it-takes-four

[it-takes-four]

Have any of them met the Gman?

The G-Man is surely around like the transdimensional weirdo he is, but he hasn't directly messed with them so far, other than creeping just in the corner of their vision and being gone the second they check. Power plays in his case strongly involves paranoia~

Although he's been following Chell for the longest. Why wouldn't he ? She's in the wasted world he's been messing with for the last century after all, and wields a technology that can only invest a dimension-jumping, all-seeing entity. Chell's sanity could definitely do without his just-in-the-corner-of-your-eye running shenanigan though.

He might be having his sights on Doug and Henry too.

Oh, also :

Not the only perception he's been messing with

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #chell portal #chell #portal #half life gman #glados #scanner

[it-takes-four]

(The A-Team Theme Starts Playing In The Background)

She just loves fucking with them, what can ya say

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #glados #(kinda) #ain't she a prankster (doug & chell grinning teeth)

[it-takes-four]

Your content is good soup

Thanks, happy that you enjoy the food~ I'm putting my heart into it. And I love you guys's questions I swear, even though I might take ages to respond

(Sorry about the service though it's one slow-ass broth I fully recognise that-)

I'll see how I can handle the rest

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #splatsona

[it-takes-four]

@giaanofdarkness

They don't need to get any closer than this

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #batim #bendy and the ink machine #bendy and the dark revival #batdr #audrey batdr #bendy #little eyes are spying... spying something... familiar~ #dark deception characters

[it-takes-four]

To me all of them are equally traumatized

That's a valid opinion lol. Trauma comes in many forms, as can attest this helpful listing I did of them

And those who are not will soon be

#it takes four #it takes four au #answered ask #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #dark deception doug #dark deception #batim #portal #poppy playtime #oc #cw angst #trauma cw #indie games #protagonists get all the fun don't they- #character analysis #scanner

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(I think someone here asked me who out of the gang was the most traumatized ?

If you do recognize yourself please ask again, I cannot find the original ask and I'd like to answer.)

#it takes four #ooc

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SO guys

Headcrabs IMIRIGHT

Also if your boerd have this "slams werewolf the forsaken on the table" enjoy

SHE'S MUTE GLADOS (the guys are concerned)

(Also huh enjoy Boomer Henry-)

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #chell portal #chell #portal #half life #headcrab #cw scars #glados #miscommunication marvels #doug houser #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #........... #trigger teddy

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Chell Gay?

Yes Chell Very Gay

(The Reaper Nurses figured that out sooner rather than later. And well -early staff's whispers about how butch Chell looks aside, it would certainly go against their job description to not try to take advantage of it, now would it not~)

>Not pictured : GLaDOS overheating from jealousy and murder plots in the background

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #chell portal #chell #dark deception #reaper nurse #reaper nurses #dark deception reaper nurse #lesbian

[it-takes-four]

Dance Party (Neffex's How's It Supposed To Feel Starts Playing In The Background)

They don't dance

(Doug wasn't even fitted to dance at his own damn wedding, Chell doesn't like to have an audience, Haslim prefers dances involving interaction with someone else, and Henry has his 'errand-boy' limits)

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #character asks

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Here, have a meme❤️

What are you all talking about this squad is the shining epitome of human mental health

(Don't worry they will get worse- <3)

#it takes four #it takes four au #answered ask #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #nah I'll have them get better too that's in my nature #but they'll also get worse especially Teddy #(you have no earthly idea of the crap I'm making him go through in my head jeezus)

[it-takes-four]

When was the last time ya'll slept?

Collectively : "Hhhuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh......"

Chell : [Well it's been I think it's been huhhh... About maybe 16 ho- (GLaDOS : Reviewing your latest recorded activity in the last three days, it has been exactly 22 hours, 37 minutes and 16 seconds since your last biologically mandated unconsciousness.) ... ... ... (GLaDOS : If you would ever bother to care : no, it is not, in fact, considered good.) ...Yeah Ok Shut up.💢]"

Doug : "Huh holy shit. I don't think I slept at all in the Dark Dimension, but I mean strictly speaking I've been in a spell-induced coma the whole time anyway, so... Joker ?? I haven't really tried to sleep here, but I guess I could. I am certainly feeling exhausted but, like, not sleepy...? ...Next halt, I'll have a shot at it."

