//------------------------------// // Chapter I: Arrival to Earth // Story: My Little Wheatley // by DuskIsGolden //------------------------------// "So, it's not very often I use this feature the bloody engineers gave me... it's called Notepad, and it's bloody ridiculous to type if you don't have any arms... or hands... or fingers for that matter. But by all means, I am fine. It would help if I could be picked off the ground for a minute so I can check my surroundings... cause I'm on the ground. Facing the.. uhm... dirt- ground- wait a minute. I'm not in space! Thank bloody God I'm not in space anymore with that space core! Oh, this is brilliant! Amazing! There must be someone I can say thank you to for tha-" A silent mechanical orb was laying in the grass, eye-down and unable to move, considering its spherical body was on fire and halfway down in the ground. A perpetual sunlight drifted over him, and a hushed and awed crowd of four-legged animals sat watching him. "What do you think it is?" one of them would ask. Some weren't sure. But fact was fact that none of them had the urge to go up to it. "It's probably a raw sewage container," another one would suggest. The crowd backed up a few steps and shunned the container or whatever it seemed to be. They had been awed by the spherical object for hours on end, and the entire town that they occupied was almost a ghost town at this point, minus the occasional screaming from one the fashion designers or bakers if they missed an order or made something wrong. "Hold on a minute, let's see what exactly this is-" some pony pushed others lightly out of her way and when she saw the spherical object, her eyebrows shot up. She backed up and cocked her head slightly to look at the strange thing before her. "Wait a minute- I hear talking. Those must be people! I can't move though, that's kind of an issue... my eye is kind of stuck, and I'm not sure if those are people or strange animals that are speaking English just to fool me... hmmm. Since I'm not sure, I'm going to stay put! Right here, right in this comfortable dirt home I was dropped into." the orb silently clacked away to himself. The awkward silence was too much for any of the ponies present, so the pony who had pushed herself into the middle of the crowd used her magic to pull the thing out of the dirt. The spherical object yelled in a mad slur of his Bristol accent and swiveled his singular blue-eyed gaze at the Unicorn who had pulled him out. "Well this is kind of a shocker, heh," he began, eagerly looking around, "so, uhm.. where am I? Because this is definitely not Earth, because there aren't Earth-like animals around... well obviously you could be from Earth, but..." he sighed in frustration and the purple Unicorn piped up, "I was going to ask you the same thing! What are you?" the spherical object made a sound similar to one clearing their throat before speaking and replied professionally, "I am the core responsible for the production of deadly Neurotoxin, keeping 30,000 bloody vegetables alive and also getting banished into space," he announced. And also being a moron, GLaDOS' words stuck in the back of his memory bank and he shivered at the thought of GLaDOS ever possibly winding up here. The purple Unicorn raised an eyebrow and started carrying the spherical object with her and she asked another question, "So what's your name? You seem semi-helpful," the spherical object laughed as he replied, "Semi-helpful? You've got to be joking! I can help with a lot... if you know, if I had arms and useful appendages... which I don't, and you don't happen to have computers here, do you, by any chance?" after a moment of silence the spherical object cleared his throat again and answered the question at hand, "oh, and my name is Wheatley! Freshly un-banished from space it would seem, I am at your service," the Purple Unicorn smiled to herself. This should be interesting, she thought as she made her way to the Library. "Well my name is Twilight Sparkle, and this is Ponyville," the Purple unicorn named Twilight began happily, "so you said you were banished to space?" Wheatley made his best attempt to nod and replied, "Yup! I was just toying around with some new toys of mine, and uh… this lady came in, shot a few portals around, and I, uhm… got kind of shot out into space! And somehow landed up down here,” Twilight nodded slowly as she opened the door to her library, slowly pulling some books off the shelves. “So what exactly do you do, uhm…you… four-legged-horned-techni-color…uhm… thing?” Twilight mumbled an inaudible reply as she pulled a book halfway out of its spot on the shelves and a small boom was heard as her shelf receded into the wall and slid behind the other shelf. “Well, I study magic, keep the library clean and I am extremely scientific!” Twilight’s eyes beamed and Whealtey raised the bar above his eye in curiosity. “So what exactly do you mean, scientific? What in the bloody world can you do without any arms or legs?—well obviously you have legs, but no hands! You can’t do much without hands, like… like pushing buttons! Or hacking!—wait—no, not hacking. Heh, you could… you could probably hack like that door over there…” Twilight raised her eyebrow at Wheatley groaned. “Actually, never mind, let’s just go with whatever your plan might be,” Twilight nodded slowly, the curiosity draining a little away as Wheatley spoke. This if far from what I thought this would be, she thought. Shaking off the thought, Twilight took Wheatley down a set of stairs that looked as if they were just another extension of the library, just made of hundreds of books assembled into a downward-spiraled staircase. When Wheatley turned on his flashlight—to Twilight’s utter surprise, she replied gleefully, “These are all made from hundreds of books assembled into this staircase,” Wheatley blinked confusedly, “What? Books? Are books those two-sided things you crack open and read?...” he trailed off, then blinked away his apparent confusion, continuing, “oh, oh!! Books! Oh, brilliant, you’ve got books! This is amazing! I read books all the time, you know, just crack open a good reading of Plato and Machiavelli on a rainy day…” Wheatley trailed off in his whimsical reply and Twilight’s confusion grew a little more, a lot like a tumor with a side of potatoes and gravy and an eight-ounce glass of confusion on the side. “This leads down into my lap several miles deep into the ground,” Twilight took on her glee-full look and tone of voice again. She was getting really pumped up for whatever she was going to do. But before Twilight had brought Wheatley a quarter of the way down, another voice was heard. “Twilight!! What’s everypony outside yelling about?” Twilight yelled back up to her speaker, knowing who it was, “Spike! Tell them it’s no big deal, I have an idea!” There was a long pause which was then followed by a groan that seemed to say, “Oh God, not one of your ideas again, Twilight…” “Okay, Twilight!” Twilight nodded, giving her all-too-well-known-triumphant-look as she trotted down the stairs and into an elevator, which shot the two down the rest of the way to her underground Lab. * * *