamber in the Lambda Labs, and finally an alien world…but Gordon had been sent out to stop the invasion, hadn’t he?

“It’s a long story,” Barney sighed, “I’ll catch you up on the details later.”

Well, now Gordon was anxious to know if he’d killed the wrong alien leader.

“And lastly…uh…” He contemplatively bit his lower lip. “Well…shit…how do I say this without being completely blunt?”

Barney wouldn’t be acting this weird if Gordon just looked older. Looked like disfigurement was back on the list of possibilities.

Sighing again, Barney looked him in the eye. “Can you promise me you won’t panic?”

With how weird Barney was acting? No. He could not.

“Well, at least you’re honest.” The man laughed nervously. He slowly reached over to one of Gordon’s hands and pulled it into view-

That wasn’t his hand.

He was fully aware that his nervous system was receiving inputs of pressure from the hand in front of him being held within Barney’s, and that when he told his brain to close his hand around Barney’s that the amphibious claws before him did so, but that was not his hand.

It couldn’t be.

He looked to his other hand, a mirror image of the first, and following the length of the arm to his shoulder, clearly draped with a lab coat. His vision was drawn to his chest, hairless but sprouting a third, smaller arm from the center of the breast area. His legs were digitigrade with almost hoove-like digits, the sight of which made Gordon feel unsteady.

He compulsively opened his other eye…eyes…to see better. He had four of them now, and not in the way he was used to, either. They followed his vision like normal eyes, but the field of view provided from having new and unfamiliar ocular receptors was immediately overwhelming. He closed all his eyes and tried to cover his mouth to keep himself from hyperventilating.

His heavy breaths pressed warm air onto his chest, causing him to realize that his mouth was much closer to his chin than it should have been.

“Gordon, it’s okay.” Barney said with a forced calmness, “Just try to steady your breathing. Freaking out isn’t going to help us right now-”

He wanted to scream.

He could not be allowed to scream.

Because he knew that if he screamed, the voice coming out, even if he’d never had one before, would not belong to him.

Nervous heaving sounds sputtered from the back of his throat, doing nothing to alleviate the ever-growing desire to scream at the horror of what he had become without his knowledge.

And then the ever-prevalent static in his head, while never ceasing, began to formulate into…into words and questions, conversations…observations.

“The Freeman appears to be in a state of panic. This was to be expected.”

“It will take much time for the Freeman to become accustomed-”

“His mind has awakened and his body has opened itself up to the Vortessence!”

“His safe retrieval shall bring much rejoice.”

It wasn’t static. It was voices.

Millions, maybe even billions of voices overlapping so heavily that it was comparable to the sound of white noise. Most spoke in a tongue he couldn’t understand, but they were definitely voices. It was an almost hypnotic melody of commotion within his mind, his horror briefly overridden by wonder…

A pounding noise shook Gordon out of his trance.

“Shit, Gordon!” Barney ran towards a door in the back part of the room, swinging it wide open.

“Get in here. We can’t let anybody see you wandering around, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb…”

He listened without question, his terrible legs carrying him inside some sort of storage room.

“Try to see if any of the boxes back here have space for you to hide in, and keep quiet until I come find you.”

With the door closed behind him, Gordon was now alone to scrounge around for a hiding spot. He was quite thankful that this new body, as horrifying as it was, was strong enough to pry open some of the boxes he found with so much ease. Most of them had labels written in a language Gordon couldn’t understand, so of course the one to stand out most to him was a wooden container that was left completely unmarked. This had been the fourth box he had searched, all the others were tightly packed with suitcases or miscellaneous items that Gordon wouldn’t be able to remove without causing a ruckus; this box by comparison was mainly filled with…straw, which was what one would normally expect to find in a shipping container if they were carrying something fragile. But there didn’t seem to be anything especially fragile inside, just a bulletproof vest of some kind and a…set of familiar-looking black-and-white camo.

Images of the soldiers Gordon had to fight flashed into his memory.

Why did Barney have a box with this stuff inside? There was clearly more space than was necessary…enough for Gordon to slip in and hide underneath the uniform and all of that straw.

Gordon couldn’t afford to be picky right now with how worried Barney sounded about his safety, so into the box he went!

