One moment, the group of Liberators was fighting somewhat victoriously against the Metal Shark Player, who appeared to be slowly wilting under their combined front.
The next moment, said metallic fish monster was a hulking colossal of junk and Vision was gone.
Not dead.
Gone.
The other android had literally been reduced to dust and ash by the excessive force of the Darkloid. Proto Man had caught glimpses of the machine’s remains as they flittered through the clouds along with the rest of the smog and pollution. The only thing that told them apart from the rest of the aerial detritus was when they sparkled—tiny, rainbow flecks that shimmered just once before vanishing from the world.
Just like that, Vision was a memory. Certainly, he would be reanimated in the Nexus. Proto Man knew that slain primes always came back, one way or another. The only long-term solution was the send them away, like he had done to Scylla and Gilgamesh. The preteen machine doubted that the Metal Shark Player had bothered with the intricacies when he was ripping and tearing and exploding poor Vision.
In the background, the Metal Shark Player had been rambling and ranting about how he was going to kill them all. In the process of becoming a living pile of garbage, the commander of the infested soldiers had assimilated the Control Tower. That made the task of destroy them both that much simpler and streamlined. There was a line about ‘fools’ in the background, and the next thing that Proto Man knew, his perimeter sensors were screaming at him. Never one to ignore the giant red exclamation points on his HUD, the machine spun and saw the massive, junk-infused anchor start its sweep across the remnants of the courtyard.
Proto Man didn’t have time to spot the rest of the Liberators. His knees and ankles flexed, and a beat later, he had hopped up into the air as high as the hydraulic joints and rocket-enhanced boots would let him. Despite his reflexes, he still got splashed with chunks of black earth and shards of junk sheared away from the anchor.
As gravity took over, the preteen machine ran through a list of feasible options—his CPU flexing its might to figure out the best course to deal with this threat. Scans of the Metal Shark Player showed that the giant form was accompanied by increases most of its physical capabilities, despite the fact that it was anchored into the location of the former Control Tower. If Proto Man and his allies could just close that gap, they could likely neutralize the monster’s range, although who knew what type of nonsense he could pull even if they were staring him right in the eyes.
The red robot landed with a thud on the ground and slung up his Buster Cannon. Metal Shark Player slung the anchor up over his head and brought it swinging down toward a Liberator. Proto Man couldn’t tell who it was, because the entire courtyard at this point was thick with pollution and cinders. When the anchor collided with the ground, the machine felt the vibrations from thirty feet away, but his focus remained on the sneering visage of the junk monster. The face of a jolly ole killer.
Proto Man had a special way to deal with killers.
With a whoosh, the charged burst screamed from the Proto Buster and collided with the side of the Metal Shark Player’s head. Proto Man, eyes protected from his shades, watched with a scowl as the explosion tore apart half of the beast’s cranium.
Roaring all the way, the Darkloid slumped backwards—his head a pyre that belched dark smog as it whiplashed to the ground. On impact, the heap of junk twitched a few times before falling still.
Behind Proto Man, he heard a ripple that heralded the soft footfalls of Blink, who stepped out in front of him and tilted her head. “Can’t be it,” she whispered.
“I know,” the android remarked somberly as the Metal Shark Player suddenly jolted upright. His sneering asymmetrical maw, filled with teeth made from over a dozen different sources, formed into a callous smile as he focused himself on the pair of primes.
“Fools.”
The anchor came swinging down at them.
Rushing forward, Cloud Strife got in the way and hoisted up his Buster Sword. The timing was enough to save them being crushed, but after that initial ‘huzzah’, the blonde soldier’s arms and legs started to wobble.
“Fools.” The Darkloid laughed as he reached out with his other arm to squash them all. Before he could, a succession of bullets crashed into his head. A few careened off, but there was enough there to pull him from his task.
A grinning Cole felt rather full of himself until the anchor came veering toward him. The marksman turned and ran, hoping he could distract just long enough for something desperate. Before setting his focus on the gunslinger, the Metal Shark Player batted away the three primes on his other side. Blink went rolling like a ragdoll, but after a few yards, she simply vanished down into one of her portals.
