The Proto Man Chronicles 2

The path ahead seemed long and full of many obstacles, though it was nothing that Proto Man wasn’t already used to. He walked along the road leading out of the abandoned city left in ruins, as he starred over at the girl next to him, admiring how she’d looked for a brief moment. He hadn’t seen a real human in years. Everyone in this modern age was half-reploid or quarter-reploid, and it was something that was sort of starting to bother him, but even if there were humans out there in the reploid-filled cities, he’d never be allowed to see him. He had been labelled a “maverick” time and time again. He starred down at his feet for a while, before Elly cleared her thought and broke the silence.

“Hey. You’ve been awfully quiet during this walk…” she said, still carrying his arm in her hand, holding it close to her, as if she was afraid of someone else taking it from her. It didn’t seem to bother Proto Man as much as it had before. He just responded with a bit of a sigh, not bothering to move his eyes off of the ground.

“We just agreed to go back to your house so that you could help me repair my arm. You are a nice person and all, but after this, I must leave and hopefully never see you again,” Proto Man said, which Elly responded with a bit of a sad gasp. “Let me explain. The humans and reploids of the cities think that I am a maverick, because I am an ancient robot who hasn’t adapted to their way of living, and I do not get along with the mavericks, because people may not believe it, but I do have a sense of justice.”

For the rest of the trip, neither of them said much, though both likely had many interesting questions for each other. They had almost reached the city. Proto Man was starting to feel more and more awkward as he’d approached the entrance, but once he was inside, people didn’t seem to treat him that differently from one of their own people, which he found somewhat odd, but resumed walking through the city, regardless. It wasn’t that much more of a walk until they reached Elly’s house. She got out a card out of her pocket and held it over a small plate by the side of the door, which scanned the coding on the back of the card and unlocked the door, allowing them access to the house, which Proto Man found a little weird, but definitely thought that it was efficient. Proto Man remained completely silent, as he always was. Elly just shook her head and sighed.

“Come on. Lighten up a little bit. I’m going to get you repaired in no time. Can’t I at least know a little bit about the reploid I’m helping out?” she asked, to which Proto Man responded with a little bit of a shudder.

“I am not a reploid. I am a robot. To a casual observer, it’d appear that there is no difference between us, but trust me when I say that I am the far superior one,” he responded, taking off his helmet and placing it on the desk near the front door. The two of them then walked downstairs into the basement, which was dark and felt overcrowded. Proto Man could barely move with all the mechanical objects and spare parts lying around this ‘laboratory’.

“Oh, a robot, eh? As in a fully-functional humanoid master-type? I doubt it. Those haven’t existed since…”
“20XX,” Proto Man briefly interrupted. Elly seemed surprised to hear this. It clearly wasn’t common knowledge in the present day.

Though they were pretty amateur, there were a few incomplete robots lying around. The designs seemed to be inspired off of Dr. Light’s early work, and it definitely showed with the patterns on their bodies, and the colours. He could already see, because being a robot, he could see regardless of whether or not there was any light present, but humans weren’t like that, so Elly flipped the switch and the lights turned on.

“Yeah, so… welcome to my lab. Can I know what model number you are, first of all? Maybe I have some old parts that emulate your circuitry pattern making it easier to repair you,” Elly explained. Proto Man checked his arm and looked at the scratched paint of tiny writing that said ‘DRN-000’, which he repeated to Elly and she wrote it down on a small notebook lying on her desk. A spontaneous squeal of excitement suddenly escaped Elly’s lips as she waved her arms in the air and she ran over toward Proto Man, grabbing on to his one hand tightly and jumping up and down.

“You’re Proto Man,” she said aloud.

‘How did she know that? I never mentioned my name to her,’ Proto Man thought to himself, with his eyes widened, slightly looking at Elly a little weirdly, but then snapped out of it and calmed down, trying not to ruin his cool look. “Can I ask how you knew that?” he asked, still seeming a little confused, but waited for an explanation before he just assumed anything.

She responded with a simple giggle as she ran back over to the other side of the room, rather childishly as she picked up a large book that looked kind of like an old journal. The cover was hard, brown and patterned with a name on it that quite clearly said ‘Dr. Light’, though it was very old and the pages were a bit torn. She flipped through the book obsessively.

“I told you. I’m a collector. I collect these types of things and then I use them for my creations. I knew your name because I’d read it in this book, though many call you Proto Man, you prefer to be called ‘Blues’, by close friends,” Elly said, with the smile on her face suddenly fading to a frown as she looked over at Proto Man. “Nobody has called you Blues in a long time, have they?”

Proto Man looked down, as memories of Mega Man came back to him, and he sighed, looking back on those days was very hurtful, especially since he swore long ago that he’d find his brother, once he’d gone missing back in the late 20XX.

“No… they haven’t,” he simply stated. “But, don’t worry about me. Let’s get on with what you were saying.” Elly seemed a little surprised, but after a three second pause, she just smiled and nodded.

“Okay, if you say so,” she said rather happily. “Oh, I got something to show you.”