It would be difficult enough to maneuver into the box without making much noise, but it was more so now that Gordon was actively aware of his alien body. As he clumsily tried to perfect getting the lid of the box back on, another voice spoke to him.

“The Freeman’s cover is too shallow. A quick glance will spell his doom.”

He processed the comment. His feet were pressed against one wall of the box while his back sat against the opposite side. It was comfortable…but the voice was correct to say that he would be seen if the box was opened for any reason.

He decidedly shuffled around some until he was decently buried beneath the straw and the other items.

Just in time, too.

He heard the door open.

“Your confidence in my disloyalty is offensive.”

“A mandatory search was requested.”

“I have nothing to hide.”

“The inactivity of your camera feed exceeded its required blackout time.”

“You know I don’t like the cameras to see my dirty work…”

“Overwatch requires searches like this for any nonstandard activity. Visual and audio inactivity, noncompliance with uniform code, suspicious transmission feeds…you should know this by now.”

Silence overcame the room, followed by the crunching of wood boxes being pulled open.

Gordon slowly took in breath as the sound traveled closer to him, filling his new lungs to capacity when the crunching came from just above him.

A hand sifted through the straw around him, paused, then sifted again before whoever outside the box gave up.

“Has Overwatch confirmed an origin for this unlabeled cargo?”

“Negative.”

“Understood. Your station appears to be uncompromised, as you have stated. I will make appropriate communications about-”

The rest of the conversation occurred out of earshot. Gordon let out a relieved sigh while he tossed around to his side and waited for Barney to come back.

The temptation to sleep so he could ignore his new body was powerful, but he urged himself to stay awake until he was safe. If there was one thing he had learned while fighting for his life, it was that rest could not be assured without absolute confidence in one’s safety. He’d let his guard down once, and it got him thrown into a garbage disposal.

He wasn’t letting that happen again.

Unfortunately, that meant the alternative was to get comfortable with his new body. Undesirable, but necessary.

He moved some straw aside to look at himself again. Gordon had good reason to narrow down the possibilities of what species of alien he’d become down to one very particular species from his journey: the alien slave. The details all matched to what he’d seen, right down to the mottled skin and how approximately human-sized he was compared to the short list of other upright species he’d seen.

Gordon couldn’t help but fixate on what Barney had said about Earth being under ‘New Management.’ He hadn’t seen any other aliens so far, but the fact that everybody acted so suspicious around him…it seemed pretty obvious that, enslaved or not, he wore the face of the enemy. Gordon messed up with killing whichever thing was in charge, the aliens took over Earth in his absence, and now he looked like one of them.

It was…god.

It was terrible to think about, if that really were the case. All that effort, just to kill the wrong guy. He was a traitor to either species in this case, too internally human to comfortably live as one of the aliens and too externally alien to live among his fellow man.

“Gordon, hey!” Barney’s voice called out. “I got those guys outta my hair for a bit, we can talk again.”

Gordon couldn’t move his body, far too ashamed to show himself. Barney must have been putting his job at risk just to save him. He didn’t deserve such a good friend.

“Gordon? Oh god, please don’t be outside somewhere…”

He worked up the strength to sit upright and push open the box he was hiding. His vision was obscured by tears, but he could tell the man was about to climb up the nearby ladder.

“Gordon, thank god. I was worried you had-oh…” Barney frowned. “Hey, don’t…it’s okay, we’re going to get you somewhere safe. Come on.” He helped pull him out of the box and wiped away some of his tears. “I’ve got ways to contact people without being detected, and I think I know somebody that will be very happy to know you’re alive.”

——————

Notes: I had a lot of fun writing Gordon’s brief view into the Vortessence. It must be overwhelming and confusing to experience as a being that’s never been part of a temporally un-stuck hivemind before…

[eternally-sugary]

Ok ok so

Half Life 1: Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist who graduated from MIT has his first day at Black Mesa. He got in due to his closeness with another scientist, Dr. Issac Kleiner.

Anyways so Gordon is tasked with pushing the crystal they have recently gotten from a border world (read: a world that is between dimensions) called Xen into an anti-mass spectrometer. The experiment goes totally wrong, and portals from Xen begin opening up, allowing aliens to come through and swarm the facility.

