#it will be modded after i get it warm enough to pry the button off 👹

[coyote-kiddo]

cooka da binky

[soundofez]

The Future Starts With You

Portal AU. Uraraka is a test subject forced to complete a variety of test chambers in an underground facility, and Tsuyu is the girl trapped in the cube that keeps her company.

First, some dedications:

This fic would not exist without the amazing @crimson-and-rover​! They’ve done some gorgeous artwork that you can find here :D

Shoutout to the mods @uravitybang​ for their hard work organizing the event! I’ve had a lot of fun, and I look forward to any future big bangs they may host ♥

Finally, an enormous thank you to @arialis​ for their betawork! They helped me get the fic to a point where any BNHA fan can enjoy it, not just the ones who have played Portal, and I am eternally grateful.

Links: [artwork] [event tumblr] [fic on ao3]

Disclaimer: All of the voice’s lines are ripped straight from GLaDOS’s lines in Portal. This is because the voice is GLaDOS. Also, those lines are masterpieces and cannot be improved or imitated, at least not by this humble author.

Also, if you’re on the mobile app, I cannot guarantee that the readmore will work. Tumblr is... irritating like that. Sorry.

...Like, seriously, I’m really really sorry.

001: Testing

You open your eyes to a bright, blank white.

You try to sit up, but the movement makes your head pound. Your joints feel loose and sore.

You try again, and your tailbone complains as you shift your weight. When you swing your legs over the side of the bed, you are dragged out feet first by the unexpected weight on your calves.

You land on your feet with a bounce, and you flip, and your hands slap against the floor for an instant before your legs swing back under you, not entirely of your own will.

As fast as it happens, it's over— you didn't even have time to scream. You catch your breath and cautiously take stock of your body, careful not to move too quickly and in case you make something else happen.

You are crouching. Your arms tremble faintly as adrenaline catches up to them. Your clothes are unfamiliar, an ugly orange jumpsuit. On your feet, covering your calves, are pristine white boots. You flex your feet, and they flex back, forcing you upright with a bizarre instinct you didn't know you had. You wobble on the spot.

They're heavy, odd-looking things, with a crowbar-shaped heel that extends from your calf. They keep you on your toes, literally.

"Hello," an artificial voice says, causing you to leap (literally) several inches off the ground. Your boots clang against the ground, accompanying the voice as it continues: "Welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center. We hope your brief detention in the Relaxation Vault has been a pleasant one."

You shiver. You remember the voice. You don't trust it one whit.

"... serious injuries may occur. For your own safety, and the safety of others, please refrain from—" As if on cue, the voice skips and stutters, shuffling through a foreign language before cutting out entirely.

The silence leaves you frozen, your spine buzzing with nerves. You need to escape.

You pace the "relaxation vault," feeling distinctly unrelaxed. You are trapped in a glass chamber, slightly elevated from a larger room, its walls panelled with an off-white material. You can see a door out there, open and mocking.

You take stock of your options. There's the bed you'd woken up in, solidly fixed to the floor, useless. At the foot of the bed is a toilet, also fixed to the floor, also useless (especially useless, you think, glancing at the cameras leering at you through the glass). Beside it, a nightstand, also fixed to the floor, but with a tiny radio atop it playing an upbeat song you don't recognize. You pick up the radio, but it feels too light and fragile to be very useful.

A shock of static crackles through the room, raising the hairs on the back of your neck. "I'm back," the voice says. "The portal will open in three… two… one…"

A completely indescribable sound blooms behind you.

You whirl and catch sight of a hungry, orange fire and almost laugh with despair— of course you would wake up in time to burn to death. Out of the corner of your eye, on a wall beyond your glass prison, you catch a flicker of burning blue, as well.

Just as suddenly as the fire had begun, though, it stops, swirling into an oval ring. The center of it clears, mirror-like, to reveal a new space: when you glance at the blue fire, you find that it has done the same.

You turn your attention back to the orange-rimmed oval in front of you and spy an oddly familiar person in an orange jumpsuit and pristine white boots behind a glass wall, slightly elevated from the rest of the room they are in. They are looking at a wall in their cell, and you raise a hand, opening your mouth to shout.

Before you can, something moves in the corner of your vision, and you turn to look at the blue oval outside your glass box.

On the other side of that oval, too, is a person in an orange jumpsuit and pristine white boots, her hand half-raised and peering to one side. You take note of her hair, the same color as yours, if cut in a slightly longer bob.

Comprehension dawns. You turn back to the orange oval and, when you lower your hand, watch as the person beyond the oval lowers her hand, too, a perfect, unflipped mirror. You glance at the blue oval and see that person's hair sway gently, as if she, too, had just turned her head, which you know she had, because she is you. You're looking at yourself from multiple sides.

