Chell learned a long time ago not to trust anyone.
While others called her paranoid, she called it survival.
If she wasn’t as relentlessly stubborn as she was, she would’ve been dead a long time ago. The further this new life progressed, these traits only proved more useful with life on the surface.
If she thought Aperture was a horrible place, the outside world beat that by the worst degree.
The human race had perished. Everything had been destroyed. Cities collapsed, and a new empire rose by beings best suited for hell itself. These forces – or the combine, as people called them – harvested the entire planet, leaving hardly anything left for humans. It made living a normal life incredibly hard to do under the keen eye of the combine, forcing a massive majority of humans to obey to them like mindless drones. But Chell refused to submit to them.
Instead, she joined The Resistance. An intentional act of defiance.
Killing combine soldiers became an effortless task – nothing but a daily chore. With time, Chell had grown numb to the brutal bloodshed and senseless acts of genocide. But the day she was forced to commit a real kill for the first time hadn’t settled right with her. She was plagued with nightmares for weeks. But now, she was something akin to a ruthless murderer. She had to be.
It was for a good, sensible cause.
The human race had started an uprising, fighting against the forces that overtook their rightful planet. Everyday it was kill, or be killed. Nothing more, nothing less. As the weeks came and went, Chell ended up joining a local group of City 12 rebels, fighting alongside them in violent street wars against the combine. But as the resistance uprising raged on, their numbers dwindled to the point where their once massive gathering had been reduced to little but a small group of 12 people.
She heard some people say safety was in numbers. Well, Chell thought otherwise.
They thought they had safety in numbers.
But then look what happened to them.
Now, they were forced to seek refuge instead of going out to fight; only doing so when it was absolutely necessary now. Or at least, until they replenished their lost numbers. But that wouldn’t be for a long while.
However, in the meantime, the last remaining survivors thought it wise to station themselves in an abandoned lodge within one of Michigan’s forest preserves. With traps set up all over the place, it made for a convenient temporary base. Even though they wouldn’t hold out here forever, it did them well for the time being.
But eventually, supplies ran low.
With so many survivors held up in one place, it made it difficult to keep everything rationed and long-lasting; and because of Earth’s severely limited resources, most people often had to go hungry or thirst for nights on end. And drinking combine-issued water was completely out of the question, no matter how desperate someone was.
Don’t drink the water. They put something in it. To make you forget.
No one dared touch the water.
Instead, Chell volunteered to go scavenging.
Sent off with nothing but loaded weapons and a half-empty aluminum bottle of water, she would have to survive on pure adrenaline and will-power alone. But being forced to live in these conditions was nothing new to her.
She was used to it.
—
After hours of trekking through the forest, Chell had finally stumbled across a water stream far up North.
What seemed like nothing but a hopeless cause hadn’t been as hopeless as she thought after all. Again, her persistence paid off, and now she would be able to reap the benefits.
If the water was even drinkable.
Chell kneels at the edge of the small water stream, testing the cool water with her hand to briefly check for any discrepancy in quality. The last thing she wanted was for her hand to come back with obvious signs of infected waters, but her worries were mostly eased when it came back clean.
Well, as possible as it could be, given the circumstance.
She swings the backpack over her shoulder and reaches for the water bottle inside, twisting the cap off and submerging it into the water.
With the bottle partially settled, she could only hope in the midst of doing so that it wasn’t as lethally contaminated as the other water sources were in the area. Honestly, some of them weren’t even water anymore – just rivers of toxic sludge. Radioactive with whatever substance alien life emitted. It was effective in irreversibly polluting Earth’s natural wildlife, and it undoubtedly created a problem for all the refugees that tried to survive outside combine territory, making it impossible to scavenge for real sustenance anymore.
Instead, what humans got was a disgusting mouthful of headcrab.
They were more common in the outskirts of towns; where forests and abandoned mountain ranges merged. They were places often times overrun with headcrabs and other unmentionable horrors. A place where the lesser fortunate of her kind perished by a most horrible fate if for a second, they let their guard down.
But Chell knew better than to make that same mistake.
The water rippled around her hands as she lifted the bottle from the current and twisted the cap back on shut. Even though she wasn’t feeling dehydrated yet, she knew the risk still lingered. The long trek by foot to reach the resistance camp several miles away was, with every chance, bound to be riddled with delays and dangers on the way; and this reserve in the meantime, would hold her over until she got there to restock up on supplies and notify others of the accessible water stream to harvest from.
