Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Presents: Blood on the Sand!

[Proto Man]

When they entered into the Nexus, the pair of primes hadn’t expected to find the place rife with Imperial stormtroopers. A quick glance at the Dataverse news stories revealed that the Empire had increased its patrols of the area in the wake of some recent fights on the top tier of the mighty city. Rather than try and slip around the group to the Camelot gate, the pair headed in the opposite direction, hoping to escape any sort of interrogation.

The pair half-walked, half-jogged away from the wandering groups of troopers and slipped into the gate in the northwest. Instead of the verdant green fields, they’d stepped out into something that seemed pulled straight from North Africa. The ground that crunched beneath their boots was coarse sand, and the buildings that loomed a few dozen yards in front of them were a blend of steel and cloth.

“Where are we?” Mickey muttered as he lifted his eyes to the cloudless sky. “I don’t think I’ve been here before.” A few yards away, a cactus jutted up out of the ground. “Yea, I don’t believe I’ve seen a cactus yet.”

The answer to the mouse’s question popped up on Proto Man’s internal display. “That’s Carrefore up ahead… we’re in the Endless Dunes.” Up ahead, the android spotted a collection of armed storm troopers patrolling through the oasis town. “It’s an Empire establishment, and if I recall, you’re a wanted criminal.”

“Let’s slip out before we attract any attention,” Mickey muttered, but when Proto Man stepped out of the gate and into the Nexus, he spotted an oncoming stormtrooper patrol.

Stepping backwards into the Endless Dunes, Proto Man gestured to the north—a route that would hopefully take them around the town in front of them. “Patrols coming, we need to get out of here now before someone notices you.”

“Got it,” Mickey muttered as he reached back and pulled a hood up over his distinctive ears. The two scurried off in a route that would allow them to avoid Carrefore and the Imperial presence therein.

***

After an hour of silently trudging into the interior of the verse, Mickey and Proto Man stopped their trek. “From here, we can try and head out into one of the neighboring verses.” The android explained as he pulled up geographic and topographic information about the Endless Dunes.

“What are the options?”

Proto Man scowled as the information flashed onto his internal display. “Coruscant or the Ashen Steppes…”

A heavy frown spread across Mickey Mouse’s visage as he processed their options. “Well we don’t really have an option if we want to try and avoid the Empire. Have you been to the Steppes?”

“Yes,” the preteen machine replied. “Unpleasant place with a lot of volcanoes and lava flows.” What Proto Man left out of the story was the sociopath with an arm cannon and the sacrifice of a half-brother he barely knew.

“Wonderful.”

“We’re got something incoming…” Proto Man muttered as a few warnings popped up on his display. “Oh how wonderful, a sandstorm.”

“Gee, this is a great day,” Mickey chuckled halfheartedly as Proto Man untied his scarf and handed it to the mouse. “Thank you,” the king replied as he tied the yellow cloth tightly around his mouth and nose. “How long we got?”

Proto Man never got a chance to respond. Like a massive wave crashing on an unsuspecting beach, a shifting wall of wind and sand came crashing down onto the pair of small primes, swallowing them up as it rolled around the Dunes at the head of an even more massive storm cell.

[Proto Man]

The sandstorm ravaged for half a day as it tormented a nearly fifty square mile area of the desert. When the torrents of dirt, dust, and sand finally died down, there was a pair of wayward primes within its grasp that let out sighs of joy. Having clutched one another’s hand during the storm, they released their grip and dropped down onto their haunches simultaneously.

“Well that’s a nice welcome party,” Mickey chuckled as he removed the sand-stained scarf given to him by Proto Man. After using the clean side to wipe off the rest of his face, the mouse handed it over to his friend. “I appreciate it.”

“Anytime,” Proto Man replied as he tied the now brown-ish looking scarf around his neck once more. A glance at his systems showed that he would have to do some minor maintenance to remove buildups of dirt and sand particles from a few areas. Even more disheartening, the storm was still inferring with his connection to the Dataverse, which would make it hard for him to determine their location and proximity to anything other than sand dunes.

