Family of Steel [Exemplary]

[Proto Man]

Part of him wanted to try and savor the experience of the other cities that existed beneath Tier One. He was too focused to sightsee, so when Proto Man exited the elevator complex on Tier Three, he made his way to the giant steel building with the yellow trim. As he drew closer, he noticed the small detachment of guards near the front door.

Fortunately for the preteen android, his goal was the large pipelines that vanished into the floor/ground. A hop over the fence and a well-placed blast were all he needed to slip down into the tube. Once inside, he simply let gravity carry him down the massive pipe, which bent and twisted every now and again to ensure he didn’t accelerate too fast and become a colorful smear.

After what felt like hours but registered on his head’s up display as only a few minutes, the service piper went into a short spiral and dumped Proto Man into a small chamber. A few bursts opened a hole to the outside, which the adolescent quickly slipped through. He found himself outside a tall, dilapidated structure at the intersection of a few streets.

This was closer to how Proto Man remembered his urban experiences: Dirty, disheveled, and depressing. Coruscant’s Sixth Tier was a ghetto, with its collapsing tenements and garbage-cluttered streets providing a stark departure from the higher cities. The aerial streets of the first three tiers were gone, as it seemed that the tiers below lacked the accommodating vertical space to allow for such luxury causeways. In their place, there were poorly maintained asphalt streets filled with potholes, debris, and pieces of cars. Proto Man wondered if there were even garbage services on this level. The fact that a quick glance around the area revealed three burning cars served as a pretty definitive answer.

If this was the sixth tier, the android wondered what sort of hell awaited anyone miserable enough to find themselves at the bottom of this verse. The seventh tier had to be something barely above a wasteland. If anyone was foolish enough to live down there, they probably weren’t doing it of their own accord.

Ignoring the blatant and all-encompassing gloom of the area, Proto Man walked away from the service pipe and scanned the area a couple more times. He wasn’t paranoid—each visual sweep let his GPS and mapping software download and save more data on the area. The only schematics he’d been able to find were utility lines and a street or two with some civic structures on them. With any luck, he’d be able to acclimate a little faster than the normal visitor.

The data he’d collected spoke of organized crime serving as the closing thin to a business down here, with being a slum lord coming in a close second. Given the lack of any real imperial presence outside a few state-run buildings, Proto Man knew he’d have to rely on his own capabilities in the event that things went sour. If the other Robot Masters were lurking about, he figured he’d have to do the hard work of tracking them down without any outside help.

How many of the machines were down here? He knew from the articles and a few video feeds that the entire series of Robot Masters, with possibly one or two exceptions, was in the Omniverse. They’d apparently appeared in his hotel around the same time he’d rebooted to update his software.

Were these the actual Robot Masters? Certainly some of them were still alive—Dr. Light’s initial series had been saved—but most of them had been destroyed by a combination of Proto Man’s brother and Monsteropolis Special Forces. Had someone hacked his system during that time to steal the information he had himself stolen from the doctors about all of their robots? He hadn’t found any evidence to suggest tampering with his systems, but given the nature of the Omniverse, he wasn’t ready to rule anything out just yet.

“You don’t belong down here, little boy.”

Spinning around, Proto Man found himself confronted by a semi-circle comprised of three dirty-looking men in ragtag outfits.

“Excuse me?” The android asked as he sized up the trio of vagrants. He’d seen their type before in ‘normal cities’—either natural sleaze balls or down-on-their-luck homeless people who became highwaymen preying on the timid, wealthy, or drunk who were ignorant or stupid enough to stumble onto their turf.

“Give us your valuables and we won’t have to teach you a very important lesson about the sixth circle of hell.”

A smile formed on the preteen’s pallid face as he tossed his scarf over his shoulder and activated the Proto Buster. The sudden appearance of the gun-arm caused two of the men to recoil. The central figure, after a cursory glare at his two companions, drew a sidearm from the inside of his raggedy coat. “He’s still just a boy, you cowards.”

“Screw you, Malcolm, I follow the news. He’s one of those new Primes that took down those terrorists in the Dataverse. I’m not dying for this.” With that, the vagrant on the left fled, and with a quick nod, the man on the right joined him in flight.

“You should go with them,” Proto Man said as he summoned his shield in his free hand. “I don’t want trouble, I’m just here to find some machines.”

“Screw you, Prime!” Malcolm’s hand jerked as he discharged his gun, releasing a bolt of plasma at the robot’s chest.

With a scowl, Proto Man brought up the shield to intercept the blast. Once it had dissipated across the glossy steel surface, he charge—shield-first—at his attacker. Two more shots slammed into the metal before Proto Man closed the distance and bashed the highwayman with a scorched shield. As Malcolm staggered, the red robot swung around the front and sent a high kick into his foe’s sternum, launching the target from his feet. The vagrant slammed into the street with a wet thud and rolled for a few yards before running out of momentum.

Despite the thunderous pair of blows and his impact with unyielding asphalt, the man had not only kept a grip on his side arm, but his shaking arm was trying to bring it to bear on the boy. Before Malcolm could steady his aim, a burst of energy hit the gun and blew it and two of his fingers into a fine mist.

After he scanned the man to prove to himself he hadn't caused any fatal injuries, Proto Man started down the other end of the street.

Need to work on my aim…that man’s going to be partially handicapped for the rest of his life pending some cybernetics. A frown spread across the face of the robot as he started toward the Sixth Tier Community Center, which was supposedly the only state-affiliated facility that actually received funding.