Return to the Moors

[Proto Man]

He was in the Nexus again. All around him, the people who had stuck around the facility to catch the final moments were starting to disperse toward the gates. For a collection of individuals who had just been trying to kill one another, it seemed like a pretty orderly dispersal. Amid the group, Proto Man caught a glimpse of the Monster Hunter Cindy. He scowled, still harboring ill feelings toward the woman despite her defeat and the loss of whatever trinket she had stolen from his friends. Part of him wanted to finish what Samus, Harry, and he had started just before the event had started, but it would be ridiculous to fight someone in such a central, populated location.

His CPU updated its records on her… He would never know when he might run into the woman again. In a place like the Omniverse, he doubted she could stay away from anything that seemed to glitter and carry any value—real or imagined.

Now that he knew Samus was still alive, Proto Man would find her again. Her and Harry and whoever else the pair surrounded themselves with these days. If he had learned anything in the Omniverse, it was that he could put his trust in the armored woman and the wizard. They were flawed (and so was he), but they were good people.

Proto Man made his way toward the gate that led into the Pale Moors and his thoughts turned to Whirda. The woman had been the one to bring up the subject of Dante’s Abyss, but she hadn’t even been a contestant or even a spectator at the preshow facility. Had that been some sort of ruse? Even after fighting alongside her in a handful of fights, Proto Man wasn’t convinced he knew who the woman was just yet. For all he knew, the human inside her had died long ago and been supplanted by the darkness that coursed visibly through her veins.

So the android did the only thing he could do—he walked toward the gate. For a brief moment, he flirted with the idea of heading toward the steel edifice that housed the entrance to Coruscant. How sweet would it be to return home and be with his family? It had been so long since he last heard from any of them. Had they been watching Dante’s Abyss? Had they seen his scuffle with the monster hunter in the barracks or had that been kept from the airwaves?

Those questions would have to wait. Proto Man had a promise to keep, and the only way to do so lie in the Pale Moors. With his head held high, the android continued his trek. Once he’d made it a little over half the way across the Nexus, he glanced around and realized that he was the only one heading in this direction. Even as a machine, he’d been able to pick up on the uneasiness that people felt when wandering around the wilds of the Moors, but as he stared at the throng of individuals making their way toward Coruscant, Camelot, and the Vasty Deep, he had to wonder how Darkshire still existed. Did the place even have immigrants or did it simply draw in wayward primes like some sort of giant Venus flytrap?

With a sigh, Proto Man glanced down at his hand and the runic symbols etched around the barrel of the Proto Buster. Whirda or not, he was going to deal with the individual behind the Blight. He had allowed the archdemon too much time to continue to spread of her contagion, and it was due time that she was dealt with by someone who had the fire- and willpower to do so.

If push came to shove, hope would ride alone.