Be Welcome to the Seat of the Council.

[Proto Man]

The preteen’s quest was at an end soon after it had begun. While he’d managed to scale the cliff through some bizarre mixture of will and leaping, Cindy and her dragon mount had a ludicrous head start by the time he managed to pull his dirty, armored figure up over the edge of the gorge. With his eyes pinned to the slowly receding golden figure in the sky, Proto Man had tried to give chase. Because he was a machine, he knew he could have kept going without worrying about exhaustion or muscle acidosis, and it was that mentality that pushed him forward even after the mountainside gave way back to trees.

Despite his advantage, both the computer and the boy knew he’d never ever match the speed of a flying dragon. So it was with that thought in mind that he stopped chasing after the fleeing woman. At the end of the day, he knew he wasn’t okay with just letting her backstab them over a gold trinket, but Cindy couldn’t hide where he wouldn’t be able to track her down. I will find you.

Turning back toward the mountainside, Proto Man retrieved his whistle and played his favorite melody. While it had always soothed him down, it now served the function of summoning his mount and ally to his side. After a few chords, the armored chocobo strutted up from the mountain and gave him the closest thing to a smile it could. When it noted the tense expression on the lower half of his face, the bird came over and gave him a reassuring pat on the back with one of its large yellow wings.

“You’re a strange bird, Salsa,” Proto Man said as a smile spread across his youthful face. Climbing back into the saddle, he directed her back toward the gorge up the mountain. “We need to make sure that everyone is okay.”

“Kweh!”

He didn’t know how long he had been gone, but when he returned to the former lair of the dragons, Proto Man saw that most of the people had cleared out. Ganondorf, Link, Harry, and all the others had vacated what was now a makeshift crypt for the rotting reptiles. Fortunately for Proto Man, a cadre of knights remained at the scene.

“Hey, it’s the boy knight!” One of them exclaimed, clearly pleased to see Proto Man. “You’re the little guy who chased off that bounty hunter, right?”

Although he was offended at being called a ‘little guy,’ Proto Man swallowed his pride for the moment. “Yea, that’s me. Hey, do you guys know what happened to Samus? She was the woman in the orange suit or armor.”

When the first knight failed to produce an answer, one of his comrades butted in to the conversation. “The wizard took her with him. Someplace outside Minas Tirith… I think Biggs or Wedge knows where.”

With a nod, Proto Man went to find the two knights, who seemed more intent on bickering with one another to respond to his attempts to get their attention. Once he fired off a round of plasma into the ceiling, they were more than willing to lead him to where they figured Harry had gone.

Before leaving, the robot walked over to the Rathian and removed its head, which was missing one of its canines for reasons he could only theorize about. It was grisly, but he knew that everyone in the Community Center would get a kick out of it. And who knows, maybe it would deter a few of the daily attacks that befell the sanctuary. Once he’d strapped the trophy to a clearly unhappy chocobo, he sent Salsa back toward the Nexus and rode on the back of Biggs’ Pegasus.

It was a few hours before the trio arrived at the ruins. Fortunately for the two knights, Samus was easy enough to find.

“Samus!” Proto Man shouted, trying to hide his relief that the woman hadn’t been critically injured by the hammer blow. Despite being battered and smashed in several places, she still wore her suit of armor. That fact, along with what he’d learned of the Imperial Space Marines from Hiberius, made the android wonder if she lived perpetually in the suit of armor just like those hulking men from the Imperium.

“Proto Man?” The woman replied, turning on wobbly legs to look down at the youth. “What happened? Where’d Cindy go?”

A scowl spread across the preteen’s visage. “She knocked you out over a golden egg that summons a dragon. I tried to teach her that she shouldn’t be so rude… I gave her a welt or two before she pulled out said dragon and escape to wherever it is she schemes.” Although he was trying not to, it was obvious from the boy’s tone that he couldn’t stand the woman.

“Hrm,” Samus growled. Whether she was angry about being attacked or about losing something of value, Proto Man couldn’t be sure.

“I’ll stay with you until you feel more like yourself,” the prototype Robot Master assured the bounty hunter. “Do you have any idea where you’ll be heading next.”

With that, Samus produced a note that told her to follow some metal stakes to some Scottish place. “The wizard left me this note, but I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“Well I’ll go with you, if you’d like,” Proto Man offered as he looked at the first metal stake ahead of them.