“What do you think we oughta do, Blues?” Mickey asked as the pair picked a direction and started toward the horizon.

“Let’s just see what there is, Mick.”

“Sounds good to me, Pal!”
***



Half a mile away, a collection of six figures mounted on creatures that could have once been camels watched the two little primes wander off into the desert.

“Should we move to intercept the interlopers, Mighty Tsartan?”

The central rider, whose features were concealed beneath a heavy hood and cloth wound around most of his head, turned to glance at his lieutenant. “Not yet,” he spoke through the fabric that concealed his visage. “We’ll wait until they stumble upon the sinking pits, and then we shall make them ours.”

“Your will,” the rider replied, dipping his head in deference before turning to watch the child-sized primes wander further toward the hells of the Endless Dunes.
***


Mickey Mouse and Proto Man marched forward into the sandy landscape. Both spent the time trying to clean off some of the dust left from the storm, and it wasn’t until they felt the ground start to shift beneath them that they placed their focus back on the greater world around them.

“You felt that too?” Proto Man asked as his buster arm activated.

Before Mickey could utter a response, he suddenly slipped a foot into the ground. The mouse yelped and smacked his hands down on the sand around him, trying to find purchased with his fingers as his legs seemed to flail amid the suddenly non-solid sand layer beneath him. In an instant, Proto Man swooped forward and yanked his pal up out of the sand. With a spin, the robot placed the mouse onto a solid piece of ground, but any victory was short-lived.

Warning boxes flashed up on the android’s internal display as the sand beneath his boots suddenly gave out under his weight. Despite being only a foot or so taller than Mickey, Proto Man was probably three or four times heavier than the mouse. Even so, gloved hands clasped around one of the machine’s wrists as his friend tried to stop the red robot from sinking down into the unknown.

“Why are you so gosh darn heavy?” Mickey grunted, his boots sliding as he tried to find purchase on a surface that felt and acted more like water than sand.

“Be stronger!” Proto Man snapped back as he felt the ground actively try to swallow him. As the sand poured over his shoulders, the android thought of a desperate idea. With his legs flailing in the nonsolid sand, he shifted power to the exhausts on his boots. While he had no surface to spring off of, the sudden downward whoosh of compressed area and heat was enough to dislodge him from the grip of the sand.

A beat later, a sand-coated machine thumped into the solid ground next to the mouse.

“This place is nothing like Agrabah.” Mickey muttered. “At least there, the quicksand doesn’t hop around.”

Proto Man shook his head and tried to remember if he’d ever seen a desert outside of a book. Had California been desert? It was certainly dry and barren in spots, but he didn’t remember all this sand. Before the robot could determine whether or not that was the case, a long shadow fell over both of the disoriented primes. As he didn’t need air in his lungs, Proto Man bolted into an upright position. His sensors immediately outlined the group of mounted warriors swarming down from the surrounding hills.

At first, it seemed as the robed warriors were riding on top of horses.

Horses don’t have six legs…

With a scowl, the preteen machine reading his weapon as the creatures and their riders formed a loose circle around the pair. From twenty feet away, he could clearly see that the mounts were nothing from Earth. While the legs—all six of them—resembled those of a horse and the pair of humps looked identical to those of any dromedary camel, the similarities ended there.

Instead of brown or tan fur, the creatures had pale yellow flesh that appeared close to bursting due to the thick, chorded muscles underneath. Dulled pipes and black cables jutted out from various points in their sides, giving them the appearance of a computer tower without its case.

All of the strange mechanical parts wouldn’t have bothered Proto Man the slightest if the animals’ faces hadn’t been so unnerving. Red eyes burned hot enough that they bled small columns of black smoke. A mouth that would have otherwise seemed normal was disfigured by the presence of four large tusks that twitched and dripped slimy ichor onto the sand. One of the mounts snorted, its tusks peeling outward to reveal more of its diseased gums and make it seem as if its mouth had doubled in size.

The central rider pointed a sword at Proto Man. Not any sword, but a blade with an engine where its hilt and handle should have been. The small motor thrummed and belched smog every few seconds as the weapon gently vibrated in its master’s hand.

