Day 2 Evening

[Proto Man]

The night had been once been pleasant.

After the guardian fight had settled into their rearview mirror, the trio had been able to try and enjoy the finer things that the island had to offer—camping, swimming, eating strange foods, and ‘spooning’ (Proto Man wasn’t quite sure what utensils had to do with silent embraces) under the stars. Mickey Mouse referred to those things as ‘the essentials for a lovely time!!’

Prior to their camp, they had stopped for snacks, savoring a variety of fruits that grew in small shrubs. At one of them, Proto Man had been fortunate enough to learn the actual name of the berries he’d eaten the night prior.

Raspberries, not redberries.

When Belle had first corrected him, his skin had turned a shade of red not entirely dissimilar to the fruit in his mouth. Luckily for Proto Man, he had been able to conceal his embarrassment beneath his helmet. While a part of him had started to grow attached to how strange, new, and wonderful the same old world felt, he was also beginning to long for his faux humanity. The chilling sensation of splashed water or the warm feeling of a companion’s embrace were wonderful things to experience, but when you compared it with no longer being able to recall species of fruit or having to deal with other emotions that you couldn’t understand, it soured the rainbow-tinted reality.

How weak had this world made him?

The ‘battles’—if such a label was even remotely appropriate—with Jupiter had made that distinction quite clear to him.

Jupiter, who lay unconscious on the path behind them, had nearly killed Proto Man on their first encounter. If not for the shock and confusion of the situation, the blonde man may have plunged his knife through the preteen machine’s neck instead of his shoulder blade. The second encounter had been a number’s game, with the blonde manhandled in a group effort.

What had followed that was a confrontation with one of the island’s previously dormant guardians. Proto Man hadn’t partaken in that confrontation—the Proto Mouse had taken the reins and led the victory charge. Now that he looked back on that battle, the red robot started to wonder if he would have stood a chance against the towering monster that wore a kite shield as a piece of jewelry.

Who’s to say that the giant would have been stopped by a confused child in a bunch of metal pads?

The recently defeated Jupiter that lay behind them had been a shell of his former self. Had the man suffered many other battles or had they—in their quest for the guardian—really left him in such a mentally damaged condition? His words had bordered on lunacy, and while it was quite possible that the blonde had always been like that, there was also a high probability that he’d taken some sort of brain damage at the hands of his group.

So then why hit him with a crowbar?

Proto Man frowned as he looked up at the weapon dangling at Belle’s side. For the first hundred feet, the metal tool had dribbled blood on the path, but since then, the dry air and warm temperatures had dried the liquid into a crusty black paste.

In the heat of the moment, that decision had been born. There’d been no pausing to think about alternate scenarios. No stopping to calculate variables or possibilities.

Proto Man had asked for the crowbar and smacked Jupiter in the forehead with the blunt end of the tool. By some act of providence, he had held enough back to merely fracture the bone, rather than cave in the front of the man’s skull.

Had this happened prior to the warlock’s magic changing his body, there would have been warnings that popped up on his internal display. A hundred thousand different possibilities would have run through his CPU before his body had taken a decision.

Here in this isolated and altered verse, he didn’t have a failsafe against the semblance of faux humanity encoded into his machine parts.

He’d been reduced to a scared, frightened child that responded to fear with violence and irrationality. Just a slightly stronger swing would have killed Jupiter. Would have turned Proto Man into something he didn’t want to be.

While he had tried to avoid the truth, he could no longer deny that he was now truly naked against all the terrible ravages of humanity.

But maybe he’ll wake up okay?

Despite living in a very adult world, Proto Man didn’t want to entertain the alternate possibility that Jupiter wouldn’t wake up from the blow. They had checked his vitals before pulling him off the road, but that didn’t mean the unarmed man couldn’t slip into a coma beneath the shade of the tall trees. Even worse, someone could walk by and slit his throat.

The machine lifted up his hand and frowned at the open palm.

He’d never killed someone, either in the Omniverse or his old world. In the first frenetic years of his life, he’d come close—mostly in instances of self-defense. A man dressed in rags and reeking of hard liquor had jumped him in an alleyway. Much like Jupiter, his ‘assailant’ had been rambling incoherent nonsense. By the time he stopped himself, Proto Man had broken an arm, a leg, a couple of ribs, and dislocated his attacker’s jaw. It was only later that the machine came to the realization that his assailant had been little more than a homeless man having an adverse reaction to an overdose of narcotics.

That man had needed help, and in response, Proto Man had nearly ended his life.

What if Jupiter had needed their help?

The sad part was that Proto Man knew he didn’t have the answer to that question. He didn’t know a single thing about the blonde man with the knife. It was possible that Jupiter was an exemplar of society, but there was also the equal chance that he genuinely drew excitement from murdering children. Some miserable voice inside Proto Man’s head told him that he’d probably never learn more about Jupiter. The blonde would probably vanish and become little more than a terrible phantasm lurking in the depths of the robot’s synthetic psyche.

Regardless of how these events played out in the long term, the machine knew he’d have to live with the man’s blood on his hands.

Proto Man looked forward at the back of Mickey’s head and wondered if the mouse dealt with these emotions every day of his life.

Does Belle?

…Did Gilgamesh?

The machine scowled as he shook his head. No. He couldn’t—he wouldn/t—make excuses for monsters like that. There had to be a line in the sand. He had to be able to draw a clear distinction between right and wrong.

Despite the voice in his head telling him so, Proto Man wasn’t so sure he even believed himself. The longer he thought about it, the more confused he became. He was starting to doubt the validity of many things he had once believed in so fervently. And why shouldn’t he? Those things had been programmed into this head on birth, and while his experiences had help to paint them in further detail, there was no denying that he’d never been given the choice in the first place.

Proto Man came to an abrupt stop and looked down. He hadn’t realized it, but he was trembling. He’d spent so many years living with humans, but now that he lived as one, he was unable to function.

How do they live like this?

What had once been order inside Proto Man’s robotic brain was now filled by a swirl of emotions. There were dozens of them—all swirling around like some type of hellish maelstrom.

Who would ever want to live their life like this? Who would ever want to have to make sense of these feelings?

The robot wanted then more than ever to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. He could wipe away all the tears in the world, but the pain he felt in his chest never dulled. He still wanted to help Teucer, but he also wanted to leave this dreadful place. He wanted to feel like himself again. He desperately wanted to be free of this rampant irrationality that pervaded every fiber of his altered being.

He wanted the world to make sense again.

He wanted out before he wound up doing something he couldn’t live with.

He wanted out before he became a victim of this place…

This graveyard of heroes.