Façades

[Proto Man]

His clock app was broken.

As if he needed yet another reminder of how miserable the last few days had been, Proto Man was unable to tell the time. While he was sure that there were probably people who didn’t need a digital display to know how late it was, he wasn’t one of them. It also didn’t help that the Pale Moors were perpetually overcast, and it was a guessing game to figure out where the sun actually was before it drifted beneath the horizon.

Somewhere a few paces in front of him, Whirda walked in silence. With the Tarrasque ‘gone’ (Proto Man didn’t believe it was dead… there was no giant decaying corpse), the twosome had left behind a scene of desolation that would eventually blend in all too well with the rest of the mass graves that dotted the Pale Moors. They hadn’t spoken since the woman emerged last from whatever it was that they had all been sent to following the collapse of the Tarrasque. He didn’t ask any questions—he didn’t care enough.

And when she didn’t have anything to say either, they made their way back toward Darkshire in silence, with both of them limping and favoring their bruised, battered bodies as they journeyed back toward whatever safety the grim town would offer to them.

Much as they had before diverting their attention to the Tarrasque, neither of them requested that they stop for rest. For Proto Man, his systems were wrecked, but that didn’t mean he would stop functioning anytime soon. He didn’t know what kept Whirda’s flesh and bones moving, and he didn’t feel like having another conversation about whatever coursed through her veins.

So they walked, with the only sound the dull thud of Proto Man’s metal boots against the barren soil.

By the time that his body had repaired enough to start rebooting some of his more advanced functions, it was already dark overhead, and it was getting difficult to see more than a few dozen feet in front of their faces. “I think we should stop…” Whirda muttered with a voice like a ghost in the wind as she glanced over a bloody shoulder at her robotic associate. “The last thing we need is to be set upon by another monster or pack of drow.”

You can just kill those too, can’t you? Instead of speaking his mind, the preteen machine nodded his head and squinted through the darkness. Although he had to rely on his most sight overlay, he was still able to spot a small copse at the top of a hill near twenty or thirty feet from their position. “The trees and elevation should provide us with some cover and a vantage point.”

“Good eyes,” Whirda replied as she started toward the tree-covered hill.

Once the pair were entrenched inside the copse, they fell back into silence. Turning his attention from Whirda, Proto Man glanced down at his hands and saw that he was missing a few more parts than he had originally noticed. One of his fingers had lost a digit, and two other fingers had been scorched down to the metal endoskeleton during his last scuffle with the Spartan. While none of the grossly damaged fingers were responsive, the damage was mostly cosmetic. After all, he wasn’t going to be folding origami anytime soon—he’d rather his systems repair themselves enough to reboot the non-essential system apps that allowed him to function less like a mindless robot and more like an integrated member of whatever the hell you considered the Omniverse (‘society’ didn’t seem like a fitting term… the place was too miserable to feel like one).

With a sigh, Proto Man stared out into the darkness and waited the night away as his body slowly tried to repair itself.