Twilight awoke to mechanical humming. The door to the elevator to the next chest chamber opened. “Good. You are awake.” GLaDOS’s monotone voice spoke over the loud speaker. “I almost thought you died from the exposure to the testing rooms. Oh, well. Advance to the next test chamber. Please, do not cheat.”
Twilight sensed what was to come would be difficult. Test Chamber Six had turrets, firing energy balls, and a toxic waste pool. The pool was right in front of her, its smelly green liquid oozing its toxins and deadly chemicals. An energy ball soared over her head, its target to activate the exit was inaccessible, but she portal-ed the ball to hit the target, first letting it bounce off a couple of walls beforehand. A bridge opened over the toxic pool, but the real threat was still there. At the exit, the turrets were scattered like stars in a constellation. Using portals, she took out the turrets, hearing their critical error messages.
Twilight had finished the test in ten minutes, studying and taking notes for all parts of it, and analyzing the physics that was part of the test.
And, as an added bonus, she found an excuse to throw turrets to their demise-into the toxic pool or into the Emancipation Grid. All of their mechanical cries meant nothing to her now. They were not living beings; they were just toys of GLaDOS. By Test Chamber Seven, though, GLaDOS had something surprising to say: “This test is impossible. Friendship cannot help you in any way here. I have failed to make this test in any manner possible; so please do not attempt. Doing so may cause: irritation, paranoia, rash, and severe suicidal tendencies.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and, just to be as obnoxious as possible, took out the cameras with her portal gun. GLaDOS expressed her annoyance immediately: “Disabling cameras. That was not an element of friendship. Please don’t do that in the future. Rest assured, I can STILL see you.”
Twilight finished the test chamber in six minutes. (It was pretty much the test chamber Chell had to face, with the Emancipation Grid and all.) GLaDOS “congratulated” her: “Good, Miss Sparkle. Impossibility is never possible in Aperture Laboratories. Staying perseverant with possibilities is key. Like replacing blood with gasoline or sticking a personality core into a potato.” To Twilight, what she said sounded like a deranged paradox-type riddle.
Test Chamber Eight really did seem impossible, more so than Seven. Turrets guarded the door and the cube dispenser. Hardly any white surfaces were available for portals. Twilight gritted her teeth. ‘Fantastic,’ she thought and looked where she could actually PUT a portal. One was above the turrets near the locked exit. Another was right next to her. And a third surface was underneath the turrets near the cube dispenser. Twilight then got a crazy idea. She fired the blue portal above the turrets near the door. Then, she fired the orange portal underneath the other set of turrets. Bullets and turrets flew out of the blue portal and onto their little friends. “Don’t shoot!” “Hey! It’s me!” All of the turrets went down firing at the same time.
Twilight dispensed a cube and placed it on the button. “Did you know that test subjects who are homesick generally break down to tender music?” As of right on cue, an orchestra of soft-sounding violins and pianos played a somber tune. When it went off, GLaDOS apologized for it, claiming she did not know why it went off. It didn’t phase Twilight one bit.
The elevator took Twilight to Test Chamber Nine. More turrets were laid around the large track. Twilight noticed some high platforms over a toxic pool. Nearby her was a long pit with a white floor; a portal surface. She got excited when she realized it was a momentum puzzle. Leaping from portal to portal, Twilight finally came to the source of the turrets. The bullet-filled tin cans stood right by the exit, around a button, as she looked through the glass panes. She spotted a cube right next to her. She picked it up and fired portals on the white ceiling, for the cube to fall onto the turrets. None of them were prepared for a cube to land on their heads, so they all went down firing until they shut down. “I just read your file. Apparently you have an IQ level greater than the stupidest test subject on record. Don’t look so proud.”
Twilight didn’t feel proud. She felt relieved because she knew of far greater insults the A.I. could use on her.
Her high fall boots clacked on the smooth black floor as she advanced into the next test chamber. Ten started out to be a sequence of stairs, leading to an enormous white room. The room was completely bare, except for another door, a cube dispenser, and a button. A set of wall panels nearby stuck out like a sore thumb. Twilight frowned and walked over to them, peeking behind them. Black wires and metal frames were entangled in a fiery blood red environment. Paints and broken paintbrushes were all over the floor behind the wall. She could hear the metal gear-works of Aperture working beyond the black doom environment. She turned her head to face exactly the behind of the panels.
Her heart stopped. She really shouldn’t have been surprised, but the message was abundantly clear and it terrified her: “The cake is a lie.”She scoffed. It wasn’t a surprise at all. Not to her, at least; she’d heard from Celestia that GLaDOS might promise cake, but it may be a lie. Then again, the message looked incredibly old. But what really surprised her was a portrait of a young woman next to it.
The portrait’s dark ponytail had fallen onto her shoulders, which were covered by the orange fabric of the testing jumpsuit. Her white eyelids were closed calmly onto her pale features, acting as curtains for her eyes. She was incredibly beautiful, an angel in an orange jumpsuit, so to speak. Twilight smiled at it, before walking away. ‘She must be important enough for someone to paint her face on a wall panel. I wonder who she is.’
The test she had was just the one in the first test chamber all over again. But this time, there were glass panes surrounding where the cube would fall, but there were gaps between each panel, just enough for Twilight to shoot a portal through the gap, so the cube would fall right through the portal and into the portal near her.
She picked up the cube and once again, placed it on the button, which was on the other side of the testing chamber. She waltzed through the door, reading the Guide to Portals book she was given.
GLaDOS was prepared to zing her with more insults. “Let’s read the test results. ‘You are sad and lonely. Nobody likes you. All you care about is books. Books, books, and more books. You are also ugly.’ Oh, that’s pathetic. What do these test observing old fogeys know about loneliness? Oh, wait. I observe the tests. And that was MY conclusion for this one.”
Twilight tensed at the harsh adjectives used against her. But she continued to advance into Chamber 11, more determined to show GLaDOS the true Twilight, the girl willing to sacrifice for her friends, family, and her country. The unicorn with intelligence and powerful magic. The geek who had a book, or could write a book, about anything and everything. She was all of that, and maybe more; but she definitely was not sad. Or lonely, or even ugly. ‘Just have to survive eight or so more chambers,’ Twilight thought to herself.
Eleven was not what she had expected. It was literally a labyrinth of white and black walls, that stretched out probably more than a couple of miles. She heard turrets in the distance. Twilight immediately knew this was a test of thought and contemplation as well as chance. The great chance she could die.
She looked towards the end of the maze, where the common sliding door was, with a big red button, again, sat right by it. Twilight realized there was a white wall on the left side of her, and a white wall right next to the exit door. She placed her shimmering portals on each wall. Once she hit the other side, she found a cube RIGHT next to the button. Twilight rolled her eyes. The maze was nothing more than a distraction. Test subjects did NOT have to go through the maze at all in the first place. Twilight rested the cube on the button and advanced. “Incredible! You abstained from the painfully obvious and took the quick, easy, and painless route. Now move on to the next chamber!”
The elevator came to a stop at Test Chamber 12. Twilight observed the testing chamber, which was nothing more than endless white surfaces and numerous toxic pools of smelly sludge. Platforms stacked towards the ceiling, making up the only direction to go. Twilight shot portals on white walls and platforms, careful not to fall in the…goop. She finished in twenty minutes. (Same test chamber from Portal)
GLaDOS got right on her. “Did you know we dump corpses in that toxic liquid? It disintegrates the major organs, skin, and skeleton. It’s easy to clean up bodies from these test chambers. Hopefully, for your sake, you won’t die.”