ROUTE 29 APP

[brilliantideas]

Player
Name: Redd
Personal Journal: pokerap
E-mail: pokerap.redd@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: writersblockredd
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: Mondo Oowada (diamondo), Frank Archer (sadisticwarfare), Ryuunosuke Uryuu (greatestcool), and Jean Kirschtein (antileader)

Character
Name: Wheatley
Series: Portal 2
Timeline: After reaching a stalemate with GLaDOS during the final battle
Canon Resource Links: Wiki

Personality:

They say power corrupts. Wheatley is a perfect example. Prior to the core transfer that left him in charge of Aperture, Wheatley was actually relatively nice. He was selfish and attempting to help Chell out in order to ensure his own escape, sure, but he was willing to play nice with her in order to gain her trust and assistance. He's fully aware that he can't do everything on his own, and seeks out the only remaining human to help him, despite his disgust with humans in general. He does try to tone down his irritation with humans, but several comments he makes off-hand make it quite clear that he's not overly fond of them. He apologizes for them and moves on - though usually his apologies come right before asking Chell to do something else for him. He's never truly apologetic for what he's said, but as evidenced by the end of the game, he is capable of feeling bad about his actions.

So Wheatley was... kind of a selfish jerk, but he was trying to be a nice guy prior to the core transfer. However, he immediately shows signs of corruption after taking over GLaDOS' body. He was created as an Intelligence Dampening Sphere to keep GLaDOS from becoming too dangerous. While he isn't as smart as she is, Wheatley isn't stupid either. He makes terrible decisions and he tends to overlook important things in favor of pursuing a single goal, but he's not dumb by any means. He's very easily angered, especially when it comes to his intelligence. GLaDOS knows this and very easily eggs him on; he ends up breaking the elevator in an attempt to get at her.

Let's start with Wheatley's temper. Prior to the core transfer, Wheatley didn't get angry. At all. There were moments of irritation with Chell and GLaDOS, but he never got to the point of screaming and smashing things, which he does right after the core transfer. GLaDOS insults him and he goes off immediately. This might be because he had more power and was capable of actually lashing out, but prior to this he hadn't said much to imply he was really angry. Wheatley is relatively calm when Chell and GLaDOS encounter him again (admittedly rather irritated at the Frankenturrets, but doing nothing more than yelling at them), and he proceeds to put Chell through a series of tests where he occasionally makes snarky remarks and bickers with GLaDOS. He starts shouting whenever she brings his intelligence into question. Eventually he decides to kill Chell, but the majority of the time he doesn't act angry. ...Then there's the final battle, which consists of him insulting Chell and GLaDOS the entire time. He's very obviously angry through the final battle. So he's a little rageball who blames everything that's happened thus far on Chell and occasionally GLaDOS. Oh, and they were totally working together to stab him in the back. He becomes increasingly more paranoid over the course of the game; in the end he screams at Chell for not catching him and not telling him about killing GLaDOS, as though she was doing this to sabotage him.

The quickest way to piss Wheatley off is to insult his intelligence. As mentioned above, he was created to hinder GLaDOS' decisions - she's well aware of this and constantly calls him a moron. Wheatley does make terrible decisions (ignoring serious warnings, for example) but he isn't stupid. He quickly figures out how to operate GLaDOS' body and control everything within the facility. He does a decent job of keeping it up before Chell and GLaDOS show up again. After that he starts testing and begins focusing solely on that, ignoring everything including those serious warnings just because he wants to get rid of the "itch" that comes with being in GLaDOS' body. Wheatley doesn't ignore danger entirely, however. He watched the tapes of Chell defeating GLaDOS and created defenses to ensure he wouldn't be defeated by bombs like she was. He's prepared for the final confrontation with Chell well in advance, even going so far as to booby-trap the core transfer button. Wheatley is capable of planning in advance, but in his single-minded pursuit of his goal, he's willing to ignore factors he believes he's capable of dealing with later. He actually does say during the final fight that there isn't anything he can do to stop the explosions - but he continues to fight Chell anyway.

Wheatley wants Chell dead; he doesn't particularly care how she dies. He actively tries to kill her repeatedly, but every time she escapes. He even goes as far as trying to convince her that her parents are down in a very obvious trap. Wheatley doesn't want to confront her himself due to cowardice and the idea that he could be defeated. By the time Chell arrives in his "lair" he's stopped with the tricks and tries to blow her up. He doesn't succeed, obviously.

At his current canon point, Wheatley will still be capable of being charming, he just won't find it quite as necessary. He wants to test and he wants to kill Chell. If he's not capable of those, he'll find some other way to amuse himself. Wheatley's prone to being over-the-top when it comes to his villainy and Team Rocket is a perfect fit for this.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