Cloud and Proto Man didn’t stop until they smacked into one of the remaining walls of the factory.
“I think he might be immortal,” Cloud remarked as he yanked himself free from the now fissured surface. He had lost the Buster Sword somewhere along his unwanted flight path, but before he could step forward, he felt a small hand on his wrist. “You okay, Blues?”
“I’ve been running diagnostics,” the robot said, even if he was uncertain that the man would understand the term. “Probability and a bunch of other stuff that I know Vision would love.”
The blonde furrowed his brow. “Okay, and?”
“I got a plan.”
“Nice, what is it?”
Proto Man smiled. “Do you trust me?” He asked, prompting a confused look from his acquaintance-turned-battlefield ally. “Seriously.”
Cloud nodded his head. “Of course I trust you. We have to do what we have to do in order to beat this monster.”
“Excellent. Take my hands,” Blues extended both his hands. When Cloud delayed and gave that same confused look, Proto Man scowled. “You said you trust me, c’mon!”
The man gave another nod and clasped his ally’s small, metal hands.
“Grab on to something,” Proto Man said nonsensical, his youthful face painted with a faint smile. “This might be a bumpy ride.”
Before Cloud could ask a question or point out the obvious, he felt something jolt through his entire body. In front of him, the machine was suddenly enveloped in a blinding yellow light. The tiny fingers clenched tighter onto Cloud’s palms for a brief second, and then they were gone.
As the light faded and his vision and heartrate normalized, Cloud immediately looked around for a sign of his ally. It was only after a few moments that he glanced down and saw that his hands were red. Cloud lifted his right hand to his face and flexed his metal-encased fingers. A glance down showed that his chest and feet were likewise sheathed in red armor.
But it wasn’t just any armor. Flapping gently in breezes that didn’t exist behind Cloud was a yellow scarf.
“Proto Man?” The soldier asked as he turned around. In the distance, he heard gunshots and bombastic cackles from the fish monster.
It’s weird, isn’t it?
Cloud twitched and glanced around. The voice had come from inside his head.
Calm down. I’m going to run some diagnostics, and I don’t want you to freak out.
The man, unnerved but willing to trust the robot, gave a slow nod as words and pictures started popping up around him. No, wait… not around him. They weren’t floating there in the sky. A hand reaching up didn’t obscure the stream of text as it descended passed him.
Just about done. I’ll make sure the HUD’s not overwhelming for you.
“Why are you in my head?” Cloud asked.
Just think of my as your user interface as you navigate the Proto Suit.
“Am I wearing you?” The man inquired as he lifted a hand and flexed his fingers.
Yes and no. We’re technically the same consciousness, but I thought this was a less jarring way to handle it. Everything I am is in the suit. Here… point you hand out to our left. Your sword is there, you should be able to pick up its shape, if I’m not mistaken.
The soldier turned his head and held out a gauntleted fist. Even though there was thick pollution hanging low over the terrain, he could detect the sword out there—its shape distinct even in the obscured vision. Before Cloud could ask what else he was supposed to do, he saw the gray blur hurtling straight at him. It was only quick reflexes that allowed him to duck and snatch the handle of the Buster Sword before it skewered him.
“Neat trick.”
Ferromagnetic Manipulation… it should make for some fun fighting a monster made up of metal parts.
“What now?” Cloud asked as he lazily swung the sword around. It felt even lighter than it ever had. Had it been damaged or manipulated in some way… or was he just that much stronger?
We’re going to destroy Metal Shark Player.
“Just like that?” The man said with a laugh before he felt another jolt of electricity course through his body. “Okay,” Cloud added, a rare smile spreading wide across his features. “Just like that.”
Elsewhere in the courtyard, the Metal Shark Player cackled and guffawed as Blink and Cole frantically tried to elude his onslaught. Both of the primes were agile, but they were only made of flesh. Eventually, they would run out of strength, and their organic meat suits would fail them. Once they died, they would be a powerful addition to the Darkloid’s horde of recycled monsters.
