Chapter 1: Anomalous Lifeforms Detected
Gordon Freeman looked down on the small Einstein-like scientist in front of him, rendered speechless by the insanity of the plan the scientist wanted him to go along with. He was glad that there had been plenty of ammunition for all of his weapons, in fact his suit's ammunition monitor had told him he could store no more in the suit itself, but the damn scientists were asking the near impossible from him. Close the rift and leave himself stranded in Xen? Bah.
He was still surprised that the suit had spots for all of the weapons he had with him, even the grenades. There were some hidden holsters for his pistols, a hook for his crowbar, a few grooves for his MP5 and SPAS-12, and even a large system for his rocket launcher on his back. His crossbow folded and was placed into a recessed grove on his left side. His grenades attached to a belt, along with his satchel charges. Of course, the prototype ray-gun that he found had to hang from a strap, and the strange bee-shooting alien just attached itself to his back next to his launcher. The long-jump module the scientist had also given him had attached itself to a spot on his lower back, and seemed to have it’s own power system, and would not drain his suit for a while at least.
‘Come on, Gordon, we only have a small window of opportunity here, and my colleague is almost ready.”
Gordon just stared at him, contemplating whacking him over the head with his crowbar. However, at that exact moment, he heard a voice over the loudspeaker.
”Gordon, come on, I don’t know how long this system will last.”
Gordon sighed inwardly, but then approached the large blast doors that lead into the experimentation chamber. When the doors opened, Gordon gasped, looking at the size of the contraption in front of him. It was as if a three-fingered alien cyborg had reached up from the pit below in an attempt to grab the ceiling, but had stopped half-way, fingers half-clenched.
“Gordon, we are about to start the process. I don’t know exactly what will happen, as this is one of the earlier prototypes and it was never designed to operate under these conditions. I want you to be ready for anything that might come through, and to keep them off of me if they do. I must concentrate on my work in order for the portal to open completely. Are you ready Gordon?”
Gordon simply nodded, struck by the amount of funding that would have had to pour into this department for this system to have been created.
”Good. Starting sequence in three… Two… One… First sequence initiated.”
The machine whirred to life at his words, sparks and arks leaping off of it. A few seconds after that, four or five balloon-headed creatures appeared and started throwing balls of energy at Gordon.
It took Gordon a second to realize he was under fire. He grabbed his revolver, feeling that the .357 rounds should be able to knock the creatures down quite easily. He took aim and fired. One of the creatures crumpled and fell to the ground. He dispatched the rest of the creatures in a similar fashion. Just after he killed the last one, he heard the scientist begin to speak.
“Sequence is at 50% complete. Almost there Freeman.”
As he said this, more of the creatures began pouring in. Gordon took them out with apparent ease, although they started to pour in faster than he could kill them. Finally, the scientist yelled out over the noise of the creatures and the whirring of the machines.
“Gordon, the portal is open. Don’t worry about me, just head for the portal, I don’t know how long the system can maintain it. Run Freeman!”
Gordon did not even bother to try to respond. He just bolted for the portal. As he ran towards the portal, preparing to jump the last few feet, he heard the scientist yell something else.
“Gordon, wait, the phase imbalance is too high, the portal is becoming unstable, don’t…”
Gordon heard these words as he jumped, but it was too late, Gordon could only hope that it would work. Time seemed to slow as Gordon flew through the air, and he saw the room beginning to fall apart. He heard the door opening behind him, but he could not turn to see who or what had entered. Gordon could only watch as he touched the portal….
Time zoomed back to normal at this point, and as he touched the portal, a huge explosion of sound and rainbow-colored light appeared, then nothing, just blackness. Gordon could hear his own breath, but nothing else. Then a flash of green light, and Gordon felt himself falling. He tried to right himself, but he was not fast enough. He hit the ground with a loud thud. He heard a few cracks, and he felt like he had fractured a few ribs and maybe a leg. The suit should take care of that he though, but then he heard the female voice of the suit saying, “Anomalous surge detected, rebooting to compensate.” However, he couldn’t be bothered with this, as the world around him began stretching into a long black-edged tunnel. He heard, as if from far away, a small shriek. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was a large mountain, and on a ridge connected to the mountain, a pale man in a blue suit, carrying a briefcase. The man looked familiar, but Gordon’s semi-conscious mind could not place him. Then everything went black.
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Fluttershy was hiking through the forest, climbing up a small mountain. One of the squirrels had complained that a badger had been climbing in her tree and would not stop messing with her house. She had come to help the badger find his own home, and to get him to stop Badgering, Fluttershy couldn’t help but giggle at her own pun, the squirrel. She continued up a mountain, and could see a clearing ahead. The squirrel was still chattering away to her, and she continued to listen. Just before entering the clearing, however, the squirrel stopped and looked up.