“Surrender yourself to New Istanople and the Eternal Tsartan Constantine !”

“Who?” Mickey Mouse shouted back as the two small primes shuffled closer to one another. Next to him, Proto Man’s eyes went wide as he recalled the last time he had heard such a rasping accent. Even with the hood and the facial wrappings muffling the voice, it was simply too distinct. No one could pack so much arrogance and spite into so few words.

The rider who had addressed them reached out his free hand and brushed aside the hood that concealed his features. Although he wore a compact turban that kept his hair up from his face, Proto Man had those stern, loathing features burned into his systems. No on else had a chin that sharp, jaw bones that high, and eyes that soulless.

Heat Man’s killer was sneering down at the two primes.

“I know you remember me, Proto Man.” He spoke, his thick Soviet accent no longer muffled by the headgear.

The preteen machine glared back, unwilling to back down to the heartless killer. “Cell Delta.”

[Proto Man]

“You know that guy?” Mickey whispered as the two small primes looked at the mounted warriors ringed around them.

Proto Man nodded his head as a scowl spread across his youthful features. “He’s a foul, despicable person who murdered one of my brothers in cold blood.”

The mouse casually nodded his head. “So not a nice fella.”

“Not a nice fella,” the android replied as the pair started to quickly weigh their options.

“You will come with us… or you will die,” Cell Delta rasped as he reached down and unsheathed an oversized machete with what seemed to be an oil motor gently sputtering away beneath the handle grip. “Actually, we won’t kill you. We’ll splice you into our town’s generator, and we’ll stuff your friend into a giant wheel to scamper until his legs fail.”

“Well that’s just plain rude,” Mickey stammered as he clenched at his gloved hands. Proto Man glimpsed flashes of yellow energy seeping through his pal’s dark fingers and knew that they weren’t walking away from this one unscathed.

“Kill the heretics!” Cell Delta roared as his strange machine-camel reared back on its hind limbs. All around the two small primes, the mounted warriors drew an assortment of machine-powered melee weapons, but before they could move, the pair was on the attack.

Mickey threw a hand forward, and with a flash of yellow light, a golden beam of energy roared at Cell Delta. Proto Man afforded only a fleeting glance—enough time to see the attack smash into their foe’s mount and knock it over. With that, the robot summoned his shield and brought it up as a thrumming, smoke-belching hammer crashed down against it. The impact splintered the thick material, but it held long enough for Proto Man to dive clear of his attacker.

With a quick scramble back to a standing position, the preteen machine rapidly charged a blast and sent it into the mounted warrior’s chest. The veiled rider let out a grunt as he was thrown clear from the pseudo-mechanical creature. A beat later, Proto Man had to twist and fire at someone from just a few feet away, watching with wide eyes as the rider toppled to the ground. When the man lifted his head up and looked very much alive, the robot twisted and pulled up his buster arm to guard against a large hatchet.

A few feet away, Mickey heard the yelp of his friend, but he was too preoccupied with the snarling man rushing at him. In a blink of light, the mouse’s keyblade appeared in an outstretched hand. A beat later, his attacker was on his side, a large bruise spreading across the side of his face. Twirling with the weapon in his grasp, Mickey downed another foe with a quick succession of pearls. Before he could relish that victory, a blast nearly as large as his body slammed into him with the force of a motor vehicle.

Mickey let out a yelp as he was thrown sideways, his lithe frame colliding with the red and gray form of his android associate. The two primes slid and tumbled across the sand for a few feet before coming to rest. As they pulled themselves up off the ground, they both saw that their now unmounted adversaries had recovered from their initial skirmish. At the helm of the group, Cell Delta smiled as smoke wafted up from the barrel of his arm cannon.

“Still unable to take a life, Proto Man? I would have hoped you’d have at least paired up with someone capable of doing what it takes to survive in this world.” The twisted prime snickered as the cannon reverted back to a hand. “Instead you’ve found another spineless, gutless idiot, and you dare to wander into my sands.”