Experimentally, you stick your hand through the portal. Nothing interesting happens, except that you can see yourself do it in the third person, your hand disappearing into the wall you're facing.

You pull your hand back, vaguely unsettled.

You turn your attention to the fire still dancing at the edge of the portal. It's orange on your side, but it blends into blue, matching the portal you can see on the wall outside the glass. You can't see the wall in between.

You're still holding the radio. You prod it at the flames; neither the radio nor the flames react. The radio isn't even warm, you think, running your fingers over the corner you had poked into the flames.

You press the radio into the edge of the portal, and it sinks through without any noticeable effort on your part. It also stops playing. When you pull it out of the wall, it looks fine, but the screen flickers and returns to black when you try to turn it on.

You test the portal again, this time lopping off a corner of the radio. The severed chunk of plastic clatters to the floor on the other side.

Note to self: avoid the edges of the portal at all costs.

You step through the portal, or rather, your boots bounce you through and slam you against the outside of your erstwhile cage.

You spend the next few minutes testing your balance to make sure you don't accidently slam yourself into anything more dangerous, like the edge of a portal. By the time you leave the room, you've gotten used to the skipping rhythm of walking with the boots.

The door latches shut behind you, sending shivers down your spine. The room you now find yourself in has another door, but it is closed as well, with no apparent means of opening except for a red, button-like platform on the ground a short distance away.

You avoid the platform. It could be a trap.

The only other things in the room are a camera over the exit door and a tube, roughly a foot-and-a-half in diameter, protruding from the ceiling. You pace the room for a while, looking for another way out. You're inspecting the door you came from when something crashes to the floor, and you jump high enough to bang your head on the door frame.

It's a cube, sitting under the tube it had apparently dropped out of. It looks harmless enough, you think as you pick the thing up, but it is reasonably heavy.

You throw it at the camera over the door and take great satisfaction in watching both objects crash to the ground, though the voice's toneless "Vital testing apparatus destroyed" makes your skin crawl.

The door remains closed.

You search the room fruitlessly for several more minutes, but eventually, unable to find an alternative, you carry the cube to the platform and watch it depress under the weight.

"Excellent," the voice says, and the door opens. "Please proceed into the chamberlock after completing each test."

You hesitate, but there is no where else to go. If you follow along, you can at least try to escape.

It's with this hope in mind that you proceed through the "tests." The voice guide you, as if trying to gain your trust, but the casual hints that drop through its robotic filter only make you more wary and distrusting.

You remain silent. It becomes your way of protesting what has happened to you. You do not give the voice the satisfaction of hearing you speak.

At first, the most dangerous things about the tests are the portals, which rotate through existence in a manner that makes you hyper-aware of how easily they could cut you in half, if you timed a jump wrong and were caught mid-transfer.

Then you receive the portal guns, and the danger of portals wanes to just their edges. (You also take great pleasure in slicing the cameras from the walls with some well-placed portals, and learn to ignore the voice's default announcement.)

Of course, you still have to contend against enormous falls and nauseating pools of liquid and free-floating balls of electric death ("Aperture Science High Energy Pellets," the voice calls them). In one course, you are unapologetically sent into a "live fire course designed for military androids," and you spend several long minutes nursing an enormous bruise where a bullet had hit you in the shoulder. (Miraculously, it hadn't punched through you, but it had still punched you.)

The course is a blessing in disguise. The bullets punch into the wall panels with enough force to throw them out of alignment, and after getting rid of the turrets and the cameras in the area, you pry a panel out of the wall and crawl into the cavity behind it.

You can't go far: there is too much wiring and not enough floor and barely enough gaps to squeeze through. That first time you venture behind the walls, you are wary, but there is no room for hostile tricks, and you begin to lower your guard. You spend more time exploring the construction of the puzzles, and you even catch quick naps when you feel tired enough.

It is after several test chambers of this luxury that the voice adds something new.

"The vital apparatus vent will deliver a weighted companion cube in three… two… one."

The tube extending from the ceiling opens its mouth in a spiralling motion that you have become familiar with. A cube falls to your feet, as promised, though this one has pink hearts on its faces instead of the Aperture logo. You might have called it cute if it weren't for the ghostly figure perched on top of it.

"Ochako!" the figure says, rising to their knees to put their eyes level with yours. "Is it— Is it really you?"

You force yourself to ignore them, fixing your eyes on the cube instead, but your heart is boiling with rage, melting a path through your stomach that leaves you feeling hollow inside.

"This weighted companion cube will accompany you through the test chamber," the voice says. "Please take care of it."

You pick up the cube, determinedly ignoring the hologram sitting on it. The voice wants you to test? Fine. You'll keep testing. You will test until you figure out how to escape, and then you will find the source of the voice and end them for using the image of Tsuyu Asui against you.

(chapter 2 on ao3)