As he hoisted up the anchor for another punishing sweep of the courtyard, the Metal Shark Player felt something smack against his back.
“Not dead yet?” He barked as he turned to confront the other two primes. “Just one of you now?” He sneered at the distant little prime, who clutched his oversized sword in one hand like a toy. “Did the robot die peacefully?”
Before the Metal Shark Player could enjoy his trash talk, the man lunged off the ground with enough force to rocket toward him. The Darkloid didn’t know how his foe had become so fast, but it didn’t matter. He would die just as hard as the others had.
The Metal Shark Player swung the anchor at the approaching gnat of a prime.
Instead of squashing his foe, the anchor exploded as Proto Cloud literally rammed through it en route to the now mortified visage of the Darkloid. With a swift motion, the cyborg soldier slashed off the top of his adversary’s cranium before landed gently on the ground behind him.
Disposing of his early possum theatrics, the monster turned and growled. In the distance, parts of the factory crumbled as they were willed to the Darkloid, whose skull continued to patch as he seethed toward the armored prime.
“Impossible,” the Shark Player growled as he held up the broken stump of his anchor. The weapon, also slowly regenerating as fresh ‘junk’ torn from the factory worked to restore its shape and form.
“A good mouse taught me a nice life lesson,” Proto Cloud replied, following prompts on his screen from his user interface. “He said ‘nothing is impossible if you set your heart to it, by golly!’” The man flashed a warm smile as he lifted up his other arm, which converted into a Buster Cannon that immediately started to build a terrifying charge.
Buster Sword in one arm, Buster Cannon in the other, the Proto Cloud released his terrifying, righteous fury upon the Metal Shark Player.
The next moment, said metallic fish monster was a hulking colossal of junk and Vision was gone.
Not dead.
Gone.
The other android had literally been reduced to dust and ash by the excessive force of the Darkloid. Proto Man had caught glimpses of the machine’s remains as they flittered through the clouds along with the rest of the smog and pollution. The only thing that told them apart from the rest of the aerial detritus was when they sparkled—tiny, rainbow flecks that shimmered just once before vanishing from the world.
Just like that, Vision was a memory. Certainly, he would be reanimated in the Nexus. Proto Man knew that slain primes always came back, one way or another. The only long-term solution was the send them away, like he had done to Scylla and Gilgamesh. The preteen machine doubted that the Metal Shark Player had bothered with the intricacies when he was ripping and tearing and exploding poor Vision.
In the background, the Metal Shark Player had been rambling and ranting about how he was going to kill them all. In the process of becoming a living pile of garbage, the commander of the infested soldiers had assimilated the Control Tower. That made the task of destroy them both that much simpler and streamlined. There was a line about ‘fools’ in the background, and the next thing that Proto Man knew, his perimeter sensors were screaming at him. Never one to ignore the giant red exclamation points on his HUD, the machine spun and saw the massive, junk-infused anchor start its sweep across the remnants of the courtyard.
Proto Man didn’t have time to spot the rest of the Liberators. His knees and ankles flexed, and a beat later, he had hopped up into the air as high as the hydraulic joints and rocket-enhanced boots would let him. Despite his reflexes, he still got splashed with chunks of black earth and shards of junk sheared away from the anchor.
As gravity took over, the preteen machine ran through a list of feasible options—his CPU flexing its might to figure out the best course to deal with this threat. Scans of the Metal Shark Player showed that the giant form was accompanied by increases most of its physical capabilities, despite the fact that it was anchored into the location of the former Control Tower. If Proto Man and his allies could just close that gap, they could likely neutralize the monster’s range, although who knew what type of nonsense he could pull even if they were staring him right in the eyes.
The red robot landed with a thud on the ground and slung up his Buster Cannon. Metal Shark Player slung the anchor up over his head and brought it swinging down toward a Liberator. Proto Man couldn’t tell who it was, because the entire courtyard at this point was thick with pollution and cinders. When the anchor collided with the ground, the machine felt the vibrations from thirty feet away, but his focus remained on the sneering visage of the junk monster. The face of a jolly ole killer.
