The Cure - II [Exemplary]

[Proto Man]

Recovering quickly as a second bolt of lightning screamed down toward him, Proto Man threw out his buster arm and released a rapid charged burst of energy.

Scylla twirled her other hand, and a wall of stone erupted up from the platform to absorb the oncoming projectile. As the makeshift barricade crumbled, Proto Man came leaping over it and smashed the side of his foot into her head. She dropped to her hands and knees and muttered something beneath her breath as the entire platform started to shudder. Before the Prototype Robot Master could react, giant stone fingers reached up out of the altar floor and closed around his legs, abdomen, and his gun arm.

“You can’t defeat me,” Scylla whispered as she rose up to her feet and wiped away a streak of blood from the corner of her mouth.

“I never said I’d do it alone,” Proto Man grunted as he grabbed the whistle and brought it to his lips. He blew through it for a few seconds before letting it fall from his mouth and back to his chest.

The Archdemon furrowed her brow as she waited for something—anything—to happen. When nothing did, she smiled and squeezed her hand, causing the stony fingers around Proto Man to likewise tighten their grasp. Before she could snap the Robot Master in half, something slammed into her back with enough force to knock her onto her backside. As Scylla’s concentration broke, the stone fingers around Proto Man’s lower body softened before melting back into the platform.

“What,” the woman groaned as she put a hand on the small of her back and started to pull herself back to her feet. Her response came in the form of a bark, and when she turned, she saw a robotic dog staring at her, its tongue hanging out of its open mouth.

“That’s Rush,” Proto Man chimed in. “In my world, he was built for my brother, but my version is clearly superior.” As if it agreed, the dog let out a few short barks.

“I’m not amused,” Scylla replied as she threw out a palm, hurtling a stream of flames at the Robot Master. Proto Man leapt over the fire and landed behind Rush.

“Show her what you got, Boy,” Proto Man replied as the dog barked and dropped down onto his haunches. The robotic mutt’s chest split apart, revealing one giant cannon quite similar the one his master wielded. “I call this one the Rush Buster,” the red robot smiled as a beam of energy erupted from the dog’s chest, catching Scylla unprepared. The blast carried the woman until she slammed into one of the might columns that supported the Black Gate. With a dull thud, she fell away from the unaffected stone and to the ground below.

Rush barked as his chest slid shut, cutting off the little plumes of smoke wafting up from the cannon. Proto Man relayed a standby order to the dog over their wifi connection and jumped from the platform. He landed silently on the ground and immediately spotted the location where the Archdemon had hit the earth. Before he could properly scan the surroundings, the ground beneath him turned to mud, forcing the machine to rush forward to avoid sinking into the spreading goop.

Amidst all the hops and lunges, Proto Man left himself wide open for a blast of electricity that sent him bouncing and rolling across the ground before he finally ran out of momentum. As he groaned and pushed himself up to his feet, Scylla stalked over to him, her burning figure a sharp contrast with the darkness that pervaded the rest of their surroundings. Proto Man rose to his feet and scowled as his opponent started to almost leisurely hurtle spears of ice at him. Summoning his shield, he hoisted it from the ground—a simpler task given his overclocked physique—and advanced toward his foe as the projectiles smashed across the surface of the bulwark.

When he felt the dirt beneath him start to soften, Proto Man knew what was coming next. Instead of dodging left or right and leaving himself unguarded and unaware, he planted the shield into the ground and sent it sailing forward with a vicious kick.

Scylla grunted as she summoned a burst of fire to halt the massive projectile. But when the shield dropped to the ground in front of her, Proto Man was standing right behind it, and the robot seemed to grin as he buried a set of knuckles into her gut. The impact folded her over the android, who pushed her upright and laid into her with a vicious right cross. After that, a solid straight kick to the chest threw the Archdemon onto her back. Scylla groaned as she found herself breathing with more difficulty. Pain across her ribcage told her that something in there wasn’t altogether correct.