“Ideas?” Proto Man whispered as the pair started to back away from the collection of heavily armed warriors and their sociopathic warlord.

“I don’t know if we can take them by ourselves,” Mickey whispered as he fumbled around in a pouch on his side. “But we can maybe take them together…” he finished as he produced a pair of earrings with dull yellow balls on them.

“Jewelry?” Proto Man mumbled as they started to back away from the collection of warriors.

“Shush,” Mickey muttered as he casually clipped on onto his left ear. “You got an ear under that helmet, dontcha? On your right ear.”

Although he thought it was a stupid idea to bedazzle themselves mid-fight, Proto Man trusted the goofy mouse with his life. With a simple, fluid motion, the android removed his helmet and dropped it to the ground. The earring clipped around his ear easily enough, and for a few moments, he was afraid that they were going to be gunned down where they stood.

Before a second thought could enter Proto Man’s mind, he felt a weird sensation wash over his body. A beat later, the two primes were pulled together, and in a flash of yellow light, the pair ceased to exist.

[Mickey Mouse]

Cell Delta and his five lackeys shielded their eyes from the incredibly bright flash of golden light that covered everything surrounding the mouse and the preteen machine. For several seconds, the blinding flare lingered over the desert.

“What the—ugh,” the turban-wearing man grunted, taking a few steps backwards. His eyes began to water just slightly, overwhelmed by the Potara’s potency.

After a few moments, the yellow-ish glow began to disappear from sight, but as the desert came back into focus, the six aggressors noticed that their prey, too, seemed to be gone. Where once stood a bruised and beaten Mickey Mouse and Proto Man now stood nothing. All that remained of the two pint-sized warriors was some blackened sand, probably burnt to a crisp by whatever energy had helped the two escape Cell Delta’s clutches.

“Fuck, boss,” one of the men piped up, “They just vanished.”

The Soviet let out a deep growl, frustration clear on his sharp-featured face. “There’s no way,” he shook his head, “they’re here somewhere—find them.”

“Over here!”

The voice didn’t sound altogether familiar, but it didn’t sound different, either. The squeaky tones of Mickey Mouse’s candor combined with the childish whimsy of Proto Man’s own pre-pubescent voice formed into something that sounded… strange. A playful ferocity lingered under the surface of the simple phrase as Cell Delta and the others spun to find the source.

The thing that stood before them caused more than one raised eyebrow among the group. Standing somewhere in between Mickey Mouse’s just-over-two-feet and Proto Man’s four, a creature that looked altogether similar to the former king decked out in the robot’s traditional red armor smirked up at them, one hand covered by a buster cannon and the other holding a red-hued Keyblade. Hanging off of both of the big, traditional mouse ears were the two yellow-colored orbs that Mickey had pulled seemingly out of nowhere just moments before. “Lookin’ for me, pal?”

Cell Delta scowled—whatever the fuck the pair had turned into, it had to die. “Kill the rat.”

The man’s five minions surged forward, but the creature kicked off the ground and into the air, aiming its cannon straight down and releasing a blast of golden energy. One of Delta’s lackeys stumbled as he tried to stop, tumbling right into the path of the beam; a searing heat covered his flesh and he let out a blood curdling scream, collapsing onto the ground in a heap.

The armored mouse flipped in the air and landed on two feet on the other side of Delta, near the scorched spot where his two parts had initially fused. The quartet of remaining thugs turned around and glared at the thing.

“Is he breathing?” the mouse asked, his squeaky voice tempered by Proto Man’s mechanical drone.

Hesitantly, one of the henchman stepped over to his comrade, placing two fingers on his neck to check for a pulse. Despite the appearance-altering burns that now riddled his face and chest, the man appeared to still have a working, beating heart: “He’s alive.”

A genuine smile formed underneath the mouse’s visor. “Yay!”