Proto Man had a special way to deal with killers.
With a whoosh, the charged burst screamed from the Proto Buster and collided with the side of the Metal Shark Player’s head. Proto Man, eyes protected from his shades, watched with a scowl as the explosion tore apart half of the beast’s cranium.
Roaring all the way, the Darkloid slumped backwards—his head a pyre that belched dark smog as it whiplashed to the ground. On impact, the heap of junk twitched a few times before falling still.
Behind Proto Man, he heard a ripple that heralded the soft footfalls of Blink, who stepped out in front of him and tilted her head. “Can’t be it,” she whispered.
“I know,” the android remarked somberly as the Metal Shark Player suddenly jolted upright. His sneering asymmetrical maw, filled with teeth made from over a dozen different sources, formed into a callous smile as he focused himself on the pair of primes.
“Fools.”
The anchor came swinging down at them.
Rushing forward, Cloud Strife got in the way and hoisted up his Buster Sword. The timing was enough to save them being crushed, but after that initial ‘huzzah’, the blonde soldier’s arms and legs started to wobble.
“Fools.” The Darkloid laughed as he reached out with his other arm to squash them all. Before he could, a succession of bullets crashed into his head. A few careened off, but there was enough there to pull him from his task.
A grinning Cole felt rather full of himself until the anchor came veering toward him. The marksman turned and ran, hoping he could distract just long enough for something desperate. Before setting his focus on the gunslinger, the Metal Shark Player batted away the three primes on his other side. Blink went rolling like a ragdoll, but after a few yards, she simply vanished down into one of her portals.
Cloud and Proto Man didn’t stop until they smacked into one of the remaining walls of the factory.
“I think he might be immortal,” Cloud remarked as he yanked himself free from the now fissured surface. He had lost the Buster Sword somewhere along his unwanted flight path, but before he could step forward, he felt a small hand on his wrist. “You okay, Blues?”
“I’ve been running diagnostics,” the robot said, even if he was uncertain that the man would understand the term. “Probability and a bunch of other stuff that I know Vision would love.”
The blonde furrowed his brow. “Okay, and?”
“I got a plan.”
“Nice, what is it?”
Proto Man smiled. “Do you trust me?” He asked, prompting a confused look from his acquaintance-turned-battlefield ally. “Seriously.”
Cloud nodded his head. “Of course I trust you. We have to do what we have to do in order to beat this monster.”
“Excellent. Take my hands,” Blues extended both his hands. When Cloud delayed and gave that same confused look, Proto Man scowled. “You said you trust me, c’mon!”
The man gave another nod and clasped his ally’s small, metal hands.
“Grab on to something,” Proto Man said nonsensical, his youthful face painted with a faint smile. “This might be a bumpy ride.”
Before Cloud could ask a question or point out the obvious, he felt something jolt through his entire body. In front of him, the machine was suddenly enveloped in a blinding yellow light. The tiny fingers clenched tighter onto Cloud’s palms for a brief second, and then they were gone.
As the light faded and his vision and heartrate normalized, Cloud immediately looked around for a sign of his ally. It was only after a few moments that he glanced down and saw that his hands were red. Cloud lifted his right hand to his face and flexed his metal-encased fingers. A glance down showed that his chest and feet were likewise sheathed in red armor.
But it wasn’t just any armor. Flapping gently in breezes that didn’t exist behind Cloud was a yellow scarf.
“Proto Man?” The soldier asked as he turned around. In the distance, he heard gunshots and bombastic cackles from the fish monster.
It’s weird, isn’t it?
Cloud twitched and glanced around. The voice had come from inside his head.
Calm down. I’m going to run some diagnostics, and I don’t want you to freak out.
The man, unnerved but willing to trust the robot, gave a slow nod as words and pictures started popping up around him. No, wait… not around him. They weren’t floating there in the sky. A hand reaching up didn’t obscure the stream of text as it descended passed him.
Just about done. I’ll make sure the HUD’s not overwhelming for you.