✔ Wheatley is surprisingly charming when Chell first meets him. He obviously wants to escape Aperture, but he's nice to her for the most part (outside of being a bit on the bossy side and making some comments about that imply he really doesn't like humans very much). This isn't something he can maintain very well under pressure, but at least he can pretend! He's a very good actor, he just tends to screw himself over with his inability to shut up.
✔ He's crushed during his first encounter with GLaDOS, but not only does Wheatley show up again, he seems to be perfectly fine. He's very resilient and he's more focused on getting Chell out of GLaDOS' tests than on extracting revenge. While this doesn't mean that he's forgiven GLaDOS for that, it does mean that he can put aside his grudges in order to work toward a goal he finds more important - in this case, getting Chell to help him escape.
✔ For an android, he's very creative! Except... his creativity tends to express itself in rather horrible ways. He realizes that without Chell he has no one to test on, so he combines turrets with cubes in order to create cubes that will move themselves to sit on switches. They're horrible abominations, but he's trying to come up with a way around the problem of no longer having test subjects.
✔ He's actually intelligent; his original function was to hamper GLaDOS' decision-making skills by offering her terrible ideas so she wouldn't be as much of a threat. He studies Chell's battle against GLaDOS and learns from his predecessor's mistakes, creating shields to protect him from bombs and booby-trapping the button Chell has to push in order to initiate a core transfer. He's not stupid and he clearly does have the capabilities of running the entire facility, but he does have his faults.
✘ So while he is smart, Wheatley's biggest downfall is that he's severely lacking in the common sense department. He's warned about the entire place blowing up repeatedly, yet he chooses to ignore the warnings - or even worse, he just shuts them off. He's very negligent once he's gained control of Aperture; all he wants to do is test.
✘ Wheatley was designed as an Intelligence Dampening Sphere for GLaDOS. As such, he's not very bright. He occasionally has good ideas, but he never knows how to put them into action. Those good ideas are few and far between the nearly-endless onslaught of horrible ideas, unfortunately.
✘ Wheatley grows more paranoid during the course of the game, to the extent of accusing Chell and GLaDOS of working together against him the entire time. He has absolutely no proof of this but flings wild accusations around anyway. He won't trust anyone in Johto.
✘ He tends to be goaded into doing things very easily. GLaDOS repeatedly gets him to do things just by pushing the right buttons.
✘ Wheatley is very touchy about his intelligence. Being called a "moron" infuriates him more than anything else. He doesn't ever admit to being GLaDOS' Intelligence Dampening Sphere, and she can very easily provoke him just by implying that what he's saying or doing is stupid. He goes out of his way to appear smart while he's testing Chell, such as reading Machiavelli.

Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket
Starter: Woobat (level 30) + Zubat
Password: Ginger Snaps

Samples
First Person Sample:

[The 'Gear flickers on and a familiar face appears on screen. Wheatley grins broadly.]

Excellent, excellent! Good afternoon, Johto. It's been awhile, hasn't it? Feels like it was just yesterday that it was summer. Probably because it was. I didn't even get to see home. Rather annoying, really, but it's quite alright! I'll settle back in easily enough!

Ah, for those of you who aren't aware, I was here before. Unfortunately, this is the second time I've been returned home only to not actually go home. Bloody awful, really, but I am glad to be back! Does anyone know what happened to my other Pokémon? Alpha, Beta, and the others? If you've received any of them, please let me know! I would like to have them back.

[Ah right, but he's rambled on for far too long, hasn't he?]

Finally, does anyone know what happened to the white-haired lady working in the labs? I haven't seen her and it would be dreadfully unfair if she got to return home while I haven't!

Third Person Sample:

The labs were incredibly quiet at three in the morning. Wheatley still hadn't gotten used to this "sleeping" thing that humans required and often found himself awake at odd hours of the night. The labs were always comforting though; they were familiar and above all else, safe. There wasn't any sort of threat in here that he couldn't handle, Wheatley was certain of that.

Companion Bat, the Woobat Wheatley had started with during his first time in Johto, was seated on his head, dozing off. Despite being a bat, she didn't seem to be nocturnal at all, which was odd. His other bat, Weighted Storage Bat, was flying around the lab and exploring. Wheatley didn't mind that as long as Weighted Storage Bat didn't break anything or mess anything up. The last thing he needed to deal with was one of the other scientists getting upset with him for ruining their work.

His current project was one he cared about deeply (but then again, what projects of his did he not care about?); it would allow a Pokémon without legs to walk around on mechanical ones. No, he wasn't doing this for poor injured Pokémon, he was doing this for Pokémon that literally didn't have legs, like Sharpedo. It was a project that hit particularly close to home because Wheatley knew all about being incapable of movement beyond the limits of the rail; here he was free to move about as he pleased, whenever he wanted. Legs were marvelous things, though perhaps he should have started with hands. A shark with hands was a simply magnificent idea, after all!

"Now all I'll need to do is procure a proper test subject and we should be good to go!" He grinned happily, flicking one of the mechanical legs and nodding his approval as it reacted properly to the touch. "I'm sure someone has a Sharpedo they will let me borrow, but for the time being..." He attempted to look up at the ball of fluff on his head, but Companion Bat was far enough back that he couldn't actually see anything more than one dark wing.

"Companion Bat!" The bat squeaked and fluttered off his head. "Good girl. Now then, will you kindly come here so I can attach these legs?"

The bat looked skeptical (well, as skeptical as a bat with its eyes covered really could look), but she trusted her trainer and floated down to allow Wheatley to hook up the legs. They were clearly built for a larger Pokémon and barely fit on the bat as it was, but Wheatley managed to hook them up properly anyway. He took a step back from the work bench and sighed happily. "Perfect! Now, Companion Bat, take your first steps!"

With a loud squeak, the bat attempted to make the legs move, which really only led to her losing her balance and falling on her side, making soft, pitiful noises. Wheatley slammed his palm against his forehead. "It looks like we have a lot of work ahead of us, Companion Bat..."