Before another thought could be formed by anyone around, the mouse lifted up his buster arm and fired off four more shots of golden energy, knocking each of Cell Delta’s henchmen off their feet and slamming their unconscious bodies into the sand one by one. The Soviet leader spun, confused, around, watching as his lackeys crumpled beneath the power of the newly-fused mouse machine. The creature lifted the buster cannon to his mouth and blew some smoke off the end of it.

“Golly,” he shrugged, “That was easy.”

“…what the fuck are you?” Cell Delta said, flabbergasted.

“Language,” the thing scolded before continuing, lowering his buster arm and aiming it at Cell Delta’s chest. “Me? I’m Mickey Mouse! And Proto Man. Together. So I guess I’m… Proto Mouse! Ho-ho.”

“So clever,” the attacker scowled.

“Yea,” Proto Mouse shrugged before blasting away at Cell Delta.

[Proto Man]

The blast of energy hit the sociopath square on the chest, sending him sailing backwards. With a resounding thud and a giant puff of sand, Cell Delta hit the ground and went still. Never one to hit a man when he was down, Proto Mouse turned and began to walk away without a second thought.

“You’re not going to walk away from me, you little rodent…” Delta rasped as he pulled himself into an upright position and started to fire a quick succession of plasma bursts from his arm cannon.

Proto Mouse spun around and battered away the oncoming projectiles with his keyblade. Once the firing stop, the cyborg mouse took a step forward and hurtled his weapon like a javelin. Despite the fact that the keyblade was blunted at the end, the force behind the throw was enough to punch it through the side of Cell Delta’s abdomen. The prime let out a horrible scream as he clutched at the oversized key now buried through his midsection.

“You’ll survive,” Proto Mouse muttered, recalling Proto Man’s previous fight with the barely human creature. The machine man had suffered a blast of red-hot flames to the face without losing consciousness or slipping beyond the mortal coil.

“As long…” Cell Delta paused, his brow laced with sweat as he tried to stop the blood loss. Even so, the liquid continued to seep out from around the keyblade haft. Even at his distance from his foe, Proto Mouse could see that the blood had an almost oily consistency. “As long as you remain in this verse… I will hunt you. You will… you will never be safe.”

“Bring an army next time,” Proto Mouse chuckled as he turned and walked away, leaving the grievously wounded ‘tsartan’ sitting in a pool of his own blood surrounded by his unconscious lackeys. “You’ll need it!” He shouted cheerfully as he began to leisurely jog off toward the horizon.

***

What a strange world!

There was no way to describe the strangeness that Proto Mouse felt as he soared across the dunes on a jetpack. A look at a reflective surface revealed the handsome features of one Mickey Mouse, and removing the helmet revealed his ears and the rest of his scalp.

Even so, he knew he wasn’t entirely the same mouse as before. Words and images popped up before him from time to time, indicating everything from temperature and GPS location to recent news stories on the Dataverse. Every now and again, he’d even receive a prompt indicating him to change course or stating that he should lay off the throttle. The slightly less robotic nature of those text boxes lead him to believe they weren’t just being automatically generated by a machine.

As he dropped his altitude a few feet, Proto Mouse skimmed over a fresh text popup. Nearby Settlement – Town with no Name. Former Imperial Settlement. Currently Independent. [i]De facto run by Sheriff Roland Deschain.[/i]

“People!” The flying robo-mouse declared as he skimmed the horizon until he located what appeared to be houses or buildings of some sort that broke up the desert landscape. “There we go.” He said with a smile as he kicked up the thrusters and sped toward the location.

A minute and a half later, Proto Mouse killed the engines and dropped down from the sky into the center of the Town with No Name. As the propulsion thingamajigs (the mouse part of him couldn’t figure out the actual name) retracted seamlessly into his back, the cyborg glanced around at the collection of people now staring at him.

“Hi, I’m Proto Mouse, and it’s really lovely to meet you all.”

[Mickey Mouse]

“Uh-uh,” one of the newly-gathered townsfolk interjected, “I’m fuckin’ done.”

Proto Mouse cocked his head to the side as the man—decked out in gear that, his sensors told him, was indicative of people from the American West—spun around on his booted feet and stormed off into the distance. Around him, similarly-dressed people diverted their attention from the man who’d caused the commotion to the mouse-bot that incited it.