“Why are you in my head?” Cloud asked.
Just think of my as your user interface as you navigate the Proto Suit.
“Am I wearing you?” The man inquired as he lifted a hand and flexed his fingers.
Yes and no. We’re technically the same consciousness, but I thought this was a less jarring way to handle it. Everything I am is in the suit. Here… point you hand out to our left. Your sword is there, you should be able to pick up its shape, if I’m not mistaken.
The soldier turned his head and held out a gauntleted fist. Even though there was thick pollution hanging low over the terrain, he could detect the sword out there—its shape distinct even in the obscured vision. Before Cloud could ask what else he was supposed to do, he saw the gray blur hurtling straight at him. It was only quick reflexes that allowed him to duck and snatch the handle of the Buster Sword before it skewered him.
“Neat trick.”
Ferromagnetic Manipulation… it should make for some fun fighting a monster made up of metal parts.
“What now?” Cloud asked as he lazily swung the sword around. It felt even lighter than it ever had. Had it been damaged or manipulated in some way… or was he just that much stronger?
We’re going to destroy Metal Shark Player.
“Just like that?” The man said with a laugh before he felt another jolt of electricity course through his body. “Okay,” Cloud added, a rare smile spreading wide across his features. “Just like that.”
Elsewhere in the courtyard, the Metal Shark Player cackled and guffawed as Blink and Cole frantically tried to elude his onslaught. Both of the primes were agile, but they were only made of flesh. Eventually, they would run out of strength, and their organic meat suits would fail them. Once they died, they would be a powerful addition to the Darkloid’s horde of recycled monsters.
As he hoisted up the anchor for another punishing sweep of the courtyard, the Metal Shark Player felt something smack against his back.
“Not dead yet?” He barked as he turned to confront the other two primes. “Just one of you now?” He sneered at the distant little prime, who clutched his oversized sword in one hand like a toy. “Did the robot die peacefully?”
Before the Metal Shark Player could enjoy his trash talk, the man lunged off the ground with enough force to rocket toward him. The Darkloid didn’t know how his foe had become so fast, but it didn’t matter. He would die just as hard as the others had.
The Metal Shark Player swung the anchor at the approaching gnat of a prime.
Instead of squashing his foe, the anchor exploded as Proto Cloud literally rammed through it en route to the now mortified visage of the Darkloid. With a swift motion, the cyborg soldier slashed off the top of his adversary’s cranium before landed gently on the ground behind him.
Disposing of his early possum theatrics, the monster turned and growled. In the distance, parts of the factory crumbled as they were willed to the Darkloid, whose skull continued to patch as he seethed toward the armored prime.
“Impossible,” the Shark Player growled as he held up the broken stump of his anchor. The weapon, also slowly regenerating as fresh ‘junk’ torn from the factory worked to restore its shape and form.
“A good mouse taught me a nice life lesson,” Proto Cloud replied, following prompts on his screen from his user interface. “He said ‘nothing is impossible if you set your heart to it, by golly!’” The man flashed a warm smile as he lifted up his other arm, which converted into a Buster Cannon that immediately started to build a terrifying charge.
Buster Sword in one arm, Buster Cannon in the other, the Proto Cloud released his terrifying, righteous fury upon the Metal Shark Player.
Quote:1998 words, according to MS Word
Proto Man and Cloud Strife have fused (refereed to as Proto Cloud).
Prior to attacking, Proto Cloud used Proto Man’s T3 alt form, the Prodigal Son. Stats as follows:
21 ATK
9 DEF
8 SPD
9 TEC
Costs: T3 for the rest of the round = 8 SP + 2 SP (Fusion entire Round) = 10
Cloud SP = 0/3 (Spent 3) / Proto Man SP = 1 /10 (Spent 7, earlier used T1 SA and T1 SD)
![[Image: proto.jpg]](http://epiqz.com/omni/proto.jpg)
![[Image: DAHost.png]](http://www.omniverse-rpg.com/images/badges/Events/DAHost.png)
Dante's Abyss 2015
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