Dark on the Waters [Dark Data]

[Proto Man]

He discarded the sword the moment the additional marines poured into the area. The blade fizzled as Proto Man shifted back to the normal functionality of his Proto Buster.

The preteen machine braced his arm cannon and kept firing until he saw the air around the barrel start to throb with heat.

Rather than coil up and return to whatever darkness had spawned them, the darkling marines fought back with their variety of heavy ordinance. Even as chunks of them were blown apart by the concentrated bursts of energy, they found their triggers and retaliated against their four-foot adversary. Proto Man grit his teeth and leaned heavy against the shield as it attempted to save him from the concentrated assault.

For its part, the Proto Shield could absorb one heck of a walloping before throwing in the towel.

Unfortunately, the towel throwing moment waited until a pineapple grenade rolled to a rest a few feet in front of its intended target.

There was a whoosh as the projectile sucked in a mouthful of air before erupting outward with enough force to blow apart the nearby walls of the room. The shield soaked up the initial bombardment of flames and shrapnel before failing when the wave of concussive force crashed against it. Proto Man’s oversized metal feet left the floor as he was thrown backwards through what had once been the room’s back wall. He landed hard on his back and skidded with enough force to smash through an actual wall before his momentum subsided.

He had been here before.

Planting his hands against the floor, Proto Man shoved himself up off the floor. Before he could make sense of the situation in the aftermath of the grenade blast, he caught a shadow scythe through the haze to his left. A moment later, he heard panicked gunfire interspersed by the thunderous crash of steel against steel.

With his gun primed and his immediate threats preoccupied, Proto Man shifted to a thermal view and jogged into the haze. Up ahead, he caught a glimpse as an orange, marine-shaped blob was cut in half across the waist by a cold, blue rectangle. Fresh gunshots rang out as the soldiers tried to fight back against their silent slaughterer.

By the time the dust and fallout had settled enough for Proto Man to see without the use of visual overlays, Cloud Strife had dispatched the remainder of their would-be attackers. The soldier, his weapon coated in the bile-like blood of the darklings, glanced over his shoulder at the red robot and gestured with his head toward the front of the ship.

“The others are in a hanger. They have found the portal.”

Proto Man nodded his head. “Let’s roll.”

A few minutes and a handful of quick skirmishes later, Proto Man and Cloud Strife came barreling through on the entrances into the hanger. Compared to the cramped halls and smaller chambers he had burned and shot his way through, the preteen machine found himself a bit mesmerized by the scale of the hanger. Darkling marines skittered and scrambled to and fro as they fought back against a pair of primes equipped with armored vehicles.

“Let’s join the party,” Proto Man whispered as he set his eyes on the portal. That was his destination, and there was nothing that would stop him. If they tried, he was more than willing to tear apart the entire battleship. Rust or no rust, he still had more than enough juice in his systems to charge up the big guns.

Cloud and Proto join Blink and Vision in the hanger

590 words