Soon after, the HECU Marines (a special taskforce called for when the scientists REALLY fuck up), so on top of fighting the aliens, Gordon has to fight the military as well. He moves through Black Mesa, eventually getting to a scientist who send him through a portal to Xen so he can kill the Nilanth, which is an alien who has a seperate race of aliens called Vortigaunts enslaved and tbh isn't very lore important. Gordon kills the Nilanth, then G-man shows up and gives Gordon a job then puts him in stasis.

(Barney (security guard), Gina, and Colette (scientists) are also fighting through Black Mesa, and Adrian (soldier) is fighting the scientists and guards but Blue Shift (Barney), Opposing Force (Adrian) and Decay (Gina and Colette) are all dubiously canon, especially Opposing Force)

Half Life 1: After the portal to Xen is opened, the Combine (a warlike alien race that takes over worlds, enslave and kill the inhabitants, strip the planet of its resources, and moves on) are alerted to Earth's existence and in seven hours have taken over Earth. Dr. Wallace Breen, former administrator of Black Mesa, negotiates Earth's surrender with the Combine. Twenty years later, Gordon returns, arriving in City 17 which is where all his former co-workers are (that survived, that is)

He meets with Barney who is working as a Metrocop (metrocops are humans that choose to work for the Combine for extra rations and safety. It's hard to tell them apart from a Civil Protection officer which are - as far as I can tell - modified humans with most of the "humaness" stripped away)

ANYWAYS BACK ON TRACK Barney brings Gordon into a back room and tells Dr. Kleiner that Gordon's back. He then tells Gordon to go to Kleiner's lab, but as he is getting there he is caught and beaten up but Alyx saves him. She then leads him to Kleiner's lab and explains what happened while he was gone. In Kleiner's lab Gordon gets his HEV suit back, and Kleiner tries to teleport both Gordon and Alyx to Black Mesa East (no relation to the nuked Black Mesa). Alyx gets there, but Dr. Kleiner's pet headcrab Lamarr messes up the teleporter as Gordon is in it so he has to go on a river route.

After he goes through the river, he arrives at Black Mesa East and meets Eli Vance and also Judith Mossman (who hates him. She is very jealous of him) and they talk for a bit, Gordon gets a new weapon (the Gravity Gun, he can fling people and things around with it) and also plays with Alyx's robot D0g, then Black Mesa East gets raided so Gordon has to go to Ravenholm (We don't go to Ravenholm)

In Ravenholm Gordon is surrounded by headcrab zombies and has to kill the with giant saw blades fires with the gravity Gun, until the only actual person there (Father Grigori) gives him a shotgun. Father Grigory seems chill but he sacrifices himself right before Gordon leaves so. Yeah.

Gordon then goes on a roadtrip. Then he has to do parkour so he doesn't get killed by antlions. (Antlions don't like when you walk on the sand) Luckily a friendly Vortigaunt gives him a pheromone ball so the antlions like him. So he has to lead them out of where they were.

Gordon then goes to the very scary Combine jail called Nova Prospekt to try to save Eli. Turns out he's not there! Gordon meets with Alyx again, and they both find out that Judith was working with Dr. Breen the whole time. Judith then takes Eli to the Citadel (Where Breen is)

Alyx and Gordon teleport back to Kleiner's lab only to find out they have been stuck in a loop for a whole week, and Nova Prospekt blew up and everyone's going crazy (in a good way). Alyx stays with Kleiner and Gordon finds Barney and the two start beating people up. They get to the Citadel and Gordon gets inside. Gordon fights all the way to Dr. Breen's office, and goes inside (captured). Dr. Breen then basically says he wants Eli and Alyx gone and that makes Judith mad because she wanted Eli safe so she blows up Breen's communicator, and then frees the three. Gordon chases Breen to the top of the Citadel, Breen dies and everyone gets out and the Citadel blows up.

