Hope Rides Alone

[Proto Man]

The preteen android let out a sigh as he placed the panel back over his exposed foot and waited for it to seal back into place with a dull thunk. Once that was done he practiced twisting and bending the ankle to ensure that the appendage was functioning at its optimum efficiency. In the scramble from Wily’s collapsing fortress, he’d got caught on some rubble and twisted several of the pistons out of place.

With that done, Proto Man fell back onto the bed’s naked mattress and looked up at the ceiling. An icon in the corner of his HUD told him that the display was nearly done patching to the newest available software, whatever the hell that meant. As he relaxed, the robot listened to the strange melody that the flying cars made as they traversed their strange, invisible streets. Despite the fact that Monsteropolis had been one of the most advanced cities on the planet, it had nothing that compared to the menagerie of real life science-fiction that was Corusant’s sea of impossibly tall and often strikingly beautiful structures. If this was to be his life for the foreseeable future, Proto Man was certain he could adapt quite easily to his new surroundings.

Patch Finished. Omniverse-update complete. A reboot is required for this update, would you like to do that now?

“Yes.” The android muttered as he drew breath into his inorganic ‘lungs.’ The last time he’d been forced to reboot his system, he’d lost a good week of his life and woke up to find himself buried in a landfill somewhere outside Chicago. At least this time he was somewhere that he wouldn’t been mistaken as a busted-up toy. As the icons on his screen vanished one-by-one, Proto Man flashed a grin toward the spinning ceiling fan overhead. “Maybe I’ll wake up in ano-- …

...”

[Proto Man]

The realm of the subconscious was something both fascinating and mysterious to humans. Some individuals had amazing, vivid dreams with layers of meaning, while others passed their sleeptime in shrouds of blackness or muddled visiions that left them within seconds of waking from their slumber. Android didn’t dream--when they shut down, they simply ceased to function for said period of time. When they rebooted, it was as if they had passed from one second to the next, with no recollection or idea that minutes, hours, or even days had gone by while they were inert.

Proto Man remembered when he first realized he was having a dream. He’d shut down for a regular update only to find himself wandering some poorly illuminated caverns. The only clear things he could make out were shadows that seemed to be coming from someone standing around a nearby corner, but every time he would round a corridor, he’d be confronted with more shadows and more turns. e,g,g Each turn made him feel all the more nervous and scared that he’d chase those shadows for the rest of eternity. It was with a great joy that the visions faded into white noise and the real world took form.

When he had booted back up, the android had described what had happened to Wily and Light, who were both amazed and horrified. As it stands, that was the first time they saw that their robot was unique. For Proto Man, it meant he would run the risk of having those horrible, dreadful experiences in his sleep. From that point forward, he refused to shutdown or reboot for anything, and since his departure from the lab, he’d only gone through with it one a handful of occasions when his fuel cells or his programming demanded it of him.

This time, oddly enough, he had dreams of Light’s laboratory facility. Proto Man had spent several nights both outside an within the walls of Light’s home and workshop. His security clearances were oddly intact, and his experience of living in the dredge of the world had made him rather adept at cruising under the radar. Over the course of his visits, he had acquainted himself with all of the ‘Robot Masters,’ which he discovered had been built based on the data that Light and Wily had collected from him. The first two were deemed as ‘household assistants’ and were deliberately based on Proto Man’s base model. They were called Rock and Roll, although the latter had been combat retrofitted and most references outside of Light’s personal logs called him ‘Mega Man.’ From those blueprints and running into him throughout the course of Wily’s attempted takeover, Proto Man could see that his younger brother was based almost exactly on him, albeit with functioning power cells and programming.

The other six of the original eight were classified as ‘civil service’ machines, and their functions ranged from deconstruction to power to simple maintenance of facilities. It was within those files that Proto Man read all about the two conflicts between the friends-turned-bitter enemies that had nearly destroyed the city. He also got up-to-date on Light’s side of the current, third spat between the two geniuses. There were data logs on eight Robot Masters created by Wily, along with the eight that had been co-designed by the two during their short lived period of reconciliation.

