//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - Happy Landings // Story: Portals. Portals Everywhere! // by Piece Bot //------------------------------// “News reports have been coming in from all over the globe about how people have been disappearing from-” The news report was cut short by Joseph turning off his television. “Yeah, yeah. People disappear all the time. Why would this be any different?” Joseph asked himself as he threw the remote onto the couch and headed up to his room to get changed into costume. He was going to a convention in Melbourne, dressed up as Chell, complete with the orange jumpsuit and white singlet. He had even crafted his own long fall boots to complete the look. The only thing missing was a portal gun. He hoped he would be able to pick one up rather cheaply at the convention. “Okay. Costume, check. Boots, check. Wallet and money, check. Great. I’m all ready.” Joseph muttered. Smiling, he locked the front door and headed off towards the train station to head into the city. Walking around slowly, he checked his map and looked around, judging where he was. “If I’m here, then Bunyip Theatre would be … thataway.” Joseph mumbled and headed in that direction. Walking in through the doors, Joseph wandered around aimlessly for a bit, looking at the wares that people were selling. One particular stall was being manned by someone dressed as the Merchant from Resident Evil 4. “I wonder what he’s selling.” Joseph walked over and took a quick glance at the table. His eyes lit up when he saw that he was selling an almost exact replica of the portal gun from portal. The only difference was, was that there were two tubes in the chamber instead of the one and a GLADoS potato battery was lodged on one of the black prongs.(As he gazed at it he heard a famillar voice call out. “JOSHU! AOWWW! Hey! Hey Joshu! Come over here! Pick me up! Buy me! I may have accidentally made the magic man angry! Now I’m a potato! And good news! They’ll throw in my wallet so we can get you a payback from me to you for spending the moneys to buy me!” Then after a moment silence, “Oh yeah and I can do telepathy now, so don’t leave me or I’ll complain to you THROUGH YOUR MIND!”   “What?” Joseph asked out loud as he turned towards the Merchant. Not wanting to leave his friend behind, he walked up to the seller.  “G’Day mate, how much for the portal gun?” Joseph asked pointing to said item. The Merchant looked at the gun, then back to him. “For you, $150.” He said simply. Joseph grinned and fished out his wallet from his pocket, counting out the correct amount of notes. “Deal. Here.” He replied and gave him the money. “Enjoy.” The Merchant said with a somewhat creepy smile but Joseph ignored it in favor of picking up the gun. Looking it over, there were two barrels in the glass chamber and looking inside it, he found the handle to hold it properly when firing. Putting his hand in it, he pressed a button on the handle with his thumb, causing the bottom tube to light up a blinding white, along with the whirr of the gun powering up. His brow furrowed. “Okay. Why is it white?” Joseph talked more to himself than the Merchant. Giving it a test fire, he felt a shudder and then it fired off a portal onto the nearby wall. A swirling black vortex with white edges appeared where he had shot it.”WHAT!?” Joseph shouted in alarm, running towards the portal. Experimentally putting his hand in it, he felt an invisible force pull him inside. He tried to scream out for help but his head vanished into the portal before he could. Joseph screamed out as he felt himself falling towards the ground at an alarming rate. Looking around quickly, he couldn’t spot any buildings to fire his portal on, so he braced for impact. It never came. Instead, the ground folded in around him and pushed him back out making him scream as she started to fall again. Eventually the bouncing was caused less and less until it stopped. Shaking his head, he clutched it and groaned. “Well that was certainly a fall. But hey! What did you expect WALKING RIGHT INTO A PORTAL!” A robotic sounding voice said next to his ear. Joseph jumped and quickly looked around to identify the voice, his weird landing momentarily forgotten. “Who are you?” Joseph asked uncertainly. “Oh god please no amnesia… just down here.” Joseph looked down and was a bit confused as all he could see was his portal gun and a flashing potato battery. He looked at the potato more closely. “Are you the one that talked?” Joseph questioned in disbelief. “I would nod except I don’t exactly have a neck.” The potato beeped. Joseph’s eyes widened and beamed. “This is brilliant. I have an actual portal gun AND a GLADoS potato battery as well!” Joseph shouted in glee and jumped around in circles a few times before slowly coming to grips with where he actually was. He looked at the ground at his feet, then the sky and clouds and finally everywhere else. “Why is the ground plaid? Shouldn’t it be grey or at the very least green?” Joseph asked GLADoS as he picked a random direction and began walking. “I don’t know but I don’t like the sound of that rumbling.” GLADoS remarked and Joseph looked towards the source. It appeared to be a group of long-legged bunnies were stampeding across the land. “You certainly don’t see that every day.” Joseph said a bit fearfully as he tried to work out where the hell the portal deposited him. After a few hours of walking, Joseph finally came upon a village, of sorts. For one, all the houses were upside down. Two, there were clouds made out of cotton candy and raining down chocolate milk. Three, this seemed as good a time as any to figure out how the portal gun worked. Joseph ignored the maddening spectacle in front of him and fiddled with the buttons on the handle. He flicked a switch and the top tube lit up with blue light. He flicked it the other way and it lit up with an orange light. Pressing the lonesome button made the bottom tube light up with a white light. “Let’s see if the blue and orange portals also work.” He flicked the switch and the white light disappeared to be replaced with a blue light in the top tube. He looked at a house and fired it inside one of the open windows. He looked at the ground and sighed. “Oh right. It can only fire on white surfaces. But, if this second tube is here, then maybe I don’t need to fire on white surfaces.” He tested his theory by firing an orange portal directly underneath his feet, expecting it to fizzle out. “Woah!” Joseph shouted as he unexpectedly fell through and ended up hitting his head on a floating table. “Ouch. I’ll feel that in the morning. Uhh ..” A snort is heard followed by, “Hey Joshu, look up.” Joseph looked up and found a family of colourful ponies staring at him. He grinned and waved. “G’Day?” One of the little ponies screamed while the big grey one flared its wings and bucked Joseph back through the portal, only to have him fall back into the house, knocking into the ponies as if they were bowling pins. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!” Joseph almost shouted apologetically but realised that the ponies weren’t in any mood to talk. Seeing that, Joseph climbed out of the portal and hit a second button on the handle, causing the portals to disappear. “This is just not my day.” Joseph moaned and trudged towards the centre of the town. “Those horses did not seem to like you. Also, WHY DID YOU SHOOT A PORTAL AT YOUR OWN BLOODY FE...” GLADoS beeped and fizzled out, effectively shutting him up for the time being. “Looks like the ‘too much emotion’ thing from the game is present as well.” Joseph frowned and turned to see six pastel-coloured ponies firing a rainbow at a mismatched creature, effectively turning him to stone. Joseph’s mouth dropped open, not noticing the town reverting back to normal. “Wha- Huh- Wh-hy?” Joseph blubbered while his brain tried to process what has happened to him. Joseph was about halfway through processing when a shout came from behind him. He turned around and found the same pony family from before charging towards him. Panicked, she fired a blue portal towards the massive tree in the middle town, only barely noticing that it sailed through an open window. He flicked the switch and fired an orange portal at his feet, jumping into it. Soon as he did, he fizzled out the portals and stumbled around a bit, trying to get his balance back. “This is not my day.” He repeated and looked out the nearby window at the ponies as they tried to figure out where he went. Breathing out a sigh of relief, he sat down underneath the window and took a good look around the room he was in. It was a big library …. inside a tree. “GLADoS. Please tell me you’re experiencing the same thing I am.” Joseph whispered to the potato on his gun as he fearfully looked at the six ponies in the room. They were all staring at him, with their mouths open. “While I hate to see you in pain and it would be fun to witness, this time, I think you had better explain to the ponies why we are here.” GLADoS answered and fizzled out again, leaving Joseph by himself for the time being. “Before all you … sheilas,” Joseph said after noticing all of them had rather long manes and feminine faces, “charge at me, can I introduce myself? I’m friendly, my name is Joseph and this is … umm... GLADoS? ...What do I call you?” Joseph asked the potato battery as it seemed he didn’t have the same personality as the actual GLADoS. “God dammit,” it muttered under it’s ‘breath’ as it realised it didn’t know either, “Look, just call me Crikey. That’ll work” “Okay … and this is Crikey. What are all yours?” He asked with a pleasant smile, even though his face betrayed his true emotion. Fear. The first pony to recover was the lavender one. She shook her head and stepped forward cautiously. “Joseph. It’s, umm, good... to meet you? My name is Twilight Sparkle. These are my friends, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy and Applejack.” Twilight gestured to each one in turn. The rest of them seemed to recover when Twilight Sparkle spoke their names. “Y-you’re not going to h-hurt us are you?” The yellow one stammered, hiding her face behind her pink mane. At that, Joseph beamed, inhaled deeply and rushed to Fluttershy, giving her a big hug. “Oh you’re just so cuute~!” Joseph squeed finally letting Fluttershy down after what seemed like a few minutes. The mare coughed and a tinge of red graced her face as she went to hide behind Twilight. “Oh, right, sorry. I got pulled into this rather unexpectedly.” Joseph said, beaming. “You have a funny accent.” The pink pony spoke as it suddenly appeared on Joseph’s shoulder. Joseph nearly fell over and when he got back up, he went to raise his gun but realised it was back underneath the window. “Yeah, so what sheila?” Joseph asked uncertainly when the pink pony stopped bouncing and stared at him. She then gasped and spoke rather quickly. “I need to throw you a “Welcome to a New World party!” Joseph clutched his ears at the volume of her voice. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.” Twilight smiled at Joseph and then trotted over to pick up the portal gun. When she saw the potato battery on it, she tried to use her magic to pull it off so that she could get a better look at the device when it suddenly spoke. “WAIT! STOP PURPLE UNIHORSE! I NEED TO BE HERE TO LIV... ” It cuts out as Twilight stared in shock at the battery. Joseph just facepalmed and walked to the blue pony. “Your name is Rainbow Dash right? I can see why.” Joseph said as he gazed at the rainbow mane. “Well, I can see the rainbow part but the dash? I don’t really know.” Joseph muttered and walked over to the orange pony. “HEY! I heard that!” Rainbow said to her. “The dash part is because I can fly at speeds that can make sonic rainbooms.” Rainbow continued, watching him turn around. “A sonic whatboom? Rainboom? What the heck is a sonic rainboom!? I don’t even know what this place is even called, let alone what a bloody sonic rainboom is!” Joseph shouted as his brain finally processed what happened to him. Rainbow recoiled from the outburst and couldn’t think of anything to say. “I broke her? Well that’s good.” Crikey said in smug satisfaction. Joseph just sighed and picked up the portal gun, looking at the ponies. “Before things get any weirder, I’m going to try and find a place to sleep.” Joseph said, taking careful aim at the mountain in the distance. Firing off a portal, he fired the other one at the wall opposite him. Before he stepped inside, he looked at the mountain in the distance. “Why is there a city on the side of the mountain? You know what? I don’t even want to know.” Joseph muttered, holding his head and walking through the portal.