'Teddy' : "Wellll, It's been a little while when I think about it. About as long as for Ms Chell if we're being logical... I should definitely try to rest too. ...But if I'm being honest about it, I don't really sleep soundly here. I've always been a relatively light sleeper, but here my slumber is straight up jumpy. It feels like a deep sleep, but at the same time ready to jump awake at any alert...? Not really relaxing. What was that about a bear, Doug ? "

Henry : -*Long, calculating silence punctuated by an increasingly dissociative stare*-

#very long. they haven't slep in a very long time #henry is getting a very wrong feeling all of a sudden #don't worry about it #yup no need to worry about it at all really not #anyways #answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #character asks

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To doug,chell,teddy and henry: how did you all meet echother

@teeny-tiny-mousey @poketube28 (think you changed URLs since the time but still)

It was about time I'd write this one off, huh ? Well, here's how it went.

After the dimensional crash, when everyone got more or less scattered around, wandering aimlessly through the mixed Settings and trying to make sense of whatever was happening, they found each first two by two, before uniting.

The circumstances were rather... intense.

Doug found himself lost in Aperture after a good two days of confused and slightly stressed out wandering, and eventually reached the death pit used for falling tests. As he was dedicating his attention to trying to make sense of the facility's questionable architecture, the worn down walkway he was on suddenly collapsed.

He would have died for sure if Chell, who spotted him a few minutes ago and was discreetly stalking him, wondering if and how to aboard him, did not lunge to catch him in extremis. The 30 seconds stare down that ensued, while he was dangling from her arm, was all levels of awkward.

But ultimately, Chell used her Portal Gun to swing him off safely to a platform a few dozen meters down, and join him there. Then she proceeded to scold him in ASL about paying attention to his surroundings, while Doug could only stand there awkwardly. Way to make a first impression, and he couldn't exactly tell a mute off. Also it was nice to meet someone who looked out for him for once. He offered to carry her bag as thanks. (And regretted it from the second he put on the extra 27 pounds but he wasn't complaining anymore.)

The initial tension took a while to wear off, but after a few days, they eventually got comfortable with each other. Doug recognizes her as the leading type and appreciate her do-no-harm-take-no-shit harsh yet not malicious personality, and Chell is mostly glad that he can read her ASL and has the patience to do so, and see how much he's trying generally speaking. Also he's quite literally the first human she met in a century, so there's that.

Teddy and Henry, on the other hand, found each other within minutes of Bullshit Occurring.

When the dimensional collide happened, Teddy was there to witness it, as the Toy Train station he was wandering on suddenly shifted from colourful train tracks to stained yellowish wood planks, that intersected supremely oddly with the surrounding concrete. He barely had the time to process what he was seeing when a violent rumble came from afar, as a furious torrent of ink flooded the tracks... Along with masculine human screaming.

Henry was riding along the ink river, dreading the usual giant toon hand, when the collide happened and the current off-scriptedly greatly increased. The floor the ink river flowed in merged with a toy factory floor that was below its level and was met with unflooded space, so the river very quickly changed into rapids, and Henry's boat was dragged along at top speeds without any means to slow down. On the end of the train tracks was also the crashed Toy Train, towards which he was inexorably rushing.

What ended up happening is that Teddy saw the random boat coming from the furious black river, a screaming panicked man inside, the train carcass literally 40 meters ahead, and didn't even think twice. He instinctively grabbed Henry's boat with his Grabpack, which sent him flying into a metal pillar (ouch) that he desperately latched onto whilst trying to both direct Henry's boat towards the station platform, and resist being dragged in the ink current. Henry managed to help by steering the boat in the right direction, and jumped off to safety. The boat still crashed into the train, but with less violence than would have been.

Henry was all levels of grateful to his savior, and also immensely happy to see someone new and HUMAN in what felt like so long, and was immediately friendly to Teddy. Teddy was hurt, taken aback and so very confused, but was happy to help and find someone else (that seemed to like him) as well. They agreed to team up and try to make sense of this situation. Henry is very protective of Teddy, and Teddy watches his back and takes care of him and his concerning sanity levels.

They all eventually joined up after a few days when they ran into each other at a Settings intersection. Though they didn't notice the two old men right away, Chell immediately earned Henry's admiration by yeeting Ink Bendy, that her and Doug were running from, from the walkway. Past the initial confusion, the two duos found their way to each other and agreed to join forces (mainly thanks to Henry's enthusiasm.)

Ultimately, they all reckon that they have a lot in common.

They would currently physically fight for each other.

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Aaand that's the story of how they all met. I hope this was coherent and smooth enough to read. I also hope you like my drawings, because I don't do settings very often and I was pretty proud of myself.

