Bachelor #1: Thoughts on GLaDOS? [open!]

[enter_aeneas]

Today, amidst the turmoil that was the meatship and its wayward crew, three of its members found themselves released from GLaDOS's clutches in three separate corners of their domain. Following is an objective analysis of their respective predicaments, cool and unbiased as per usual:

Comments

Dustin, because he's the least compatible one, I gather

[behaemmert]

Dustin was watched by what looked like a young girl in a red dress, who was standing nearby, leaning on something looking like a mallet half her size.

"Man, you got one foul mouth there." She finally commented. "Do you always travel through slimy shafts, or what?"

You would be correct, unfortunately.

[quark_assassin]

A voice-young, quite young, female, apparently too snarky for her own good-snatched Dustin from his enlightened fretting in an instant. By impulse he spun around and shot a glare through narrowed green eyes, startled that he was being watched, furious at the comments he'd received (among other things aforementioned), and scrutinizing to see if this individual was more than she seemed. Many of the crew, so Dustin had learned, required this level of understanding in order to be properly tolerated. The process was characteristically frustrating, though.

"I try to avoid it whenever possible," the genius snapped with surprisingly good humor, "Do you always hang around and pester the ones that do?"

[behaemmert]

"Not really, I just thought it odd that someone was stupid enough to move through that. Don't see any tools, so I doubt you're on mechanic duty." Vita replied, kinda glad that there was some distraction from her seek-for-Hayate-quest.

Even if it was talking to some glare-happy guy who seemed to have pretty strange hobbies.

[quark_assassin]

Dustin frowned, a bit more pointedly than he had been, now that he had a tangible focus for his discontent. One of them, then-why was it that Dustin always seemed to run into the people that were just as stubborn as himself? It would be so much easier if everyone wasn't so damn full of themselves, especially since, in his eyes, they really had no reason to be

[behaemmert]

"How about not getting your self caught in mazes, then?" Vita suggested.

She didn't quite know what a mucos membrane was (to be honest, she never really had paid much attention to biology, not being quite human herself. She was the forward unit, not the healer, that was Shamal's job!)
Thus, what he was on precisely eluded her - some freaky doctor captured him and did experiments, or what? She did make a mental note to check with Nanoha about that, the last crazy, experiment-happy doctor she had seen had almost ruined their world, after all. Better be careful.

"Since lab-escaping isn't among your talents, and you think you're too good for mechanic stuff, what can you do, anyway?"

Hm, she probably should have asked about the one who did the experiments. Well, she could do this afterwards.

[quark_assassin]

Dustin rolled his eyes, an audible movement in terms of how loudly they screamed of bitter sarcasm. "Well aren't you a brilliant little prodigy. What a fantastic idea. I'll be sure to tell the few crewmembers that have yet to be taken for experimentation, just as a precautionary measure."

He wiped his prosthetic hand down the opposite arm, flicking off a slimy strand of spaceship snot from his shirt sleeve before replacing his heavy overcoat.

"I can do whatever's needed of me at the time." Snark was waiting close behind, but for the moment Dustin held it back in favor of starting to clean out his somewhat deflated mass of dark brown hair.

[behaemmert]

Vita shrugged at that. She hadn't noticed the arm before, though. So the guy's a combat cyborg or something?

"No idea what you're talking about." She pointed out. "I sure wasn't captured by something like that yet."

But then, she was new and hadn't Hiatused yet.

"Except leaving the labyrinth, of course." Vita mumbled after he said he could do a lot, more to herself, then thought of what she had wanted to ask. "What captured you, anyway? Some kind of mad scientist or something? Tell me he's not called Jail Sca...Scagli...something, please."

[quark_assassin]

Something like that. "Combat cyborg" wouldn't be the phrase that Dustin would use himself, especially not with his personal definitions of a cyborg creature-in order to be half-robot, after all, one needs all parts of the body to be mechanically altered, and Dustin made a point to keep his central nervous system well out of the way of modification. His brain is just fine the way it is, thanks.

Regardless. "Given enough time I could have," Dustin snapped back reflexively, working his hand through an endless system of stubborn, poofy cowlicks, "I wouldn't let some sanctimonious-you don't know about GLaDOS?"

The genius cocked his head, suddenly curious. She must've been fairly new-which explained why Dustin didn't recognize her, even in passing. Had he really been gone long enough to miss a stasis release?

[behaemmert]

Well, he did look like combat cyborgs she knew, especially with that arm thing, and she hadn't exactly read a bulletin on naming conventions to know the finer details. And if she had, she might simply have dismissed something like that as unimportant.