In the dream, Proto Man was watching an inert Roll through the window of her room. While he felt little toward his younger brother, the red robot wanted nothing more than to introduce himself to his kid sister. She reminded him so much of the two young girls who had helped him survive in East New York so many years ago. Despite his efforts to will himself to sneak through that single-pane window and activate the ‘sleeping’ robot, Proto Man never worked up the courage to go through with it. Now that he was in the Omniverse, he couldn’t deny that he was terrified he’d never have the chance to meet the sister he could have had.

It was with a heavy sigh that the android stirred from his ‘sleep.’ His vision slowly returned to normal as he sat up and flexed his fingers and feet to ensure proper field of motion in all his joints. His HUD started to load, informing him that he’d only been asleep for the better part of eight hours, which he knew was normal for humans. His GPS application booted up, and now it informed him of his location in the Omniverse, along with his location in his current Verse. If the data was to be trusted, he was in Corusant’s first tier at some hotel with a fancy, foreign name. Up next, his weather application blinked up shortly before hiding itself, and it was followed soon after by similar meters that displayed his processor, memory, and power cell levels.

At the end of the startup, a final little app popped up that he didn’t recognize from before. It was a simple box titled ‘Omnilium’ and it contained a seemingly random value, the meaning of which he couldn’t ascertain. A message poped up that read ‘Omnilium Use Acquired: Proto Buster Upgraded with Omniphysics.’

Proto Man looked down as the Proto Buster materialized in a swirl of white light. If what Omni and the other Primes had said was accurate, he could manifest objects through force of will. He would have to try that out at some point. For now, he figured he should try and locate Nanoha before he lost her trail in the vastness of the city. That meant he had to find the library.

Hopping off the bed, the Robot Master dematerialized his buster cannon and exited the quiet room. As the door slid shut, something stirred outside the window. A young, blonde girl in a red dress let out a defeated sigh as she let her hand fall down to her lap. Try as she could, she had failed to find the courage to knock on the glass door that led from the balcony that she had woken up on just a few minutes prior.

From the bathroom, the door exploded outward in a cloud of sawdust and shards of wood as a bulky, blue-armored robot stumbled into the apartment, his body carried through by his own fierce momentum. Behind the dense android, seven others grumbled and bickered as they tried to exit the cramped confines of the bathroom.

“Where are we?” A robot with orange and white accents whose body seemed like a large spark plug shouted as he stumbled away from the others. The android lifted his hands to his face and watched as his forearms turned into electrodes. “The last thing I recall is Mega Man stalking…” The robot’s eyes went wide as his hands returned to normal and clasped at his right knee. “My foreleg was gone. He had shot me with a… shuriken.” The orange humanoid turned to one who was dressed in purple ninja vestments with a shuriken adorning the front of his hood.

“He killed us,” the ninja replied with a shake of his head. “I recall fighting Mega Man and he was able to dodge my blades using a move where he spun like a top.”

One of the robots whose cranium was shaped like a top let out a gasp.

“If we were destroyed, then why are we here… wherever here is?” The speaker was a stout blue robot with a crown of spikes atop his neckless head. This robot had no mouth, and instead spoke through a grate that rested beneath a dull red light under his eyes. The tone was vaguely insectoid, despite a humanoid physique.

“I’m not sssure,” a snake-themed android hissed. “I can’t reconnect with Dr. Wily’sss mainframe, which meansss its offline or we are too far out of range.”

“It could be both.” The armored, somewhat rotund robot replied as he peered out the window at the foreign metropolis. Fortunately for the girl huddled beneath the frame, he didn’t investigate further. “This isn’t Monsteropolis.”

A red-and-black android with a magnet mounted on his forehead frowned as he stepped toward the door leading further into the structure. Whatever it is, we should stay together. “Strength in numbers, after all.”

“We agree,” spoke the final robot--a light blue android with a crystal motif.