Also I'm sorry for kinda dropping posting on this blog in a while, I don't really have any excuse except motivation issues. I'll try to fix that, hope you still like it around though. :)

Alright, thanks for asking 🤗 Have a nice day ! ✨✨✨

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #chell #dark deception doug #henry batim #poppy playtime #crossover au #long post #settings #pen art #lore #dark deception #batim #portal

[it-takes-four]

"I'm just going to remember the very bad headaches and pretend it never happened. Don't tell the others about that. Except maybe Henry. Henry might understand."

it takes four doug has "been through the system of 'several lives'"? do you mean he's been killed by the monsters and respawned a few times, and if not what did you mean? im always a fan of aus that incorporate the respawn mechanics that the games theyre for brush over :3c🍿

Oh man isn't that one hell of a question, that I was totally prepared for ! And since you asked it you're now legally required to sit through my painfully long take on this. Enjoy.

(Fair warning : Long post ahead. And you even get drawings. Click For Quality bcz phone pictures.)

Well it's actually relating to a theory/headcanon of mine that I came up to try for the respawn system to make sense in-game, because I too love when the mechanisms in-game are a thing that's accounted for and explained in the "world building*. And the respawn system in Dark Deception always left me perplex. Allow me to put the problem :

So we, as the player get a certain amount of Lives, represented by skulls, that we can use to try again from the last loading point before a Game Over (in which case I think you have to do the level since the very start.) We get more Lives the more we progress through. So far so good. It could not be accounted for and I'll be content enough with that, HOWEVER. When you die while still having 'Lives', Bierce pulls out a snarky comment like "Oh you got killed by a freaking statue, that's bloody hilarious". But, when you die after running out of Lives and get a Game Over, she will say "You died... HAHAHAHAHAHA" (like the sadistic asshole she is), and that, invariably and only in case of Game Over.

(And, very importantly : when you lose a Life, you don't lose your progress, you don't lose any Shard (depending on the difficulty ofc lmao.) So that means there is no time rewind for Lost Lives : it's a thing that's happening and counts as part of the trial. (The Game Overs, however, are on us.)

Which implies that she's somehow aware that the Game Over means Actually Dead, and that the other times was a "Oh dear, you got yourself fucked up again didn't you." and that we could try again. So this implies that the "several lives" system is something that just occurs with Mortals, and not only Doug since it doesn't phase her.

Now it's kinda infuriating because other than the Joy Joy Gang with the Game Over no one else really says anything about this, so. How would that system, that's implied to be acknowledged, be explained in the Dark Dimension, and why is it not talked about ?

Well I think I developed a plausible enough theory, and I believe the reason, for that and a few other mechanics, could be the Soul Shards. Allow me to explain.

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So we all know the Soul Shards right. Each of them holding power, and supposed to have once been an unfortunate Mortal that got ripped to bits in Malak's Realm. So far so good, however : "Soul Shard" implies that what we collect is only a fraction of the entirety of the victim's soul, which means the rest must be trapped in Malak's Realm. Enslaved, consumed or just wandering, you'd expect these poor sinners (those who did not cave or qualify into becoming Monsters) to want to do the best they can to help the next victim, with whatever power they hold as captive spirits.

So I believe they are the ones to give the Mortals more than one chance. How they do it is unclear, they might 'zap out' the corpse and reanimate it from a certain point of power, because this action takes a lot of their energy, and it needs for them to focus their collective power in certain emplacements -the Respawn Points for us. However, as it takes a lot out of them, they can only revive so many times. That's also why we gain more Lives through the levels : the more Shards we collect, the more people we get on our side to focus their energy to revive us.

As you can see I've given them a humanoid form because I felt they needed one. Anyways, they follow us around. (A lot because we're literally collecting them, I suspect.) When we die, the death screen advice is spoken by them, as pictured here.

I like to think they're also the reason why there is writing on the walls in certain locations (such as the Hotel, the Golden Manor and the Sewers), giving advice and warnings. I don't think it's blood, so it's probably something easier for them to produce. Those must be erased whenever they're spotted.

Anyways, they do more than that.

You see the chorus that you can hear in the background music ? Well I don't know if you ever noticed, but it appear to be singing warnings and injonctions, such as "Keep on moving" in "Maternal Instinct" or "Run for your life" in the teased ost "Silent Shopper" (I think). Here's my illustrated theory on that : Malak forces them to be the ominous background ambiance, so they choose to subtly try to screw him over and encourage us whilst doing so. (There is canonically whispering from the victims according to E, so I think this chorus might be part of this aspect of the lore.)

There are more than one type of Soul Shard, by the way. Depending on their level of spite, their energy, their personality and their desire to get back to their tormentors, they can sometimes appear as Stun Balls or Spotting Shards. Those are rare though, as most powerful souls are harvested ASAP. 

(They might also be the reason you don’t suffer from exhaustion from running, idk.)

Also, once they've been collected their spirits stick with us even through the levels they're not from and even in the Ballroom, which allows for scenes like this one.

