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

[Proto Man]

Like a predator vying for a kill, the woman rushed her quarry, her knife at the ready. She got a few feet before a string of low-intensity energy blasts knocked her off her feet and onto her back. Before the warrior could move, something darted out from the trees and locked her into a full nelson hold. Her eyes went wide as she managed to get out a yelp and a good thrash before the figure behind her smacked her skull into a tree trunk.

Proto Man looked on with an open mouth as Snake Man released his hold on the limp woman. “It’s okay, she’s alive,” he said as the red android rushed over and tried to see if the statement was true. When he saw that her chest was still rising and falling, he turned his attention to the serpent-themed machine standing beside him. “Are you satisfied? She won’t be unconscious long...the night elves are rather hardy despite how scrawny they look.”

“What are you doing here?” Proto Man asked, his tone staying neutral despite the frown on his face.

“I’ve been trailing you since you arrived in the Tangled Green, Proto Man.” For someone who was designed with a snake motif, Snake Man seemed very transparent and straightforward. “I think you know why.”

“Nope,” Proto Man shot back, causing the other Robot Master to furrow his brow.

“You came here because you picked up the signal from the pucks, right?” Snake Man asked before glancing down to make sure the ‘night elf’ was still unconscious.

“I fled to this place from the Ashen Plains. It was just by coincidence that I found the gate to here instead of the Nexus.”

Snake Man smirked as he crouched down and reached into a leather pouch tied to the woman’s belt. When he pulled his hand out of the bag, he was holding a data puck identical to the first one Proto Man had located. “These things are encoded. I tried to hack one for half a day, but the programming is beyond me. Something about you allows you to bypass the security without batting an eye. That’s why I thought you were here, but I guess it was just a coincidence.”

“I suppose so,” Proto Man said as he extended an open palm. Snake Man glanced down at the other robot’s hand, and after pondering for a silent moment, he passed the puck to his predecessor. “Do you know what the situation here is?”

“My brothers and I tend to avoid interacting with the Generation 2 machines. We were unable to see eye-to-eye, and rather than fight to the death, we simply went our separate ways. In recent months, most of the Gen 2s have been outside of Coruscant, and Shadow Man and the rest of us decided it was in our best interest to make sure they weren’t perpetrating any crimes.”

“So you’ve just been keeping tabs on them like they’re lab subjects or paroled felons? Who is keeping tabs on the eight of you?”

The serpent-themed machine flashed a toothy smile as he crouched down next to the night elf. As he spoke, he removed her belt and used it to tie her hands behind the small of her back. “You are different from all of us, aren’t you? The Gen 2s were designed to hurt people...plain and simple.”

“This place is a new lease on life. Do you really think Wood Man was out here scheming to murder people?”

“All we know is that there’s a plague in this verse and that Wood Man knew something about it. That’s why my brothers and I were trying to hack the pucks. Information.”

In Proto Man’s head, all he could picture was the frantic note scrawled by the missing robot: Tell my brothers I love them, and I am so sorry I wasn’t strong enough. “Do you even care that he could be hurt?” The look of amusement on Snake Man’s face was answer enough for Proto Man. “It was nice to meet you again, and I hope you have a nice time here in the jungle.” With that, the red robot walked off into the jungle, leaving behind a smirking Snake Man.

Once he was through the brush, Proto Man broke into a brisk jog as he proceeded to wirelessly access the puck’s data. Like the previous ‘journal,’ the device contained a movie log, a handful of documents, and the program to highlight the next puck. As he made his way through the jungle, the preteen android had the video file play on his HUD.

”Well it’s me, Wood Man. It’s been a few weeks since I arrived here in the Green, but I’ve made a lot of genuinely fascinating discoveries. Just a few days ago, I came across a settlement of green-skinned men with tusks, claws, and jagged teeth. They live around a temple in the region of the Tangled Green that more closely resembles a tropical rain forest. For the most part, they were pretty pleasant, but they were kind of obsessive about their religion. Religion isn’t really something I can understand, so I just did the polite thing and listened to their neat stories.

“After I left the green men, I found some purple-skinned women a few miles away. I accidentally stumbled over the border of their territory. Fortunately, they originally mistook me for something called a ‘treant,’ and that stopped them from immediately deciding to stab me with knives. I got to speak with the leader of the border patrol, and apparently, these night elves actually live in trees. They spoke about a ‘world tree’ and how their high priestess communes with the spirits of nature. If this wasn’t the Omniverse, I would have thought they were pulling my leg!

“Despite how fantastic their lives sound, they said they wouldn’t bring me back with them. Apparently, they have had to contend with some sort of disease or blight that is threatening their livelihood. When I try, I can be pretty sneaky, so I think I might follow these night elves around to see if I can’t learn anything else about what’s going on in the Tangled Green…”

The video file ended, leaving Proto Man with nothing more to do than trigger the next puck. While he didn’t completely trust Snake Man’s motivations, Wood Man himself had just mentioned a disease affecting the verse. He may have arrived in the Tangled Green by accident, but Proto Man certainly wasn’t going to walk away from the situation now that he was a part of it.