“Needle Man and Hard Man should take point,” the magnet-themed robot remarked. “Shadow Man can cover the flanks, while Snake Man ensures our back is properly defended.”

“Sssound ssstrategy.” Snake Man replied in his serpentine tone.

Hard Man, the heavily armored robot with an affinity for door-busting, chuckled and punched a fist into the opposing palm. “I’m down with that.”

Needle Man simply nodded his neckless head and walked over to the door. Rather than try to locate a switch, the robot leaned his torso foward so his crown of spikes was in line with the center of the door. The spikes shot forward with a smooth, pneumatic hiss--propelled by a beam that ran inside his round form. The heavy door buckled under the impact of the first blow, and the follow-up strike sent it crashing to the other side of the corridor.

“Heh,” Hard Man snickered as he stepped out into the hallway. “I bet ya I could have done that in one punch.”

The girl on the patio waited until five minutes had passed since the last footsteps had faded away into the strange building. Her HUD, which had several malfunctioning applications, couldn’t tell her the time, date, or even her present location. To make matters worse, it was blatantly obvious that she was no longer in Monsteropolis, yet she had just saw the eight Robot Masters designed by Light and Wily appear from nowhere and vanish into the city.

The last memory she recalled was Dr. Light working on repairing Rock, who the doctor had found near the ruins of Dr. Wily’s fortress. From what she could gleam from Dr. Light, a prototype Robot Master had saved Rock from the collapsing castle, but Roll could get no further information on that topic from her father. The best she had managed was a photo from an encrypted folder. The image was that of the android Blues, who Light had figured deceased after he fled from home. Once again, Roll had tried to uncover more of that story about the robot her brother and she were designed from.

Yet, the occupant of the apartment bore his exact appearance, down to the bizarre effects he wore. Roll knew she had to find Blues before he stumbled into the Robot Masters. She also knew she had to find him because it was the only chance she had to find out where she was and why she was here.

[Proto Man]

Within a few minutes, Proto Man could tell he was lost in the winding pseudo-sidewalks of Corusant. Fortunately for the android, he’d managed to connect to the Omniverse’s equivalent of a wifi signal, which meant he access to their version of the internet. Through the Dataverse, he was able to properly update all of his GPS software, which provided him with a working minimap of his surroundings. The program was still unable to run properly, as it would usually also inform him of all the persons, robots, or creatures in his immediate vicinity. When he attempted to find an Omniverse-version of this update, his HUD informed him that he lacked the omnilium to create such an application.

So I guess Omni wasn’t lying...omnilium is the key to everything around here.

Which then begged the question: How did he acquire it? Was it a tangible material or something metaphorical that represented achievement? As he mused over the question, an indicator popped up on his HUD. It was an attachment that his system had automatically seeked out and downloaded from the Dataverse labeled ‘Omnilium 101.’ From a quick glance over the document’s contents, it seemed that the Omniverse’s strange currency was both things Proto Man had theorized it to be. He could find physical deposits of it, or he could attain it through hard work or impressive feats.

Well that certainly simplifies things just a little…

As the android rushed across an invisible crosswalk, an icon shaped like an envelope light up and displayed a red circle with the number one in the center. Despite only having an active connection for less than five minutes, someone had managed to send him an email. Further investigation showed that it was a somewhat automated message from Judge Dredd, which detailed an upcoming event that celebrated the Emperor and the founding of the city. Attached to the email was an audio message from Dredd that contained some veiled threats toward anyone who might risk interfering with the parade.

Was Corusant not as unified and peaceful as Bradley had made it out to be? Proto Man had known at the time that the politician was probably embellishing to draw them toward the service of his boss, but for the first time, the android realized he genuinely knew nothing about the ‘Empire’ that he found himself a resident of. Had he made the right decision? Or did the shiny towers and beautiful streets of floating cars serve as some sort of glamorous facade? What lurked in those other six tiers?