“Sorry to barge in like this, sir,” Proto Mouse called after the cowboy, “I know it’s inconvenient.” The man muttered something under his breath, though it was just loud enough that the cyborg could tell it wasn’t exactly very nice. Some four letter words mixed in with some other not-as-rude obscenities forced a frown onto the mouse’s face, and so he turned to the rest of the townsfolk, hoping for a slightly warmer welcome.

The expressions on their faces hinted that possibility wasn’t very likely. They seemed to look at him with a mixture of confusion and horror. He didn’t really get it. What the heck about him was scary at all?

“You said your name was Proto Mouse, sir?”

The voice had originated from behind the armored rodent. He glanced over his shoulder to see the feminine form the high-pitched voice belonged to. A long, blue dress lightly grazed the sandy ground as she stood, straight-backed, before the new arrival. For her part, she seemed to be the only one in the town that didn’t look at him with a scrap of terror.

Some sensors left over from the Proto Man part of him immediately started flashing on screen, but they seemed to pull up nothing when it came to this girl. Logistically, then, that meant she must’ve been a secondary—if she’d been a prime, there probably would’ve been something on her somewhere in his records, or at least a trace of omnilium on her person. She didn’t seem to have either one. “Yes, miss, that’s m’name,” the robotic mouse squeaked, “Don’t wear it out.” He smirked a little bit, but she didn’t seem to find any humor in the situation.

“I once heard of a prime called Proto Man,” the woman quirked an eyebrow, “but you don’t look exactly like him. You’re dressed kinda like him, maybe, but he was definitely a boy, not a mouse.” She crossed her arms, a little defiantly.

“Oh, yea,” the mouse smiled, “I’m Proto Man. Or, at least, sort of. I’m what happened when Proto Man merged his body with another prime. Mickey Mouse.”

“Mickey Mouse?!” another bystander called out, “Like—the Mickey Mouse from Dante’s Abyss?”

“You get TV out here?” the mouse asked, awestruck.

“Honey, everyone in the Omniverse got Dante’s Abyss if they wanted it,” the blue dress-clad girl piped up, “We know who Mickey Mouse is, and I know who Proto Man is.”

“I’m sorry to say it, ma’am, but I don’t recognize you,” the robotic mouse replied, a twinge of sadness staining his voice.

“You wouldn’t,” the girl said, not unkindly. “We never met. I used to live in Darkshire, before the Blight. I left just before you got there, but word reached me of your efforts there. My family’s a bit safer because of you. Or, well… because of half of you.” Proto Mouse couldn’t hold back a true, genuine smile at the recognition. His efforts hadn’t gone to waste, then. “I’m Tara,” the girl said, holding out her hand, “And I’m mistress of the saloon here in the Town with No Name.”

The Town with No Name. Huh. What a name.

“Now, you boys—or is it just one of you?”

“For all intents and purposes, ma’am, we are one and the same,” Proto Mouse nodded, though the duality of his voice was apparent.

“Alright,” she grinned, “you need a place to stay, little man? It’s on the house.”

[Proto Man]

With the moon starting to peak up above the horizon, Proto Mouse let out a breath and started to walk down the street.

The Town with No Name was pretty pleasant for a place that seemingly lacked a coherent identity. Made most of single-story wooden structures, it reminded both halves of Proto Mouse of something pulled from a Wild West serial. All it lacked was a bunch of men in leather chaps with spurs on their boots and revolvers at their sides.

“Very fun,” Proto Mouse spoke to no one in particular as he started to walk down the wide central street. To his left and right, the town branched off into other roads, but he figured it best to start off with a leisurely stroll down the center. While neither Mickey or Proto Man had really been to the Endless Dunes, that didn’t stop the place from being a popular topic on the Dataverse. Even a simple search of the region brought up stories of violence and power plays.

