Façades

[Proto Man]

“What? Dmitri sent you?” The man was the exact opposite of the rugged yet approachable man who had greeted Proto Man and Mireya at the door. He was gruff, grossly unkempt, and generally seemed to have little idea what was going on around him. “I’m Sergeant Thrash, and this is Tower Six. I take it you’re here to help hold down the area? It’s been awhile since I’ve had to break in any new recruits.”

Mireya snorted. “I assure you that I don’t need to be broken in,” the half-night elf said in her unique accent. “I’m sure I can sit around and point a bow at things for an entire afternoon if need be.”

“Heh,” Thrash muttered as he examined the lithe hybrid. “Just go change into the garrison gear… they ought to be able to throw some suits together that will fit the two of you.” The man shook his head as he walked away. Although he thought he was outside of earshot, both the child and the woman were good enough to pick up his last remarks. “Sending me a woman and a damn kid… this town has gone to hell.”

“What have you gotten us into, Kid?” Mireya muttered with a snide grin on her face as they made their way into the cramped confines of the tower. Up ahead, a wooden sign indicated the path they’d need to take to make it to the quartermaster’s office. The pair made their way in silence through the claustrophobic network of corridors until they reached the plain wooden door that led into a dank room that served as the man’s ‘office.’

“Howdy,” a sweaty man said, his eyes haggard as he glanced up from a crate filled with random pieces of mangled platemail. “You’re not here for gear, are you?” He groaned after seeing the looks in their eyes.

“We are…” Mireya muttered, trying very little to hide her disdain.

“Uh,” the quartermaster sighed as he reached in and pulled out a shattered piece of platemail. From the marks on it, it looked like its last owner had been torn apart by giant wolves of some sort. “Here,” he said as he handed the piece over to Proto Man. “You just need to find enough pieces that have that decal on them… that’s the garrison recruit insignia.”

So this is what happened to the last batch? Proto Man scowled as he examined the logo and committed it to memory. Once he had, he handed it back to the quartermaster. “I’ll summon some armor for the two of us. That way, you can focus on the work that obviously needs your attention the most.”

“A prime, eh?” The quartermaster inquired. “We’ve had a few of you in the last year… it makes me start to really think that this place may be starting to turn around.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Proto Man said with a smile as Mireya and he made their way out of the cramped sorting room.

Twenty minutes later, the pair made their way over to where the man in charge of the garrison was sorting through some paperwork. Both Mireya and Proto Man were decked out in shiny new platemail armor that sported the requisite emblems for the garrison. Beyond that, neither of their suits seemed even remotely close to the standard. The preteen machine’s lacked most of the nuanced joints and plates to compensate for his already large lower legs and hands, and his helmet looked more like that of a medieval knight than the skull cap style worn by the militia. Mireya’s outfit lacked nearly all the heavy plate and was designed to guard only the essentials without tying up the woman’s lithe frame with weighty armor. Most of her body was still garbed in her handmade leather armor, and if anything, it seemed as if she’s just tacked on some metal bits for show.

“Those aren’t regulation.”

“You said all we needed was the emblem,” Proto Man shot back as the pair pointed to their respective insignias. After glancing at their equipment once more, the quartermaster furrowed his brow. “I didn’t think you’d be primes,” he muttered as he sat up in his chair and started to look over the pair in more detail. “I figured they were just at the point of sending me whatever rabble they could round up in the alleys…”

“No worries,” Proto Man replied, glossing over the fact that his companion was a secondary. As far as the robot was concerned, that was no one’s business, and if it got them a few advantages, he was okay with that. He owed it to Mireya to keep her alive from this point forward. She had been at his side throughout some terrible ordeals, and even though she was flesh and blood, she was a member of his family of steel. “Where do we go?”

Sergeant Thrash mulled over the question for a few minutes before deciding on a response. “Head up to the top floor. You’ll find Corporal Jacks up there, and he’ll be the guy who gives you your specific assignments. He has one of the rougher sections of the wall… he’s lost a pair of guys and three skeletons over the last week due to raids. For whatever reason, the monsters out there are being adventurous with the town walls.”

“Nothing too serious, right?” Proto Man asked.

“Ehh,” the sergeant muttered as he tried to think of the right, politically-correct response to that question. “Let’s just say that the current situation is very taxing on our available resources.”

If Proto Man had a ‘bullshit’ detection app, it would have been sending up a dozen red flags. Since it wasn’t his place to call people out on their words, he simply nodded his head and walked with Mireya to their next destination. With any luck, they could pass this time without disaster and leave Darkshire to sort through its own affairs.