[Exemplary] Family of Steel - Carved from the Blighted Oak

[Proto Man]

When had his communications come back online?

Proto Man glanced down at his arms and noticed that the visible internal damage didn’t seem to be quite as devastating as it had been earlier. Even stranger, he was missing many smaller scratches and abrasions from his armor and body suit. Was it possible that the damage was undoing itself? Proto Man had never been this seriously injured, even while fighting the dragon in Camelot, so he had zero precedent. Either way, a check of his systems revealed increased functionality and smoother operations across the board.

Is this a natural thing for primes? Proto Man flashed back to Cell Delta’s ramblings about immortality. Was the heavily burned and mutilated cyborg hidden away in a cave somewhere in the Ashen Plains undergoing the same gradual restoration? The small machine shuddered at the thought of the maniac being restored back to full health. With a jarring ping, Proto Man’s GPS software started back up, and after it synced up to the Dataverse, it began downloading a few days worth of information.

Samus was right, he’d wound up in the Tangled Green after his trek away from Cell Delta. Unfortunately for the preteen android, he wouldn’t have a functioning map of the area for several hours, thanks in part to the various patches and updates his software would have to make. How long had he walked before arriving in this place? Days? Weeks?

Shambling forward, Proto Man found himself in a small clearing in the forest. A quick analysis revealed that someone had manually removed enough trees to lighten up the space, as a few stumps were still present. The android walked over to one of the stumps and took a firm look at it, hoping it would yield more information. As many of his systems were still offline or functioning poorly, all Proto Man could do was guess as to how long ago the tree had been removed.

In the distance, something howled—an angry, animal sound.