Sitting upright even as her chest, face, and neck throbbed with pain, the woman focused on the android walking toward her. Much as she had earlier seemed almost lackadaisical while hurtling attacks at Proto Man, he now almost casually advanced toward her. Her fingers tore up the dirt as she clenched at the ground and forced herself up off her haunches. Up above them, the platform started to shudder as chunks of it broke away and fell toward the ground. It was only when the first of them neared the ground that the woman lifted a hand and ushered it toward her adversary.

The empowered machine scowled as he fired a rapidly charged blast, shattering apart the jagged slab of stone before it flattened him. As chunks of smoldering stone smacked into the ground around him, Proto Man’s vision overlay rushed to compensate for the decrease in visibility. It adapted just in time to throw out his hands to try and block against a second slab. The stone hit his palms, and although a half-dozen red indicators popped up around the edge of his display, Proto Man stopped the projectile, and with a grunt, he thrust it back toward its host.

Muttering something beneath her breath, Scylla scrambled away as the rock hit the ground where she had been standing and shattered into countless chunks. As she stumbled forward, she threw out a hand and fired a lance of ice toward the machine, who battered it aside with a leaf-shaped buckler mounted over his ‘normal’ wrist.

Once she had recovered her balance, Syclla dropped into a crouch and placed her palms on the ground.

A few yards away and trying to spot the woman through the thick dust, Proto Man wasn’t paying attention as the earth started to shudder beneath his boots. It wasn’t until it started to physically split apart that he threw himself forward, trying to escape the jagged fissure seeking to swallow him whole. Proto Man’s leap cleared him of the expanding hole, but before he could figure out what was going on, a blast of black energy struck his chest.

Like a bomb, the attack erupted against his body, shredding through the gray suit he wore, ripping into his organic layer, and even going so far as to compromise the integrity of his metal endoskeleton. The impact threw the red robot ten yards back, and when he did hit the ground, he landed on an elbow first, causing that joint and his shoulder to dislocate.

“Son of a…” Proto Man grunted as made it to his feet and grabbed a hold of the momentarily inert arm. After jamming it back into the shoulder joint, he moved down and reset the elbow joint, which was close to complete failure. From the dust beneath the platform, he saw a shape slowly advancing toward him, but a blast of energy failed to hit a target. A moment later, Scylla erupted up from the ground in front of the red robot and put a hand on his wounded chest. There was a sparkle of electricity before a blast of electricity slammed into the compromised armor and punished the android’s internal systems.

His display flashed black for a few moments as his system tried to vent the electricity and preserve the integrity of his wiring. Throwing a palm forward, he caught Scylla in the chin before she could fire a second bolt of lightning.

As Proto Man stumbled backwards, a red shape dropped down behind him. There was a blast of fire that forced the Archdemon to retreat for a moment, giving the red robot enough time to lurch backwards and join Rush. Proto Man took a knee next to the dog, who barked as Scylla reemerged from the dust. The woman was smiling despite the bruises, blood, and dirt that now covered her once pallid visage.

“Running out of tricks, Blues?”

Proto Man smiled as he reached up and adjusted his helmet so it rested evenly on his head. “I got one that I’m sure you’re going to like,” he muttered as he placed a hand on Rush’s shoulder. “Rush Adapter Execute!”

Scylla winced as the teenager and his dog vanished in a flare of white light. When the light faded, Rush was gone, and Proto Man had undergone a second transformation. His body had reverted back to its preteen form, but his torso now sported a heavy-looking suit of red and white armor, with pauldrons that matched the design of Rush’s shoulders. The gray body suit had been repaired and replaced with a white version. Heavy plate covered his abdomen and previously ‘exposed’ portions of his arms. Extending from Proto Man’s back were two flat pieces of steel decorated with an orange panel of lights and a blinking blue bulb near the end. Just below where the robot’s sternum would have ended, a large orange light shined brightly amidst their dim surroundings.

After tucking some of his scarf into his helmet, Proto Man clenched and unclenched his fists as his system ran the final post-merge diagnostics. In this stage, he lacked the raw strength of being overclocked, but all of his systems were closer to be in balance, which probably made him a much greater threat.

“You changed your clothes.”

“A lot more than that,” Proto Man took a step forward and thrust a clenched fist toward his foe. When the arm fully extended, his hand broke apart and rocketed through the air like a red blur until it smashed into Scylla’s nose.