Secondary Saga- Phase 7 "Kicking Ass and Taking Names"

[Proto Man]

How hard was it to have a verse that stayed in the same state for longer than fifteen seconds?

Top Man didn’t know which was less cheery, the swamp at the edge of the Tangled Green or the darkness of the Void. He’d traveled through the Nexus on numerous occasions, and this grayscale replica made that place look like a work of fine art. The fact that debris floated around aimlessly didn’t help to make the place feel any more pleasant. A closer inspection showed what seemed to be the broken remains of an X-Wing drifting alongside a few broken Byzantine columns.

For a moment, things were nice and nearly pleasant for what remained of the group. Although withered by time and the ravages of the Swamp, they had made it one step closer to their objective.

Unfortunately for them, the obstacles weren’t getting any smaller.

The ‘angel’ had struck them all down in an instant. A blast of white light had overloaded Top Man’s audiovisual sensors and rendered him useless for a few moments. When the interference subsided, he found himself slumped on the ground near a broken statue from ancient Egypt. Somewhere in that daze, something had wormed its way into the heads of a few survivors. People lunged at friends and long-time acquaintances with murder in their eyes.

Top Man managed to catch the edge against Isaac and stun the swordsman with a roundhouse kick to the skull.

“What’s wrong with you?” Top Man demanded as he took a step toward the man. A glance around showed that chaos reigned supreme in the heart of the Void. In the distance, the glowing figure of the angel stood where it had been before the eruption of the fracas. The Robot Master glared at the creature and started toward it when something akin to rope lashed out and caught him in the side of the head. Top Man was thrown sideways and nearly lost his balance. A glance revealed Pinocchio, long whip-like strings in his hands, was stalking toward him. The wooden boy’s eyes burned with murderous intent.

“You okay?” Top Man asked. The question was rhetorical, he knew, but there was a small part of him that hoped his friend would shake his head and be free of his woes. Who does this sort of thing to a puppet? Who turns an awkward little wooden boy into a would-be murderer? Before Top Man got a response, Pinocchio lashed out with one of his improvised whips. The robot twisted to avoid the lashing, but even as he did, the other string zipped forward and caught him on the face, neck, and shoulder.

This time, Top Man lost his balance and hit the ‘ground’ hard. While he had no blood to lose, he didn’t appreciate the sparks that now flittered across the paper-thin slash. Planting his feet into the floor of the mutable verse, the robot gave himself a hard push and made it back to his feet. Before he could proceed to metaphorically dust himself off, he caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He spun and winced as Raw Onion’s hind legs crashed into his chest, throwing him backwards like the world’s largest metal rag doll.

The world flickered in and out of focus in the few moments before the airborne Top Man smashed into the side of a broken statue. The robot felt something crunch in his spine, but all of his extremities seemed to be functioning within normal parameters. Chalking it up to yet more external damage, Top Man jammed an elbow into the stone surface and shoved off of it. The weak gravity of the Void made it so he dropped down at an almost glacial pace. As he descended, he was able to view some of the carnage in the area. Not everyone was locked into mortal combat… many of the seemingly affected people seemed to be fighting more with themselves than others. A glance showed that Pinocchio was clutching the sides of his head and seemed to be trying to overcome whatever was trying to influence his mind.

Fight, kid.

Top Man touched down just long enough to track the shining glow of the creature. Was it an angel? From this position, it just looked like a shimmering mass of light and energy in an otherwise grayscale realm. That was the true threat. Everything else was just smoke and mirrors to distract the group and have it cannibalize itself before they even found the door to Omni’s gilded city.

“Come on,” Top Man muttered as he started to jog toward the angel. “Time to cut to the chase.” With a snicker, the robot broke into a sprint. En route, he had to front flip over one of his mind-altered associates. When he landed, he activated his buster arm and started to charge an energy attack.

Before he could fire the shot, a beam erupted from the side of the angel and struck him in the chest like a bolt of lightning. The impact sent Top Man tumbling backwards head-over-heels for a solid twenty yards before the relaxed gravity managed to alleviate his momentum.

“What the hell was that?” Top Man groaned, his eyes glancing up into the infinite gray sky of the Void. With a grunt, the Robot Master shifted into an upright position and glared back across the ‘battlefield’ at the floating mass of light and energy. “You think that’s gonna keep me down?” A second grunt took Top Man from his haunches to his feet, but before he moved back into the jaws of the beast, he caught something floating nearby.

“Hey!” He chuckled as he reached out and scooped the can out of the air. The twelve ounce can of Pepsi-Cola Oil let out a refreshing crack as Top Man popped the tab and chugged down the ‘delicious’ oily hydration. When the can was empty, he crushed it into a tiny puck and set it down on the ground. With any luck, he’d come back later and grab it, although part of him wondered if the random stuff in this verse didn’t just phase in and out of existence all the time.

With a grin, Top Man marched toward the energy creature. The mixture of petroleum and soda had suffused his beleaguered body with a rush of energy. Even if this was his last stand, he knew he’d face it head-on like only he could.

“C’mon, you piece of garbage!” Top Man shouted as he charged a blast. “You’re nothing too serious.” A beam came screaming across the ‘field,’ but this time, the Robot Master deftly spun out of the way and fired his own counterattack. The blast struck some sort of barrier around his foe, but even in that split-second, Top Man saw the splinters appear.

“You’re not different than any of us,” Top Man yelled as he leapfrogged another crackling beam of energy and lashed back with a retaliatory burst of his own. “You’re just a bunch of glitz and glamour, with no real substance. You’re not better than any of us, and you’re certainly not better than all of us!”