Now more than ever, Proto Man realized how alone he was in this city. Looking at that email, he knew that the Jubilee would serve as the easiest way to collect some genuine intelligence about Dredd, Bradley, and the Empire.

For now though, he had the location of the library and needed to get there as fast as his metal feet would carry him.

[Proto Man]

It wasn’t his fault he’d got distracted from his destination. You throw anyone into a mysterious new world full of lights and they’re bound to wander off course. When that same person is a preteen, it’s going to be virtually impossible to get from Point A to Point B on schedule.

So although he should have been at the library in a little under a half hour, Proto Man found himself about a mile off target after a few hours of wandering the various sidewalks and crosswalks of Coruscant. His experience in large cities like New York City, Chicago, and Detroit during his period of wandering had instilled in him a very real fear of cities. There wasn’t much of a place for a red-plated android in the nice parts of town, so he’d always had to survive where the attention of law enforcement and media seemed the thinnest. He’d seen people shot, stabbed, and killed before his own eyes. He’d had a friend or two get hurt trying to do a noble deed for another human being.

If it hadn’t been for the people he’d meet along the way, Proto Man was certain the entire experience would have soured him to all of humanity. Fortunately he had learned quickly enough that not every person was only looking out for themselves. The people he saw meandering the streets of Coruscant all seemed nice enough, and even more than that, they were the most amusing hodgepodge of humanoid species. Proto Man had only ever read of aliens in books or seen them in movies, but here in the Omniverse, science-fiction was reality. The other thing that he noticed was the presence of the military force led by Judge Dredd. It seemed like every sixth car was emblazoned with the imperial armed forces logo. Every now and again, he’d also spot one of the white troopers casually patrolling the pedestrian walkways, and once or twice, Proto Man was sure he’d spotted movement on a few of the rooftops.

His maps and the information he’d pulled from the Dataverse told him that he’d only seen a tiny fraction of Coruscant. From a few articles he’d skimmed while wandering, Proto Man knew that there were six additional levels to the city. It seemed like the second and third levels traded a lack of imperial soldiers for a lack of the absurd extravagance of the top tier.

Information on the tiers below the third were lacking—there were no official pages on them in Coruscant’s tourism bureau, although there were mentions of several industrial facilities on the fourth and fifth tiers. The use of a search engine revealed some additional facts, like the presence of a racing circuit on the middle tiers and data on some prominent organizations that would lease manpower. Despite the clever word choice and phrasing, Proto Man knew he was reading about mercenaries: Soldiers for hire that would shoot a person dead for money.

Scum. The bottom two tiers were impossible to decipher, although he found a few posts on a public message board about something called ‘Motorball.’ After he found Nanoha and went to the Jubilee, Proto Man figured a visit to the other tiers was mandatory. Nothing he learned up here would be worth its weight—there were too many soldiers and entirely too much propaganda.

As Proto Man rounded another corner, he bumped straight into someone a foot or so taller than him. Stumbling backwards, he looked up to see that he’d collided with a tall blonde—her face was soft despite the almost cold expression on her face. Although her hair seemed health and almost a bit glossy, it was pulled back into a tight ponytail that screamed ‘no nonsense.’

The red robot furrowed his brow behind his visor and tilted his head. “Do I know you?”

[Proto Man]

“You’re from the fountain,” the woman remarked, her voice mirroring her facial features. Did that statement mean that she thought he was a Prime or was she referring to the exact incident where they had all arrived almost simultaneously?

“I arrived with a bunch of others, yea…” The other women had all been brunettes, but Proto Man (and his internal computer for that matter) couldn’t help but feel like they’d encountered her before. Maybe it was those eyes…

“Samus Aran,” the woman spoke after a long silence. The robot couldn’t help but feel she had taken that time to assess him or something.

“I’m Blues.” He extended a large, gloved hand, and after a pregnant pause, the woman shook his hand. Her grip was firm, like that of a career professional. When combined with her overall stance and demeanor, it was clear to the robot that he was talking to someone who had seen a little more of the world than he had. “So you hear about that big parade? That message the Judge sent out seemed to imply that there might be some danger.”

