Be Welcome to the Seat of the Council.

[Proto Man]

Twenty minutes later, Proto Man found himself sitting in a small room with Harry and Samus. While the boy was sipping on a bottle of root beer for the sake of appearances, the bounty hunter had refrained from refreshment and instead seemed to be tending to affairs on her internal display.

With a glass of some foul-smelling brown booze, Harry sat down across from Proto Man and took a long sip from the tiny glass. The corner’s of his mouth twitched a few times—a probably indicator of the liquid burning its way down into his stomach. “How long have you been here, kid?” He asked as he glanced over to make sure Samus was okay.

“I think it’s been a few months,” Proto Man responded before taking a sip from the bottle. He felt the physical sensation the carbonation made as it bubbled down his throat and read that the drink was good, but unlike Harry, he was physically incapable of enjoying or despising it. “I’m still not sure if there’s any sort of time delay between the various verses, but I know in the middle time passes much faster.”

“The Nexus? The place with the big ole fountain?”

“Yea. If you’re a Prime, you show up in the Nexus. Judging from the troops on both sides, I imagine there’s a mild cold war going on between the two powers.” While he had constantly thought about these things, Proto Man had never spoken them aloud in Coruscant. Despite knowing that he himself was free of bugs, he didn’t know who was an informant or where the Empire may have hidden equipment to keep tabs on him. It actually felt nice to be able to talk without having to self-censor himself.

“What is this place?” Harry asked as he finished his tiny glass of booze and reached for the bottle. “The Omniverse, I mean. Are we in a different universe? Is this a purgatory-type deal? I didn’t even stop to think I could be lying in a ditch somewhere in the real world…”

Proto Man shrugged his shoulders. “All I can tell you is that it’s very real. My sister arrived here after I did, and she relayed events that occurred after I’d been brought here. This place is the creation of someone named Omni, but who or what he is, I don’t know. I guess people have tried to reach him, but no one’s had much success over the years.”

“Years? This place has been here for years?”

The android nodded his head to that question. “I think it’s year eight or nine, depending on when they start counting a new year. I haven’t really figured out how they track days yet. The conflict between this verse and where I’ve set up shop is nearly as old as this entire world.”

With his drink refreshed, the wizard took another long sip and placed it back down on the counter. “Something happened that involved a ‘Diablo’ character, right? This whole place was supposedly involved in that.”

“Yea, you’re right,” the preteen replied as he set down his empty bottle of root beer and pulled up the entry on his internal display as a reference. “Diablo was some sort of demon who created an entire verse that he proceeded to fill with monsters and other blatantly evil things. The history is that it took four years of fighting before the Kingdom and the Empire managed to seal way the Underverse. I guess the Kingdom suffered the brunt, which has only fueled the animosity.”

“And this place was some kind of forward base?”

“I guess,” Proto Man offered. He genuinely couldn’t find much information about these ruins. “There are some mentions of this place, but I can’t find anything of any detail on the Dataverse. You might want to check local archives?”

Harry nodded his head as he leaned back in his chair. “This is a weird place, kid. One minute I’m in Chicago, and in the next, I’m in a place with dragons and talking machines. What’s up with the dragons, anyway? One moment there are giant ones trying to kill us, and then you have people flying off in miniature versions.”

“From what I know, everything here was either summoned by Omni or by powerful Primes. Since we haven’t had reports of dragons in the Nexus, it’s possible that someone willed them into existence, just like you created parts of this place.”

“And the miniatures?”

Proto Man gave yet another shrug. “There are a lot of wondrous things in this place. Maybe some part of those dragons transferred to those eggs. I’ve read about powerful Primes summoning allies, so it may be derivative of that. All I know is that whatever those eggs may be, they clearly have some value, monetary or otherwise. I can’t see why else that woman would have gone to such lengths to take one.”

“You mean that girl with the hammer? You think she knew the whole time that there’d be some sort of weird prize if the dragons went down? She probably didn’t even care about the damage those things were causing to the countryside.”

“The more I dwell on it, the more I look forward to meeting her again,” Proto Man replied.

“Anyway,” Harry muttered as he set aside his glass, clearly indicating that he had enjoyed his fill of liquor for the moment. “Do you know if this place is friendly to wizards?”

“I haven’t actually been in Camelot very long, but I imagine it’s probably friendly or at least tolerant of wizards. There’s supposedly an entire floating city filled with people who study and practice magic, with their leader being a member of the king’s advisors.”

A smirk spread across the man’s face. “Maybe they can help me figure out why I can’t use my Sight.”

“Don’t know what that is,” Proto Man remarked, recalling the wizard’s earlier remarks. “But you probably just need more Omnilium. I discovered pretty quickly that this whole place runs on it.”

“The summoning stuff?”

“Yea… I don’t really know exactly what it is, but it’s used for everything. People, houses, cars…it’s all Omnilium. Since we’re Primes, we can manipulate the stuff to suit or wills, so you probably just need to get more to help with your magic problem.”

The wizard, his brow furrowed, scowled slightly as he tried to rationalize the situation in his head. Proto Man had gone through the same confusion after his arrival, but he had complex machinery to help him work through the various quandaries relating to this strange world’s malleable material. Harry had to rely on his brain alone.

“Well that’s a start…thanks, kid.”