"What's a Glad-Os?" She asked, clearly looking a bit baffled. She didn't even pronounce the name properly. "Can't say I've heard of someone called that."

Yes, she obviously was a new arrival. Everyone else probably knew about something like GLaDOS by now.

[quark_assassin]

Matter of personal interpretation, I suppose. Dustin would've been impartial either way-perhaps even gratified, knowing that someone took him as such a fantastic creation. Or perhaps not. Combat cyborgs in Vita's world could be insignificant things of little importance, and Dustin wouldn't know any differently (until she gave some sort of indication of course, in which case he would know everything, as per usual).

In the meanwhile, Dustin was content with being cynical. "The GLaDOS, morelike. The resident AI nutcase in colloquial terms."

He threw a bit of slime on the ground in a flash of bad temper.

"Apparently she's here to monitor dimensional separation on the mental level, but frankly her methods aren't exactly worth the trouble. I'm getting too old to dodge laser turrets for the sake of science."

Need we be reminded that Dustin is twenty-nine years old.

[behaemmert]

Luckily, then, she didn't give such an indication. While those entities were quite sophisticated and powerful, they were also all female.

"So, it's like a device that puts you through some sort of overdone training course."

That's what she got from his explaination. "Can't say it sounds that bad, although I'll make sure not to be captured. Just one thing, you're still pretty young, from the looks of it. After all, you made it out, right?"

Of course, Vita didn't even spot the irony of her calling someone young, when she's the one who gets annoyed at being called a kid.

[quark_assassin]

...Well, damn. Although with Dustin's build-5'6'', 115 pounds-if he didn't have facial hair and wasn't so flat, then he might just pass for one if he turned the right way.

"Sure," he shrugged, exasperated by questions but thriving in this opportunity to explain things, as it gave him a second chance to think over and organize these past events-like developing the thesis to an argumentative essay, "Far more annoying than that, though-and inherently more dangerous. She runs you through these rooms with boiling chemical pits, drops, turrets, each more difficult to think through than the last."

Dustin's mouth twitched into a small, triumphant smile. He hadn't found them all that difficult

Sorry that my tags are much shorter, Vita's not the biggest introvert alas ^^;;;

[behaemmert]

"...That is a pretty tough way to handle that." Vita said in reply to his explaination, more to herself than to him.

And that was saying something, Vita had a bit of a reputation in her world for being quite a tough instructor herself (despite her tiny size). People who didn't put up a shield the moment she yelled to do so were prone to get into massive hammer-induced pain, after all. But that was a far cry from boiling chemical pits. Turrets sure, set on stun, but stuff that could kill?

"This GLadOS" she tried to imitate his way of pronouncing it "sounds ...like a bit of a jerk. And she really messes with memory just like that?"

That Vita did not like at all. Her own memory was messed up enough as is, she didn't need some stupid Glados screwing with it.

As for the mobile phone, she gave it a glance when he brought it out, but didn't think much of it - she knew of those things from her short stay on Earth, but had never actually done much with them. That they, technically, shouldn't work here wasn't something she knew.

Bah, don't be. It's my fault for ranting. x3

[quark_assassin]

Dustin broke from his momentary show of mirth and raised an oversized, shaggy eyebrow. For someone that carried around a giant hammer-and, for her apparent age, had enough spunk to convincingly connect it to her person and not look completely ridiculous-wussing out of a few unsound scientific experiments because of turrets and nasty bubblies (I can't believe I just typed that) seemed a bit...misplaced. It took the genius a moment of distant scrutiny to remind himself that not all children who carried around weapons were accustomed to death. Especially not the ones that had only recently arrived in this place.

They would be, though, the poor creatures.

"Huh-understatement," Dustin replied with a sniff, replacing the phone on his belt, "People think I'm cold, but at least I practice morals. GLaDOS operates on pure efficiency. If she had a crew of stressy test subjects that might interrupt or damage her experiments by looking for missing people, then that would be inefficient, thus, the mind blocks. I imagine it also makes Stacy happy

^^;

[behaemmert]

Quite the misunderstanding she had caused. But then, he really couldn't know of the things she had faced without complaining or shying away, and she hadn't exactly dropped hints.

"...Let me guess, you mostly envy her for her ressources." She guessed, knowing a few scientists rather well, after all. "I'm sure you're dedicated enough for your own stuff."

Most of them were. Especially for crazy pet projects.

[quark_assassin]

First impressions can be odd like that sometimes, and rampant speculation can be even more bizarre. Dustin was content with judging everyone at least two tiers under their apparent skill level in any subject until otherwise shown