Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Presents: Blood on the Sand!

[Proto Man]

With the moon starting to peak up above the horizon, Proto Mouse let out a breath and started to walk down the street.

The Town with No Name was pretty pleasant for a place that seemingly lacked a coherent identity. Made most of single-story wooden structures, it reminded both halves of Proto Mouse of something pulled from a Wild West serial. All it lacked was a bunch of men in leather chaps with spurs on their boots and revolvers at their sides.

“Very fun,” Proto Mouse spoke to no one in particular as he started to walk down the wide central street. To his left and right, the town branched off into other roads, but he figured it best to start off with a leisurely stroll down the center. While neither Mickey or Proto Man had really been to the Endless Dunes, that didn’t stop the place from being a popular topic on the Dataverse. Even a simple search of the region brought up stories of violence and power plays.

Two names stood out among the others—Ganondorf and Gilgamesh. While the gerudo monarch didn’t come off as a total sociopath, Gilgamesh was a completely different story. Even a glimpse at old twitter feeds caused the fur on the back of the cyborg mouse’s neck to ruffle. Both had Erza Scarlet’s blood on their hands, but it was the gilded king’s associates who had murdered Samus and Mickey. Anyone who confided with a killer like that was tainted themselves. Why else would they all come to this place, a renowned bastion of lawlessness?

To avoid judgment.

The thought made Proto Mouse scowl.

What would Samus do in a situation like this? She was a bounty hunter, which meant she hunted down creatures and villains for a paycheck, but she’d also risked her life to confront Karl Jak. Would she walk away from known blackguards?

The robot mouse didn’t know the answer to that question, despite having two years and two different opinions worth of the woman to mull through.

“What the hell are you?” A voice shouted from the other side of the street.

Stopping dead in his tracks, Proto Mouse glanced over and saw a man sitting on a bench in front of a building labeled ‘Salon.’ Actually, a look at his surroundings showed that the streets were actually filled with people either watching him or paying him quick glimpses as they went about their daily duties. Had he been oblivious to all of this when he landed?

“You some kind of… mechanical what-ya-call it?” The same man asked as he drank from a wooden tankard.

“I’m Proto Mouse. I’m a… I guess I’m a Prototype Robot Master King?” He felt some redness in his cheeks the moment the words were in the air. “Scratch that… let’s just go with cyborg. Yea, I’m a cyborg!”

“…Huh,” the man grunted before spitting into a nearby jar. “A mechanical what-ya-call it.”

“He’s a prime, Dan,” someone said from the stoop of the next building. “Or at least I guess he is.”

Proto Mouse nodded his head. “You might say that,” he said with a smile that made both ‘citizens’ of the Town with No Name furrow their brows.

“I just did,” the man shot back without skipping a beat, causing the robot mouse to furrow his brow. “What I was trying to impl—”

The man in front of the salon let out a loud belch. “All right, the shiny thing’s boring now.” With that, he let out a grunt, rose from the bench, and walked back through the building’s swinging doors.

“Well that was strange,” Proto Mouse muttered as he turned to see that the other man had gone back to sanding what appeared to be scorch marks on the side of his building. Before he could figure out what to do next, someone approached him from the street. The man wore dusty clothes and a kind smile on an unshaven face.

“Welcome to the Town with No Name. You are?”

“Proto Mouse,” the cyborg replied, extending a hand to his new acquaintance. “It’s nice to meet you, bud. Who are you?”

“John Flynn,” he responded. “I help out with Sheriff Roland... have you heard of him?”

While Proto Mouse had not heard of the man, the Dataverse certainly had, and it took no more than a handful of seconds to pull up enough articles and webpages to get a working knowledge of the town’s leader. “Yes. He’s the guy who held this place together when the Empire pulled back from the interior of this verse years back. He sounds like an all right guy.”

Deputy Flynn nodded his head. “Sounds like a fair assessment.” After a pause, he continued. “You seem like someone who can handle themselves, and we’re always trying to find primes to lend a hand.”

Proto Mouse’s eyes light up. “Yea, I like to help out. What do you need?”

“Follow me, I’ll go introduce you to Roland.”

A few minutes later, Proto Mouse found himself standing across a table from a rugged-looking man whose attire perfectly matched the rest of the town’s décor and appearance.

“What brings you to my town?” Although he didn’t sound threatening or harsh, it was clear that the man wanted to cut through any nonsense and get to the point.

The machine mouse smiled warmly in spite of the tone. “To help? I know that the Dunes is filled with a lot of jerks.”

“Jerks?” The gunslinger muttered, his expression relaxing a little as looked at the three-foot armored mouse in front of him. “That’s puttin’ it lightly, kid. You want to help? Go assist my deputy.”

“Is that Mr. Flynn?”

Roland shook his head. “Not him, he’s just a decent human being who likes to help too much. Go find Dept’y… he’s the red one, you can’t miss him.”

“Roger!” Proto Mouse said, and after snapping a salute, he was gone, leaving Roland to shake his head in disbelief.