“What is it?” Fluttershy said, but the squirrel couldn’t say. Then out of nowhere a huge ball of green, arcing magic appeared in the clearing, at about the top of the trees. Fluttershy ran behind a large tree nearby, shaking with fear. She heard a thud, as if some creature had fallen, and then a strage voice said “Anomalous surge detected. Rebooting to compensate.” The voice was so foreign, so alien that she couldn’t help but shriek. She just stood there for a few minutes, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, she peered around the tree, all thought of her squirrel friend forgotten. She saw something orange in the clearing, and pulled her head back sharply. She took another look, and when the orange thing didn’t move, she tiptoed closer to see what it was.
What lay before her was the strangest creature she had ever seen. It had orange and black skin, except for the head, which was a strange light pink, almost peach. The orange and black skin seemed like an insect’s but the head was covered in a fleshy substance. It had some brown hair on its head, and it seemed to have four eyes, two were open and placed in front of the two that were closed. Its body seemed to have four main limbs, and a large number of smaller protrusions from its torso. The four limbs at the lower part of its body had black hooves, but they were shaped strangely, like an oval, and had strange wavy texture on the bottom. The two upper limbs also ended in the same black substance as the lower ones, but there were five smaller appendages, similar to the fingers on the monkeys she had seen. However, no animal she had seen before looked anything like this one. She walked around the thing and gasped at the large fleshy tumor attached to the outside of the thing. She thought she should remove it, but if it was a part of the creature, she didn’t want to hurt it. She needed someone who could find out what this thing was, and her first thought was her friend, Twilight Sparkle. She took one last look at the strange creature, and then jumped into the air to fly back and get help. She returned a few minutes later, Twilight galloping along behind her, and saw the creature again. It didn’t appear to have moved.
”What is that thing?” Twilight said, “I’ve never even heard of something even close to this thing. Maybe we should wait and see wha….” She trailed off as a small beep came from the creature and a strange female voice began to speak…
______________________________
Gordon woke slowly, his chest hurting. He couldn’t remember what he did last night. Something to do with the experiment. Did it work? He fought consciousness for a few more seconds, but the he heard a beep, and then the HEV suit’s voice began speaking.
“Welcome to the H.E.V. Mark IV protective system. For use in hazardous environment conditions. High-impact reactive armour activated. Atmospheric contaminant sensors activated. Vital sign monitoring activated. Automatic medical systems engaged. Weapon selection system activated. Munition level monitoring activated. Communications interface online. Have a very safe day. WARNING Major fractures detected, Minor concussion detected, minor lacerations detected, morphine administered.”
As the suit listed his injuries, his memories flooded back, the Resonance Cascade, the ensuing struggle through the giant mass of Black Mesa, and then the portal that the Lambda Team made him enter. He opened his eyes at this point, but almost immediately closed them as the light from the sun blinded him. His head pounded painfully. He waited until the morphine had been completely absorbed and he couldn’t feel the pain, and then he opened his eyes slowly.
He was outside, sitting in a small clearing in the woods. It seemed very peaceful, except… Something was off about this place, the air was a little too sweet, the trees just a few shades to bright, and the thick black lines surrounding everything were…. Wait a minute, Gordon thought, Thick black lines? This isn’t earth, where am I? As he looked around confused, he suddenly remembered the very last seconds before entering the portal, the brilliant flash of rainbow-light, the sound like a gunshot on steroids. He was in another dimension, completely alien to Earth and Xen. And yet… All of this looked very similar to Earth.
After his brief ruminations on this new dimension, Gordon felt that the suit had healed him enough to search his surroundings and see if there was some food around. He hadn’t eaten since the bowl of noodles he stole from Fred that morning before the experiment. As he sat up and grabbed the shotgun, he heard the suit beep again and say “Anomalous lifeforms detected.” Gordon immediately went into a defensive stance, looking around for any threat…
_________________________________-
Twilight watched the creature as it spoke in it’s strange voice. After saying a few things that confused Twilight, What is a munition level and why does it need to be monitored? she watched as the creature opened its eyes and seemed to get its bearings. Then it sat up and stood on its two hind limbs, and looked around. Then it reached towards its back and pulled off one of the protruding limbs. It looked around one more time, and then said “Anomalous lifeforms detected.” It meant her and Fluttershy! Twilight realized as the creature went into what was unmistakably a defensive stance, scanning around. Twilight decided that action had to be taken, and turned to Fluttershy and whispered, “Come on, we should try to calm this thing, it looks scared and confused, not angry or anything.” Fluttershy took a deep breath and then nodded. Twilight was surprised at this, Fluttershy was usually very, well, shy, and fearful of everything. She would cower before talking to anypony, except of course their tight-knit group of friends. Twilight was proud of her friend, overcoming her fears to help this thing that had apparently appeared out of some sort of green magic field.
