#79 Pets: Get a load of that toad!
Originally posted here on August 14, 2022.
Wow, lot of new people kicking around the community! I'm guessing a lot are rolling in from Othercon, so here, I'm making you all consider my pet back in source. For those who don't know me, hi, I'm Research! I'm fictionkind, and my fictotype is Gordon Freeman from Half-Life. I'm a little canon divergent, in that the second game didn't happen and after killing the Nihilanth, I just went right back to the facility and had to escape with the scientists in the Lambda Lab.
Now, onto the prompt!
What are common pets in your source, and do/did you have any?Well, I'm from basically an alternate Earth, so common pets are pretty much the same as we get here. I don't think I ever had a cat, although I have vague memories of a childhood dog. No details on that, though. I
do know, though, that while working at Black Mesa, that I definitely owned a toad. Some big, brown, almost scaly-looking thing, and I want to hold it
SO BADLY. You have NO idea how jealous I am of myself-as-Gordon because I LOVE toads and I want to hold them in my hands at all times. I don't know what happened to it following the Resonance Cascade (for this unfamiliar with Half-Life, The Great Befuckening), but I hope it was okay.
I know a lot of people picked up alien creatures who had come through the portals as pets in the months following the Resonance Cascade, but I don't think I ever did. A little too much PTSD from the sounds of the houndeyes, the blurred leaping of the headcrabs, the low rumble of the bullsquids. It's hard to own an animal that hurt you.