“I don’t just create my own stuff, I also rebuild old robots that have been trashed. I disassemble them, put them back together, repair and then upgrade their CPU so they work just like a modern reploid,” she explained as she walked around the room, raising her finger to the air.

Proto Man looks back a little weirdly though, as if she was just saying stuff without a point.

“So, what did you have to show me?” he asked, looking over at Elly, who went into a door which led to another room which was just more robots and spare parts. Soon after, she came back in and made a gesture with her hands for Proto Man to follow, and he did just that. He walked into the room which was a little brighter. Elly stood in front of a deactivated robot which had been masked by a curtain. He didn’t know why he was being shown a simple robot, but he decided to see what she had to show him anyway.

She smiled, seeming satisfied with what she’d done, as she pulled off the curtain off of the robot, it revealed, to Proto Man’s surprise, to be a red robotic dog, the paint very old and scratched and the tail seeming bent and broken. He held hands over his mouth in disbelief and just starred at the deactivated robot in front of him. After a long search to find at least some sign that one of his brothers or sisters was still alive, he finally finds one of his close friends, Mega Man's faithful robotic dog, Rush. Proto Man kneeled down and started petting the dog on the head, then looking up at Elly.

“Didn’t you say that you repaired him?” Proto Man asked.

“I did,” Elly responded, with a bit of uncertainty in her voice. “But for some reason, he refuses to activate. I’m certain that I rewired everything correctly. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Proto Man sighed, continuing to stroke his deactivated buddy along the head and scratching behind the ear, creating a strange, annoying scrapping noise again the metal, and just scratched the red paint off of the robot dog even more. Suddenly, the robot responded, as a pixelated sound played as Rush slowly opened his eyes and activated for the first time in centuries, and he started to move his head a bit, his joints making squeaking sounds as he tried to move them around. They seemed to have locked into place after so many years.

Proto Man wrapped his arms around Rush, joyfully, with a simple grin. It’d been the first time he’d smiled in years. The robot dog barked twice and then started breathing heavily, almost as if it were a real dog, even though it wasn’t. It was just programmed to emulate that type of behaviour.

“It’s great to see you again, too, my friend,” he said, standing up once more and looking down at Rush, still surprised to see him. He turned to Elly and gave a gentle nod. “Thank you very much for bringing me here. I’m glad to have met you, Ms. Parker.”

“It’s amazing that you actually got him to work. How’d you do it?” she asked, kneeling down and starring the robot dog in the eyes, gently rubbing her fingers against Rush’s head. “He is so adorable.”

“I don’t know how I did it. It just happened,” he said, looking over at Elly.

“In any case, I’m glad I could re-unite you with your old friend. But now, we have something important to get to. We have to solder your arm back on to the rest of your body,” Elly said, walking back into the main room of the underground ‘laboratory’ and placing Proto Man’s arm on the desk near the door. “Or I could use new parts to make a new and much more powerful arm for you.”

“I’d appreciate it if you did. I feel that the strange maverick who I was facing will come back for me once he discovers the who I am and the information that I hold in my memory storage,” Proto Man said, as he walked into the main room again, only to be followed by Rush, who ran up to him, grabbing a wrench and placing it by Proto Man’s feet. He picked up the wrench with a bit of confusion, as he starred into the dog’s eyes once more, who responded just with a simple bark. Proto Man laughed.

“Speaking of which, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your past life,” Elly said, sorting through a bunch of boxes in the corner of the room, going through different spare parts and untangling wires.

“What do you want to know?” Proto Man replied. There was a short pause before Elly responded, she resumed sorted through the boxes, with an expression on her face which showed that she was in much deep thought. She then smiled, when she took an incomplete robotic arm out of one of the boxes which seemed old and pretty damaged.

“Tell me about Mega Man…” Elly said, looking over at Proto Man, still with a bright smile.

At that moment, Proto Man just stopped what he was doing and moved his eyes down to the ground, sighing, as the memories started to flood back for him. It was hurtful, reliving his past mentally. He had no idea what happened to Mega Man, and remembering his younger brother had only made Proto Man miss him more.

“Is something wrong?” Elly asked, as the smile on her face quickly faded to a frown, as she slowly walked closer to Proto Man. He seemed to be blanked out, as if he wasn’t paying attention. Rush looked up at Proto Man, tilting his head to the side with a sad look in his eyes and whining. Elly stepped forward slightly and gently grabbed on to Proto Man’s hand. He shook his head and looked up at the female in front of him, in surprise. He’d just snapped out of his deep thought.

“Oh, Mega Man… right…” he said, with yet another sigh, as he walked over to a chair just in front of a desk near the front entrance. His mood changed rather quickly, as a soft chuckle escaped his lips, he looked up at Elly once more, peering over the top of his sunglasses to look into her eyes. “Well, what do you want to know about him exactly?”

“Tell me what he looked like, how he fought, his personality… his sense of justice,” Elly smiled once more, and looked at Proto Man, acting as if she was an admiring fan who’d just approached someone famous.

“Well, Mega Man was a great young robot. He destroyed robot masters left and right, but never failed to respect their memory,” Proto Man said. “We, his family, called him… ‘Rock’.”