“I’ll go first,” Fluttershy whispered, “I could try to calm this thing down.” Fluttershy was shaking worse than ever, but the resolve was evident in her eyes. Twilight put a comforting hoof on her shoulder, and then followed Fluttershy into the clearing. As she moved through the underbrush, Fluttershy said in a calming, albeit scared, voice “It’s okay, w-w-we don’t want to hurt you.”
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Gordon turned as a rustling was heard in the bush behind him. He put his shotgun up to his shoulder and went into a crouch, his every instinct telling him to shoot before whatever was in the bush could attack. He started to pull the trigger when a wavering voice came out from the bush.
It’s okay, w-w-we don’t want to hurt you.”
Gordon slightly lowered his weapon as what was unmistakably a Bright yellow horse came through the bush, followed by a purple one. As Gordon looked, he noticed that he wasn’t quite correct. The purple one must have been some sort of unicorn, with a small horn protruding from its forehead, while the yellow one had some sort of feathery growths on either side of its body. The two horse-like things stared at him and he stared back, thinking that the morphine may have affected his brain… Wait, thought Gordon , There is no maybe about it… I’m tripping BALLS
Gordon was still trying to figure out if he was actually safe, for all he knew, he was surrounded by some new alien creatures, and his morphine-induced brain was showing him these instead as these things in front of him, when the yellow one spoke. “Are you ok? We heard you talking about having fractured something. Do you need help?”
Gordon watched the two creatures in front of him, trying to bring himself together. He realized that the suit would have been monitoring his bloodstream, and would never have given him enough of a dose to instigate hallucinations. In fact, the only logical explanation was that the creatures in front of him were real, and sentient. Well, Gordon thought, better answer them. He prepared what he hoped was a lucid response upon meeting a new species, then discared the whole plan and decided to wing it.
“What are you?” He tried to say, but no sound came out. “What the…” he mouthed, unable to make his voicebox work. He tried to remember if anything could have made him mute. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t said anything since the night before the experiment. That night he celebrated the finding of such a pure sample, and the next morning he was too tired to talk to anyone and just monotonously put on his suit. When he finally did wake up fully, he didn’t have the chance to say anything as the lab boys in the control room and the test chamber doors didn’t give him the chance to speak. When the resonance cascade happened, he was too horrified by the visions and the aftermath to really feel like talking. Now that he was mute, he realized he would not be able to communicate with these strange things. Unless….
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Twilight looked at Fluttershy, the fear evident in her face as the creature stared them down. They looked back at the creature, who seemed to be having some sort of internal struggle, and waited. Finally, the creature seemed to make a decision and opened it’s mouth, moving it around as if to talk, but no sound came out. The creature scrunched up its face, and looked down at its neck, absentmindedly moving it’s mouth again as it rubbed it’s throat with one of its paws, lowering the black limb it had pulled off of it’s back.
“Umm, Fluttershy,” Twilight said as she saw it place the black limb back on it’s back and pull of another, red limb with a hook on one end, and a light gray color on both tips, “I think it might be unfriendly.”
The creature looked up at Twilight as she said this, and shook its head and snorted. Then it reached down with the red limb that it had, and dragged it through the ground. It seemed to be trying to communicate something, but in some sort of sign language. As twilight looked, the lines in the dirt began to take up familiar shapes. Not sign language, Twilight thought, but written language! And she began to read.
Hello, My name is Gordon Freeman. What and who are you? Where am I? was written on the ground.
“ Well, uhh, Gourdin Freamane,” Twilight said, trying to pronounce the name, “I am Twilight Sparkle, and my friend here is Fluttershy. We are in the land of Equestria, more specifically the forest surrounding Ponyville. I am a unicorn, and my friend here is a pegasus. She saw you appear out of some sort of green magical field and she came and got me. What are you and why can’t you talk? We heard your voice earlier, talking about anomalous lifeforms and tuition levels or something.”
______________________________________
Gordon looked up sharply as the purple unicorn answered his questions. Unicorns, pegasi? thought Gordon I am definitely not in Kansas anymore, Gordon continued to roll over what she had said as he thought of a good response.