Samus nodded her head. “I’ll be there. I need to learn more about this city…a lot more.” She glanced around as she spoke, as if she half-expected to see someone hiding on a rooftop or behind a window.

“Likewise,” Proto Man stated, recalling the strange feeling that he was being surveyed as he had traversed the past few blocks. “If you received that message, you must be connected to the Dataverse, right? I don’t have many connections here, so it might be nice to have one, right? It’s all about who you know.”

“Sure,” Samus said as the robot handed her a pen and a pad of paper. The woman raised an eyebrow at the collection of pictures that could have only been drawn by someone his apparent age. She scribbled her information on a fresh sheet of a paper and handed it back to him. The android nodded his head and slipped it back behind his back. “Notes?”

“It’s easier to draw sometimes. Viewing pictures takes up too much of my visual display… see you at the Jubilee?”

Once again, the woman responded with a nod, and they parted ways in silence.

A few streets later, Proto Man found himself staring at a large building surrounded by a detachment of stormtroopers headed by a grizzled-looking man in a massive suit of armor. Despite the entourage, they didn’t seem to be actively guarded the place, so the robot strode right up to the entrance and found himself greeted by one of the troopers.

“Welcome to Elevator Gamma,” he replied as he pointed through an archway. “If you’ll be traveling down today, there’s a man inside who can process you. If you’re here to enjoy the museum, a movie or our illustrious fine dining, you can find the amenities inside and to your left.”

“What is this place?” Proto Man asked as he took another step back to look at the wide, cylindrical structure. From what he could tell, there must have been numerous machines on the upper levels, because he could spot at least a dozen exhaust tubes and vents that were actively spewing out a colorless vapor of some sort.

“Elevator Gamma,” the trooper replied. Although his helmet concealed his true face, the robot could tell from the tone that the man was confused by his ignorance. “This is one of the many illustrious installations that connections the first and second tiers of Coruscant. We are home to more than a dozen fine dining establishments, and we are the only Elevator Compound with fully-reclining leather chairs in our movie theatres.”

“Fancy,” Proto Man uttered as he walked passed the man and through the archway. On the other side, the hallway opened up into a giant, mall-like area with numerous shops and restaurants along the edges. A few large hallways connected to larger amenities, which undoubtedly included the aforementioned movie theater and Coruscant Elevator Museum. The center of the vast chamber, however, was dedicated a series of large lifts. There were roughly six of them, each with a line of people formed to get on board the next one down.

Explains the machinery. Proto Man mused as he glanced up at the machines above the lifts. They seemed to operate like any other motors he’d seen before, but he could see them burning no fuel. On top of that, the exhaust had been clear and odorless, which meant it couldn’t have been coal or gas or even some variant of nuclear energy. Strange world.

With a shrug, the robot turned around and activated his GPS tracker. After a short delay, a route back to his apartment building popped up on his screen, complete with indicators guiding him in the appropriate direction. Now that he had a few landmarks saved, he could come back and visit these spots without having to wander aimlessly, but for now, he wanted to rest up for the Jubilee.

[Proto Man]

Rounding the corner of the apartment, Proto Man furrowed his brow at the sight before him. His door was lying on its side across from where it should have been. Although he was occasionally prone to some haziness if he didn’t defragment every once in a while, he was certain he would have remembered punching his door off its pneumatic track. The preteen android flexed his hand, and as he released it, the Proto Buster replaced it in a swirl of white lights. He extended his other hand, and once his shield materialized, he placed it onto his back in the event that this went sour.

With his equipment readied, he advanced on his apartment—his breath short and shallow as he racked his mind for what might be inside. When he reached the threshold, he paused to collect himself and then swung around, his gun leading the way as he stepped inside. After sweeping the immediate room, he noted that his bathroom door was equally smashed and lying on pieces in the middle of his living/bedroom.