There is also Episode 2 and HL: Alyx but. I need a break

Holy fucking shit that is so much lore/pos

[femmegina]

ive personally always assumed that a potential in-universe justification for why colette & gina's HEV suits differ in color could be that it's indicative of their occupation, as something makes me think that there isn't too many options as far as personal customization is concerned. "government property" and all. i used to slightly annoyed w/ the fact that gina's is a bit of a beige-silver tone considering that a major component of the HEV suit is that it's supposed to be a hi-vis hue but it finally clicked with me that it's very much reflective of the archetypes they fulfill; bold maroon contrasted with pale beige and all. obv the out-of-universe explanation is that it's to distinguish them from each other AND gordon, but it's the best i have on that front. on the topic of azyan, i think a fluorescent yellow-green would be fitting 4 her? like by virtue of her being THE dead wife AND dead mom who exists to get fridged theres not too much to pull from as far as canonical personality goes, but that's where the power of Making Things Up comes in. pondering how she and eli might compliment and play off one another as far as their general disposition is concerned. i WOULD like to think of her as his more energetic, more outgoing counterpart, but i'll have to mull it over especially when trying to account for how having gone through the rescas and everything following it has affected eli's character. then again i can make up like, literally anythign within reason. shes MY blank slate, ok? tangentially on topic but i saw fanart of HEV suit Azyan out in the wild on deviantart of all places from what, 2012? well rendered piece. the artist made it pink to signify that yes, a woman was wearing a "female version" of the Mark IV Hazardous Environment suit. in their own words, not mine. i think about it a lot. it SENT me.

their occupations... well they're both engineers who operate the big honking machine... maybe it really is just for fun? it does kind of suit colette's blood thirstiness and gina's lighter and more businessy attitude from a character design perspective.

looking back to see what me and @butchcolette thought abt her personality wise... i feel like she could be witty and fun in that alyx way, looking on the bright side of things (much easier when the world has not ended when u were 4 years old) also we made her a coding/programming nerd. ALSO also she and colette were work friends #feminism. there really is a huge blank slate that could be filled with any sort of personality............ also LOL im sure ive seen that art myself. person who looks up half life women on google images for any content

[just-a-random-person24]

hey chat I've been working on redoing my Stark's Mind notes so here's episodes 1-6!

Episode 1

• CINEMATIC INTRO

• internal monolog, not starting immediately on the train

• surprised that Black Mesa still has the tram voice?

• To him, being as late as he is is as bad as high-school. Will hide in bathrooms to not deal with being caught

• knows Gordon's on parol w/ Black Mesa

• still uses ‘we’ when referring to Black Mesa, says he's getting into the ‘Freeman Mentality’

• “ba donk” Shut the fuck up (loving)

• tram shaking *bad*

• has a habit of talking to people who are too far to hear him

• used to get first at the decathlon! says he'll stay back and do it for Gordon to ‘make him look like an athletic superstar’

• wasn't involved in any departments that used lasers/plasma. Also really bad at using past tense when talking abt his time working there

• doesn't want any relatives working at Black Mesa

• “All the gates I've come across so far are playing the waiting game. And so far? I'm winning.”

• Star Wars reference. idk anything abt Star Wars.

• green goop pile! Is very worried about people's safety!

• says he can't do anything about it, but is still worried about it

• his Gordon impression is *very* bad

• forgot Barney worked at Black Mesa but not Felix

• immediately drops the ‘Freeman’ act by asking the guard if his lateness affected anyone else

• Gordon has a ponytail! Stark doesn't though. Plays it off as getting a bet to cut the ponytail

• doesn't know who Gina is :(

Episode 2

• tries to help a guard with his computer to redeem himself for being late

• Stark's socially awkward!

• obligatory bass-head programmers joke

• Stark doesn't know which way the test labs are

• claims Black Mesa now looks ‘structurally sound’

• “Hopefully it's the right way… So that makes this the left way then? I'm sorry, I'll leave now.”

• thinks the guard wanted to kill him over his bad joke

• hasn't eaten breakfast…

• even though Gordon has Stark covering him, Vincent either doesn't know/forgot Gordon's locker combo

• Black Mesa doesn't have mirrors

• the 4.5… the way Stark talks about it sounds like he's more familiar with the Mark 4. (ignore that the HEV suit DID say ‘Mark 4’)

• says he's sure Black Mesa doesn't let people tour around the facilities. Even though he mentioned people touring in the first ep

• only other series to give us a year! Stark says it's 2009 while Arlen says it's 2016

• “I should just stop rambling like a mad man.” has he been talking to himself this whole time??

• Left due to unethical choices that were being made!

• ‘there's no point putting a warning sign on lasers’ You see, there's this thing called ‘OSHA’

• Breen apparently wanted to recreate the Big Bang

• offers a guard to grab a drink with him and Barney after the test

• “I forgot how large this room was.” Was in the test chamber before?