He leaned over and dragged his crowbar through the dirt once more. Do you have a pencil and paper to write with? This will take a while
Not only that, Gordon thought, I’m gonna run out of room here. He surveyed the unicorn named Twilight as she twisted her head to read his scrambled writing. Gordon was still in shock over the fact that he had gone from the chaotic events at Black Mesa into this seemingly peaceful place.
“Hmmm…” Twilight said, “I think I have just the thing back at my house in Ponyville. Follow me.”
Gordon obediently followed, but he remained vigilant. He put his crowbar away and pulled out his 9mm pistol. It may seem peaceful here, thought Gordon, but I’m not stupid.
End
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Best Half-Life crossover i have read. All the others seem to have Gordon say something, and are not written very well.
Mmm, crowbar?
Some train of thought, before the final opinion:
He was glad that there had been plenty of ammunition for all of his weapons, in fact his suit's ammunition monitor had told him he could store no more in the suit itself, but the damn scientists were asking the near impossible from him.
^ Commas aren't enough. You need at least dashes, and possibly seperate sentences.
He was still surprised that the suit had spots for all of the weapons he had with him
^ Really?! He's travelled all this way and is still being surprised by the suit he's been wearing the whole time?
Maybe in Unforseen Consequences, but NOT Lambda Core.
Do I really care about the intricate details of where all his weapons fit?
he felt like he had fractured a few ribs and maybe a leg
You say this like it's an everyday occurrance.
Fluttershy was hiking through the forest
Add a better transition. This comes out of nowhere
She had come to help the badger find his own home, and to get him to stop Badgering, Fluttershy couldn’t help but giggle at her own pun, the squirrel.
Feels OOC for Fluttershy to giggle at a pun, but okay. Also, the Badger is in a tree. Why? Why not have the badger knocking on her front door? Not to mention this sentence has the same problem as the first one I mentioned.
She took one last look at the strange creature, and then jumped into the air to fly back and get help. She returned a few minutes later, Twilight galloping along behind her, and saw the creature again.
^ Needs a new paragraph. You go from describing Freeman, to thinking about Twilight, to fetching Twilight, to having Twilight look at Freeman. That's, like, four different topics and ideas in one paragraph. Split it up.
“Welcome to the H.E.V. Mark IV protective system. For use in hazardous environment conditions.
^ This is the perfect place for a colon instead of a period.
Also, we really don't need to hear the ENTIRE suit's introductory speech.
Something was off about this place, the air was a little too sweet, the trees just a few shades to bright, and the thick black lines surrounding everything were…. Wait a minute, Gordon thought, Thick black lines? This isn’t earth, where am I?
Look up the term "run-on sentence". I don't think you know what it is.
The rest of the chapter seems to have the same reocurring problems.
And the final opinion:
I like some of the concepts: Gordon not talking, a few humerus lines, etc...
The main problem is, it feels dry. It's like you're just going through the motions, or summarizing without really showing us anything. Instead, it's filled with a bunch of unnecessary information that we don't really need. You have a piece of meat, yes, but all its juices have been sucked out, and you've tried to compensate by smothering it in salt.
There are good things in there: lines like "Gordon just stared at him, contemplating whacking him over the head with his crowbar," and "He hadn’t eaten since the bowl of noodles he stole from Fred that morning before the experiment." These are GOLD. This is the juice for the meat.
Lines like these are bad:
“Welcome to the H.E.V. Mark IV protective system. For use in hazardous environment conditions. High-impact reactive armour activated. Atmospheric contaminant sensors activated. Vital sign monitoring activated. Automatic medical systems engaged. Weapon selection system activated. Munition level monitoring activated. Communications interface online. Have a very safe day."
This is an entire paragraph that is LITERALLY straight out of the game. It's practically copied verbatum from the game's transcript, and adds NOTHING to your story. Not only is it unoriginal, but your readers will get bored reading it, and those who recognize as a copy of the Half-Life transcript will start to think you lack creativity. This is the salt that needs to go away.
The last thing I will note is the Author's Note. These are frowned upon in our reviewer circles, and for good reason. You rarely want to address your readers just after they finish reading the chapter. It destroys the immersion, and makes you look like you're afraid they won't like your story. I'm hard-pressed to think of a reason to have one of these, save to acknowledge that a character or idea was borrowed or inspired from somewhere else, and to give credit to them. Even that could be added in the description. Any real notes reguarding people's opinions, how you did stuff, or pointing out flaws, can all be done in your blog, away from the chapter itself.
You got the steak. Now get rid of the salt, add some more juice, and the flavor will show up a lot better.
