Hope Rides Alone

[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.