• he likes white noise!

• woe! green apon ye!

Episode 3

• immediately blames himself when seeing the destruction

• “I-I should be dead.. I at least have the chance to help everyone else.”

• ‘this isn't real’ count 1

• still on Black Mesa's database

• thanks the door when it opens :)

• tries to tell a scientist performing cpr that they need to leave

• apologizes to corpses

• already ready to have a breakdown

• Kleiner exclaiming that Stark is alive is met with Stark going ‘unfortunately’

• says Eli is braver than him for wanting to find his family

• says that Black Mesa is Hell and immediately exclaims ‘demons’ when seeing a burning zombie

• more apologizing to corpses

• ‘I did this’ count 12. I'm not gonna actually keep track of any counts here, he just says some of this stuff a *lot*

Episode 4

• says he needs to keep going even though people are dead cause of him

• very fine with curling up and dying in a corner after contacting the surface

• once again with calling the aliens demons. Follows it up with ‘Hell on earth’

• happy to see a guard with a gun

•’cranium’ instead of ‘head’. Nerd.

• realizes the zombies used to be human

• little ditty about guns. Would feel safer if he had the gun instead

• thinks everything going on is more similar to a horror movie than sci-fi

• hopes a lab would have weapons. Realizes it wouldn't and wonders what is wrong with him for thinking it'd have weapons

• has no clue how he's being calm at the moment

• apologizes to the guard for yelling at him

• tries to stay composed in hard situations

• says he's falling into a relapse right now. Mental relapse? \*shrug*

• doesn't feel safe even with the suit on

• “Another person dead because I'm a moron!”

• uses ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ when blaming someone. “We really fucked up with this didn't we?”

• grabs the crowbar in an attempt to be brave and fight off the zombies, regrets it immediately

• “My crowbar is the perfect companion”

• knows that the resonance cascade is a rift between worlds

Episode 5

• feels sort of reassured his “leaks” were spot on. And finds it ironic he caused the res-cas

• only time he seems genuinely happy is when the eye scanner is still working. :(

• an atheist

• Tells a screaming zombie to shut up

• checks the pulse of an obviously dead scientist

• full-names himself

• sings a little ditty about smashing crates

• obligatory Mind series slur. Only one in the series though

• “Oh yeah. Hand me crates with nothing in them, but direct me to the room laced with blood. No thank you Black Mesa.”

• no upper body strength. twink

• still looking for a gun :(

• “Hey could you stop? I'd appreciate it.” To a zombie trying to attack him

• upon finding out he's made it to Security Clearance is excited to finally get a gun. for protection

• vent sharks!

• calls the Barnacles something out of a BDSM fantasy. Nicknames them Jellyfish Pricks

• yells at the Barnacles to eat the barrels cause he paid of them

• space pup!! gets his eardrums blown out immediately after

• still doesn't fully believe everything going on is real because everything is so surreal

• about to tell a scientist that his name isn't Gordon but doesn't

• thanks the scientist for opening the door

• has never used a gun before

• “I have the responsibility to make sure that everybody gets out of here safely. You know why? Because I did this…”

Episode 6

• Telling the scientist what happened to cause the res-cas

• pretty sure he's trapped in Black Mesa but wants to think optimistically

• Mind characters and their use of ‘friggin’...

• Last names himself! I don't remember if he ever refers to himself by just his first name in these early episodes

• Assumes the military would go to the alien homeworld to conquer it or bomb the facility

• “That's a bit chilly.” In a room filled with. Ice? Snow??

• tries to reason with the Vortigaunt. Gets shocked

• gets close to the zombie to shoot it. Blood on him :(

• Water in his mouth :(

• wonders if Black Mesa has alligators

• absolutely just can't see without his glasses

• “I could drown myself. I feel like doing that, I don't feel like *living* anymore.” Already thinking about killing himself. Also doesn't because he has things to deal with

• Likes water as an element. Also Xenon, which is used in flash lamps and arc lamps

• Thinks him laughing while killing aliens is a sign of bad things to come for him. Makes an ‘Maybe I was always insane’ joke before shutting that down quickly

• really doesn't want to be in vents. Vent sharks.

• apologizes to a corpse for landing on it

• “If reality had a face, I'd kick it in the fucking dick.”