(Sorry about the colors lol still figuring out the scanner)

Anyways, that was basically the long and the short of it, though assuming the spirits follow Doug throughout the entire thing, I’ve came up with a few bonuses. Plus some cozy Tammy thing for your comfort.

So yeah long story short this pretty much explains how come Doug has gone through more than one life. He’s more or less aware of that fact, but he’s a lot in denial of the whole process and pretend the deaths never happened in the first place and that the voices he hears are indeed the other victims crying out to him and nothing else. Each death makes him more cautious, more reactive, more alert, and also more impatient. He takes the advice and what help there is to take, however he tries not to talk to them. Too much to take in and he kinda has to focus on his own problems. It helps that Bierce seems to royally ignore them. They do *not* like Bierce, by the way.

In total, Doug has died about four times so far. He IS kind of lucky, in the end of the day. That or he might actually be talented, who knows.

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Okay, so that was my explanation ! Hope you had the patience to read through all of it, and that it makes sense to you. Also enjoy the Soul Shard content, I’ve done these a while ago.

Alright, thanks for your ask. You’re welcome and have a great night ✨🤗💖

#reblog #it takes four au #it takes four #answered ask #dark deception #dark deception theory #dark deception headcanons #doug houser #dark deception doug #soul shards #tammy houser #joy joy gang #dark deception malak #dark deception bierce #cw blood #blood cw #cw bruises #scanner #long post #lore

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I think I wanted to clarify some things about Chell's character in this AU, so here's a reference sheet. Enjoy.

Some noteworthy things :

She is about 29 by then. Well technically she is 130~ years older than that if you count the two artificial comatoses/preservations, but she only shows her wa(l)king years. You could say she's a well-preserved woman.

She's canonically Asian American ethnically speaking, and has gotten pretty buff.

She has had multiple health problems from living on the post-apocalypse surface and takes meds to sustain her thyroid and avoid nuclear whiplash as much as possible. She usually carry a Geiger counter, found in her first shelter.

She has lived in isolation for 5-6 years, in an abandoned mansion she made her base. She doesn't know if there are other humans out there and she doesn't know if she want to risk the expedition just yet.

She's got a lot of stuff in her bag because she'd much rather be always ready for anything, has a hoarding tendency and doesn't care much about heavy weights.

She has picked up electronic science out of irony and put together a generator and several natural energy devices together, so she has electricity at her place. She even created a homemade radio antennae that she uses to try and communicate with the outside. So far she only got old radio messages/SOS, white noise and interferences. However, that's how GLaDOS was able to send her a SOS. She also fixes old electronic/mechanisms for challenge.

Since she found a DVD player, she likes to collect DVDs in her expeditions and enjoys watching movies.

She favours comfortable clothing.

She has adopted multiple animals and raises some other for food. She has multiple dogs and cats, an hawk, some crows, a deer and some chickens, notably.

^(*Most noticeable scars*)^

She is covered in scars, partly from Aperture, but then a lot from living on the surface. She'd like to touch a word or two with GLaDOS, about warning her about the alien apocalypse, the mutant monsters/beasts, and particularly the headcrabs. She almost died to one in her first three days of freedom, and a lot of her health issues came from mutant bites. Though she has ressources.

Consequently, she now is pretty fluent in close combat, melee weapons, gun handling and first aid/infection handling, and has rather snappy reflexes. She's normaly always pretty alert. (She also can drive a truck.)

She holds in the squad a role of guide, coach and "big sister". She's most often the leader, although it switches depending on the setting.

She and GLaDOS might hold the key to settle this mess.

I hope you enjoy :)

#it takes four #it takes four au #chell portal #portal #portal 2 #half life #character sheet #reference sheet #scanner #headcanons #character headcanons #chell #valve games #crossover au #cw scars #au spoilers #<- I guess

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(Gives Everybody a Hug) HUGS FOR EVERYONE

It's a matter of individual

#it's a little out of the blue from their pov but hey. hug drawing practice ! #answered ask #it takes four squad #it takes four #doug houser #chell portal #teddy the ex employee #batim henry #hugs #henry's sanity is on a FINE line =)

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(Bayonetta Enters The Room) Bayonetta: Let's Dance Boys & Girl (Bayonetta Music Starts Playing In The Background)

Doug : "Oi who tf is this dominatrix, I already done more than enough with the Reaper Nurses, c'mon now"

#to be fair he's also thinking about Bierce 😂 #anyway #bayonetta #done without reference forgive me #answered ask #it takes four squad

[it-takes-four]

@meena1790

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Oh, I'm sure she's fiiiiiiiiiine

#answered ask #it takes four #it takes four au #helen bierce #batim #guess who #cliffhanger