“Both these doors are smashed outward…” He spoke aloud as he walked over to his bathroom and peered inside. As he surveyed the little room, he wished he would have owned anything, because he could tell if there’d be any sort of scuffle, and none of the surfaces were altered to indicate a break-in. Had someone teleported into his bathroom and then proceeded to bust their way out? Were they hoping to get a jump on him, or had they just miscalculated and wound up in his apartment?

“Not a good way to start the week,” Proto Man muttered as he pressed the intercom to summon some assistance. After a short while, he received an automated prompt requesting the nature of his problem. “Yea, I think someone broke out of my apartment.”

“You had a break-in, Sir?”

“Uh, no…” the robot started as he glanced over his shoulder at the chunks of wood that used to be his bathroom door. “Someone got into my bathroom and damaged my furniture.”

“I see…I will send a maintenance droid and a security officer up to your room, Mr. Man.”

Proto Man rolled his eyes and let go of the button. Turning away from his open doorway, he walked over to the small balcony and glanced through the glass door. From the look of things, there was nothing out of the ordinary, although it seemed as if his fire-escape was open. Was that the work of a lazy building supervisor or something a little more insidious?

About a minute after his intercom conversation, the robot was greeted by a young-looking man in a robe. “Are you the tenant of this apartment?” He asked as he extended a slender hand.

“That would be me, Mister?” The robot reached out and grasped the man’s hand.

“Gashon, Gashon Blastmor. I’m the security man for this building.”

“Okay,” Proto Man said as he glanced at the robed figure. Something about the slender, pale-skinned man didn’t scream ‘small-time guard.’ Shrugging it off for the moment, he pointed to the door in the hallway. “I take it you’ve seen my front door? The bathroom door is in pieces behind me.”

Gashon nodded his head and walked over to the mess of wooden shards and dust. The man reached into his robe and produced a strange device that made a series of strange noises as it swept it over the floor and former doorway to the bathroom. “No signs of any sort of cosmic disturbances. Usually teleportation devices will leave behind a sort of residual energy, but there’s nothing here.” The guard glanced over his shoulder at the preteen. “You don’t suffer from any night terrors or weird alternate personalities, right?”

“Not at all.”

“You bother to check the cameras?” Gashon asked, pointing to a corner of the ceiling.

Proto Man followed his finger to a small, seemingly nondescript sphere that would have been virtually invisible under normal lighting. “What the hell is that?”

“That’s a micro-camera,” the guard answered in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. “Someone probably wanted to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble. There’s probably one in the kitchen and bathroom as well. You didn’t know about those?”

“Why would I be aware that this place was filled with surveillance cameras?” Proto Man demanded as he climbed onto his bed to get closer to the tiny device in the corner. He put his index finger up against it and pushed until he felt the glass shatter beneath his gloved digit. “Is this common?”

The guard shrugged his shoulders. “Up here on the top tiers? It’s not something you should be surprised by, that’s for sure. You’re a Prime, why do you think they’d let you wander around unsupervised?”

“Son of a…” Proto Man clenched his fists as he swallowed the last word of that remark. When he went to speak again, an indicator popped up on his screen to inform him that the Jubilee parade was underway. “I have to go,” he muttered as he moved passed the guard and into the hallway. As he stormed away, he failed to catch the slightly open door of the cleaning closet.

With the little Prime gone, Gashon put away the sweeper and grabbed a small communications device. “Yea, I think he’ll be a ripe one for the picking. Just needs a little more time. Over.” Rising up from the floor, the robed man made his way out of the apartment. He immediately noted that he hadn’t locked the cleaning cabinet, and the door had swung open just a little. “Sloppy.”

Before shutting the cabinet, Gashon glanced at the limp form of the building’s security guard that he’d crammed in there before meeting the adolescent Prime. The portly little man’s face was still twisted up in the same shocked expression he’d been wearing when the lightsaber had cauterized its way through his heart and out the front of his chest. “Sleep tight, Officer Joe.” With that, the door clicked shut and the bolt slid into place.