A Home for Heroes

[Proto Man]

The streets of Nippur were never safe once the sun set and darkness crept over the grieving, ravaged town. Once the light of day faded away, the most desperate and unsavory elements of the city took to the streets and back alleys to enact their sorrow and anger on the less fortunate. With the fall of the king, it seemed as if everything had come to a grinding halt. Merchants and traders from the wastes who had formerly seen the town as a safe place to spend a few days and peddle their wares no longer risked it. The roving bands that prowled like wolves in the streets killed any semblance of security.

Nearly eight months ago, the machine had arrived in Nippur seeking solace from the hells of the Endless Dunes. Although he had intended to move on following a short layover, he had taken to the place, despite the fact that he was certain its ruler was some sort of maniac or madman. With his other brothers operating ‘off the grid,’ the machine had tired of the struggle against the wilds. Inside the city’s walls, he could at least take some time to ‘breath’ and plan his next moves.

Since this was the Omniverse, the layover had gone long, and before he knew it, Shadow Man was watching from the rooftops as the city burned. Despite feeling something of a connection with the place, he’d avoided the various fracases that broke out across town, and much to his chagrin, he knew he should have left beforehand. The ninja-themed machine had known of the scuffles inside the palace, and he’d seen the skirmish outside the walls that predated the attack. While he doubted the connections between the early events and the all-out assault, he should have seen the writing on the wall.

Instead of leaving after the vagrant was banished, Shadow Man had lingered in the walls of Nippur.

‘Just for another day or two.’

Now, for better or worse, he was stuck in this place. He was many things, but he wasn’t a coward. The town was struggling on various levels, and if he could lend a small hand here or there, he would—it was the least he could do. Nippur had given him a place to meld back into the shadows and just relish in existence. The Town with No Name had been the polar opposite: Nothing there was secret. The smaller settlement had eyes and ears in every nook and cranny of its old, weathered buildings.

While the government of Nippur clearly liked to have an active role in ‘policing’ its citizenry, the scale of the city cast too many shadows for Gilgamesh’s eyes to see everything, even if he believed he could.

And now that he was gone, Gilgamesh saw nothing.

The ‘Proto Mouse’ …

Shadow Man couldn’t deny that another reason he wanted to stay was to investigate the rumor that the gilded king had been undone by some sort of robot-mouse hybrid. While he was prone to secrecy, the ninja was no slouch—he knew of Mickey Mouse.
Furthermore, he knew the Prodigal Son when he saw him, and the images of the ‘Proto Mouse’ were too similar to Shadow Man’s older brother to be anyone else.

Which begs the question of ‘how did you do that?’ Somehow, the Prodigal or the Mouse had meshed their bodies together, and while Shadow Man knew of fusion, the reports seemed to speak of something different. Fusions of primes were powerful, but they were also pinnacles of desperation—dying or nearly defeated warriors pooling their omnilium together to make a final stand against a stronger foe.

Whatever the Proto Mouse was, it didn’t seem like the desperation of two primes. The fact that no one had seen the composite primes did nothing but add to the mystery behind the legend.

As Shadow Man walked along the rooftops, he caught a glimpse of a man fleeing through the back alleys. Dropping into a crouch, the ninja realized that he had seen the individual before—a street urchin with a pet monkey. The Robot Master had watched them steal some bread after being turned away from the vendors distributing rations to the citizenry.

“And where are you off to?” Shadow Man spoke to himself as he followed the man from the rooftops.