Okay I guess the clothes/skin part is acceptable, but the glasses/eyes? They do have glasses in the show, like all the time. Totally not possible to be mistaken for eyes.
Rough start but we shall see where this path takes us.
Under this sun, no shadows will fall! Piercing our eyes as we charge!
2317908
You are a wise man:-)
2317908 yur avatar makes me giggle
"ray gun" is the tau canon
"balloon headed creatures" are controllers
and wouldn't the communications system be offline on the HEV suit?
other than that, good story.
I see you've completely skipped the gluon gun - aka the huge backpack vacuum-like thingie that destabilizes living things on the molecular level. And rightly so, considering it was already an issue w/ the long-jump module in the original continuity... I mean, nobody ever mentions this, but seriously: two overlapping backpacks, in a sense.
I know it's not something that's meant to be realistic - though to be honest, the Half-Life series did go to some pains to make it much more realistic than contemporary shooters of the time (for instance: no flashing guns inexplicably hovering 30 cm off the ground). I don't think this - or the fact that the guy's lugging around what probably must weight at least 200kg in weapons and ammo - is ever addressed. At the very least, I don't think the HEV suit makes it any easier (in fact, knowing these things, I'd rather expect it to make it harder to move around, really).
Though, you did also skip a few other weapons (the Colt Python for one - unless you meant that in the "pistols" bit (note: it's a handgun, but not a pistol); or the snarks), so I'm not sure if it's just not mentioned.
Also, as a side-note: I do believe the long-jump module was meant to drain the suit's power at some point, but in the end it was simply dropped. It would make sense if the flashlight also drained the suit's power, but it'd have to do so at a very low rate (alternatively, it could be said that it produces a wide, far-reaching beam and as such heats up quite a bit, requiring cooldown). Otherwise, I'd like to see a mod where the flashlight recharges on movement instead (so that it wouldn't if you stood still).
7135264
Gordon is never given the name of the device in the original continuity (as opposed to the gluon gun, referenced directly in dialogue; incidentally, it has an entirely different entity name (egon gun) in the game's assets). Calling it the "ray gun" is perfectly in-line with what Gordon should theoretically know about it at that point (alternatively, XVL1456 would also be acceptable as it's printed on the chassis of the damn thing).
Gordon is never given any names for the creatures he encounters. You can sometimes see stuff the scientists have whipped up on whiteboards and papers around Black Mesa (notably on barnacles and houndeyes), but I don't believe it was ever meant to be information Gordon gathers. As such, I wouldn't expect him to know any of the names you'd otherwise find in the game files.
To be fair, I don't think you can make the connection easily when you play for the first time, even when faced with the Nihilanth. It may take you a few playthroughs to figure out that the green aliens are in fact slaves, or that the "balloon-headed creatures" are related to the Nihilanth in any way - or that he's an alien entity on Xen, for that matter.
And finally, technically, "Vortigaunts" aren't even named as such in the original game - they're simply named "aslave" (as a game entity) in the game files. We (humanity) only find this all out after Gordon deals w/ Nihilanth and the Vorts are freed from his influence.
I'm mentioning this because we're clearly being given a story where things are described as they appear, and not as they actually are - which makes a lot of sense, because it's telling the story from the character's perspective, and the character's viewpoint is necessarily limited (in contrast to the omnipresent, omniscient narrator).
Technically it'd be online, just not receiving anything. Might send out an occasional 'blip' here and there, as part of a peer auto-discovery protocol - not to mention the active tracking devices mentioned in Apprehension, which are probably veritable chatterboxes on their own (but not strictly part of the communications interface). If you can magically 'talk' to it, it should work just fine. ;-]
For some reason, I seem to recall Equestria having a general idea of glasses, though... unless you meant it as a "four-eyes" pun, in which case shame on you, that was bad and you should feel bad (seriously, it's terrible).
2712886
I actually liked the bit about skin being orange and black. While Equestrians should have a general concept of safety gear, this is clearly an unprecedented situation - and I really enjoyed the bit where the Author doesn't tell me what it is, but rather what it looks like.
Do agree about the glasses, I mean - see above.
Now, this isn't bad as these things go - though this seems to fall more generally under HiE rules than Game Crossover rules, and seems to behave as such. Differences aside, this is way better than most other Half-Life crossovers I've read on here.
Still, there's one thing that's nagging me. Considering Half-Life as the source material, there are generally two ways I would've expected Gordon to have acted: either get the fuck out of Dodge to figure things out, or start shooting. I know he's up for anything at this point, considering what he's been through already, but...
Hello, Gordon!