Two names stood out among the others—Ganondorf and Gilgamesh. While the gerudo monarch didn’t come off as a total sociopath, Gilgamesh was a completely different story. Even a glimpse at old twitter feeds caused the fur on the back of the cyborg mouse’s neck to ruffle. Both had Erza Scarlet’s blood on their hands, but it was the gilded king’s associates who had murdered Samus and Mickey. Anyone who confided with a killer like that was tainted themselves. Why else would they all come to this place, a renowned bastion of lawlessness?

To avoid judgment.

The thought made Proto Mouse scowl.

What would Samus do in a situation like this? She was a bounty hunter, which meant she hunted down creatures and villains for a paycheck, but she’d also risked her life to confront Karl Jak. Would she walk away from known blackguards?

The robot mouse didn’t know the answer to that question, despite having two years and two different opinions worth of the woman to mull through.

“What the hell are you?” A voice shouted from the other side of the street.

Stopping dead in his tracks, Proto Mouse glanced over and saw a man sitting on a bench in front of a building labeled ‘Salon.’ Actually, a look at his surroundings showed that the streets were actually filled with people either watching him or paying him quick glimpses as they went about their daily duties. Had he been oblivious to all of this when he landed?

“You some kind of… mechanical what-ya-call it?” The same man asked as he drank from a wooden tankard.

“I’m Proto Mouse. I’m a… I guess I’m a Prototype Robot Master King?” He felt some redness in his cheeks the moment the words were in the air. “Scratch that… let’s just go with cyborg. Yea, I’m a cyborg!”

“…Huh,” the man grunted before spitting into a nearby jar. “A mechanical what-ya-call it.”

“He’s a prime, Dan,” someone said from the stoop of the next building. “Or at least I guess he is.”

Proto Mouse nodded his head. “You might say that,” he said with a smile that made both ‘citizens’ of the Town with No Name furrow their brows.

“I just did,” the man shot back without skipping a beat, causing the robot mouse to furrow his brow. “What I was trying to impl—”

The man in front of the salon let out a loud belch. “All right, the shiny thing’s boring now.” With that, he let out a grunt, rose from the bench, and walked back through the building’s swinging doors.

“Well that was strange,” Proto Mouse muttered as he turned to see that the other man had gone back to sanding what appeared to be scorch marks on the side of his building. Before he could figure out what to do next, someone approached him from the street. The man wore dusty clothes and a kind smile on an unshaven face.

“Welcome to the Town with No Name. You are?”

“Proto Mouse,” the cyborg replied, extending a hand to his new acquaintance. “It’s nice to meet you, bud. Who are you?”

“John Flynn,” he responded. “I help out with Sheriff Roland... have you heard of him?”

While Proto Mouse had not heard of the man, the Dataverse certainly had, and it took no more than a handful of seconds to pull up enough articles and webpages to get a working knowledge of the town’s leader. “Yes. He’s the guy who held this place together when the Empire pulled back from the interior of this verse years back. He sounds like an all right guy.”

Deputy Flynn nodded his head. “Sounds like a fair assessment.” After a pause, he continued. “You seem like someone who can handle themselves, and we’re always trying to find primes to lend a hand.”

Proto Mouse’s eyes light up. “Yea, I like to help out. What do you need?”

“Follow me, I’ll go introduce you to Roland.”

A few minutes later, Proto Mouse found himself standing across a table from a rugged-looking man whose attire perfectly matched the rest of the town’s décor and appearance.

“What brings you to my town?” Although he didn’t sound threatening or harsh, it was clear that the man wanted to cut through any nonsense and get to the point.

The machine mouse smiled warmly in spite of the tone. “To help? I know that the Dunes is filled with a lot of jerks.”

“Jerks?” The gunslinger muttered, his expression relaxing a little as looked at the three-foot armored mouse in front of him. “That’s puttin’ it lightly, kid. You want to help? Go assist my deputy.”

“Is that Mr. Flynn?”

Roland shook his head. “Not him, he’s just a decent human being who likes to help too much. Go find Dept’y… he’s the red one, you can’t miss him.”

“Roger!” Proto Mouse said, and after snapping a salute, he was gone, leaving Roland to shake his head in disbelief.