Quickly, she shoves the bottle back inside her bag, zipping the closure shut and swinging it back over her shoulders. She spends a moment adjust the thick straps more comfortably against her back, but with every second spent idling near the river, she started feeling uneasy.
The barest sound of footsteps crunching on gravel confirmed her suspicions and she immediately stilled.
She was being watched.
Instinctively, her hands reach for the AR2 rifle holstered against her back. She swings the weapon into her arms and presses it tight to her shoulder, readying a finger on the trigger. And with little hesitation, she bolts up from the ground in a swift maneuver and whips around, expecting to come face to face with a hostile entity.
She didn’t expect to see nothing there at all.
With a hitch in her breath, her face twisted up in mild distress, the rifle in her grasp briefly faltering at the revelation. That wasn’t right. There was definitely something here. She could feel it.
If it were an alien being, it wouldn’t bother concealing itself from view. Not once have they ever used logic to precede a human being. Most of the time, all they did was lash out without worry of consequence. And by all means, they did. They held nothing back. But she knew the moment she turned, she wasn’t dealing with one of them.
This presence was intentionally evading her sight. It visually recognized her presence, and hid.
A cold-sweat chill ran up her spine. With little to go on, Chell automatically assumed that whatever was out there was a threat. Unless proven otherwise, she was automatically drawn into high-alert for suspected combine malefactors. She wasn’t being paranoid – Just prepared for any worst case scenario.
For all she knew, she could’ve just walked right into a trap.
While the combine were sometimes slow to catch up with a resistor, they weren’t stupid. They were entirely capable of devising strategic ambushes. Often times, that was how they caught a majority of their most difficult captives in the first place. If the unsettling feeling was anything to go by, then Chell presumed they were probably sweeping the area in hopes of catching more stray resistance members to “cauterize and expunge”.
In any which case, she refused to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chell reluctantly drew backwards in the opposite direction, following the gut instinct to get out of there. All the while, her rifle remained upright in her grasp, finger ready on the trigger.
She wasn’t about to let today be the day she was caught off her guard.
Inbox me a ’ (> ^-^)> ’ For my muses’ reaction when yours hugs them from behind
Rigid was an excellent word to use when describing just exactly how stiff the remaining human test-subject became once feeling the arms wrapping around her torso. The gesture was unexpected, and of course, being in Aperture her entire life and not being able to obtain much more than a few glimpses of memories of her past, hugs were foreign to her. She was not only startled but put into high alert, feeling more threatened than comforted as the gesture ought to be perceived.
Jumping forward with a quiet 'clink' of metal on metal as she broke away and whirled around, her portal gun lifted to strike the other person smack a top the head. Seeing Wheatley there caused the test subject to hesitate and, after a few seconds, lower her gun ever so slightly. She was frowning, obviously, how could she not? But at least she wasn't going to hit him.
((Well I think I'm heading off for tonight I owe abscess-of-aperture and whole-armies-turn-and-run replies, I'll get to them tomorrow or later tonight vuv))
Chell was adopted by/ was taken care of by Doug Rattmann, though she doesn’t remember this. Her name is actually Michelle Marie Johnson, but was changed to _Michelle (Chell) Marie Rattmann.
((Curi is curvy and short. She has nice hips and a decent bust, being a C cup, and is only 5'0". So basically she's a cute little marshmallow.))
Singing Voice((I always imagined Curi being a good singer because her voice actress is Ellen McClain after all. Anyways, her voice would probably be really nice and light and pretty with that air of childishness still present.))Sleeping Habits((Curi hates sleep because it wastes time that could be used exploring, so she usually won't sleep until her system shuts off and forces her to.))Texting Habits((Hmm, that's an interesting one. Her brain moves faster than her hands so she'd probably have a lot of typos because she doesn't check that she's hitting the right keys.))Laugh((Oh my god, she probably has the cutest, most genuine laugh ever. The kind of laugh that'll just warm your heart and make you want to hug the shit out of her.))
Send "Smooch!" for a reaction to my muse suddenly being kissed by yours.
Curi paused for a moment, caught off guard, before kissing him back softly. She pulled him closer, tilting her head and holding the kiss. She usually wasn't a fan of surprises but she saw no problem with this one.
