Sure enough, the Grapple Swing quickly revealed to be very useful to rapidly return to the pit with the tower structure. On the way, they encountered a Reptilicus like the one that Sweetie Belle had killed, smaller than the Reptilicus Hunters with spiny protrusion on its back and with the ability to teleport short distances. Frankly, these ones looked really monstrous. Phazon hadn't been nice to them.
From the pit, after killing two more Reptilicus without minding the normal Nightbarbs that passed, they then passed the door behind the orange node and returned to the chasm that had blocked them earlier. Samus used her grapple to pass it and land on the ship. Sweetie Belle flew after her.
An invincible Blast Shield blocked the entrance to the ship, but they easily spotted a cracked part in the wall that they destroyed to reveal a small entrance for the Morph Ball.
After following a conduit, they landed in a room where they encountered an energy-based, round, flying creature named an Atomic that was quickly destroyed. A quick look around revealed that all the doors were blocked by invincible Blast Shields. There was also a giant blast door that was kept shut by clamp locks that Sweetie Belle and Samus destroyed. Once the door was open, they then had to connect all the power rods behind it, bringing the power back to the ship which turned on the computers and unlocked the doors. A trapdoor in the middle of the room then opened, and a big machine, the Satellite Uplink, rose from under it. Samus activated it with a security lever, and she received the map data of various areas of the planet including the one they currently were in.
One of the new areas was apparently a fiery one which Samus deducted was where the Federation mined the Fuel Gel. The other was a jungle full of these giant thorny trees they had seen.
Then as they were about to go explore the rest of the ship in hope of finding something, Samus was contacted by one of the Aurora Units, the AU 242 from the G.F.S. Olympus.
Sweetie Belle couldn't hear what the AU was saying, so once the supercomputer was done, Samus resumed what she said.
Thanks to the map data, the AU was able to find the location of two sources of energy that were certainly at the origin of the energy shield protecting the Leviathan. The AU then loaded their position into Samus' map before charging her of destroying them. One of the objectives was in the fiery region, and the other was in the jungle.
"Seems like we will have quite the trek," Sweetie Belle commented.
"Not at all. We will use my ship to reach them. Or, from what my map says, there seems to be a path to the jungle after this ship."
"Then let's go for the jungle. That's convenient since we intended to explore the ship."
They passed the door which actually led out of the ship (the ship was actually very small!) and, after killing some Gel Puffers, understood that they couldn't continue. There was a huge chasm with two streams of Fuel Gel but without targets for the grapple.
"Darn!"
"Guess we're going back to my ship after all."
And this meant traversing the ship, then the temple all the way back to where they first met, and continuing beyond the door from which Samus had come. But before, as they came out of the crashed ship, they spotted on an edge of the temple a being that observed them. When it remarked that it was spotted, the being then jumped before landing on ice that it formed directly under its feet. It then made more ice that it used to slid out of sight.
"That was Rundas!" Samus exclaimed.
"I don't know him, but I still saw that he acted really weirdly. That's a bad sign," Sweetie Belle remarked.
"Yeah..."
"At least, he's alive, which is good. But... Do you think he went rogue?"
"I don't think so. From the little I know of Rundas, while he has an ego as big as Bryyo, he really takes his job to heart. He would never betray the Federation. I hope this isn't what I think it is..."
The mood immediately dropped as Sweetie understood what she was thinking.
Phazon. Could Rundas have fallen victim to it?
Sweetie Belle was able to find a Missile Expansion on the roof of the ship while Samus used the grapple to traverse the chasm. Fighting their way through the temple, they quickly returned to the ice bridge only for the doors at both ends to close as two Alpha Hoppers came.
They were like normal Hoppers, excepted that they were red and more resistant. but against Sweetie Belle and Samus, it meant nothing (especially when the filly just had to throw them beyond the bridge into the pit below). More Alpha Hoppers came from the nests as the first ones died, but they suffered the same fate.
Eventually, the Alpha Hoppers stopped coming and the doors opened, letting them continue.
It wasn't long before they finally reached Samus' ship. A simple small ship in her likeness which the wings could apparently turn into feet to land.
Sweetie Belle wasn't really impressed. After the Lor, the Halbert, or even the Access Ark, this ship really was nothing. But she still couldn't wait to enter.
But what really impressed Sweetie Belle were the two planetoid things that were literally chained to Bryyo that could be seen behind the ship. What the heck were they? Were they spaceships? From the Age of Science of the Bryyonians?
"I will have to register your DNA so you can enter my ship. It only accepts me," Samus informed. "Let me enter it first. Then, once the lift returns, enter it and wait for the scan to end. You will then have to wait for me to confirm that your DNA will be allowed before the lift will rise with you."
"Alright."
So Samus went to the lift under the ship and entered it. A few seconds later, the lift came back down and Sweetie Belle entered it. Like Samus said, a scan began and lasted a few seconds. Once it was over, Sweetie Belle waited a few more seconds before the lift finally rose with her, letting her enter the ship.
The inside of the ship wasn't big, but thanks to her small size, Sweetie Belle had no problem finding a place to sit beside Samus' chair.
"Nice cockpit."
"Don't touch anything," Samus warned as she made the ship take off.
As the ship flew, Sweetie Belle was able to get a better view of the planet, especially of the temple they traversed as well as the Leviathan in the distance. She was also able to spot, once high enough, the other areas.
She then remarked that they were going toward the fiery region.
"I thought we would go to the jungle."
"The fiery region is smaller, so I thought to start there first," Samus explained.
"Okay," Sweetie accepted with a shrug.
It only took a few seconds to reach the fiery region, whole rivers and lakes of Fuel Gel replacing the mostly barren cliffs of the region around the temple.
Eventually, they reached a structure among the Fuel Gel with an area where Samus could land her ship. Another ship was parked here, on ice, its hull looking like Rundas' torso.
Rundas was in this region, somewhere.
Sweetie Belle and Samus exited the Hunter's ship and, after getting the coordinates of the generator - at the opposite end of the region - they moved toward the only exit while being careful of not falling into the Fuel Gel under the platform.
The exit led to an hallway with giant discs blocking the path. To pass them, the two had to ignite gel spouts in the discs to make them rotate into the walls.
After two discs, Sweetie flew to reach a Missile Expansion above a stonework head that was actually a deactivated transportation shaft while Samus continued to follow the hallway as it turned right. The filly joined her with the expansion just as she reached the exit door.
They entered a room with a totally different ambience from the hallway they previously were. Status of past emperors indicating that the place may be another ancient temple were replaced here by giant pipes and other machinery clearly of Federation origin, making this room a gel refinery. Ice was also present again, blocking passages for the Morph Ball.
Three doors were present, but two were currently inaccessible. One of them was on a ledge where Sweetie Belle had to fly to take another Missile Expansion, discovering by the same occasion that the door here was blocked by a Blast Shield with a white forcefield. When she reported this to Samus, the Hunter concluded that they needed some ice-related explosive to destroy it.
With the presence of a rogue Hunter specialising in ice not far, it wasn't hard to guess that they will need to deal with Rundas one way or another before they will be able to pass this door.
Or Sweetie could use ice herself, but an ice upgrade would be very useful to Samus to it was out of question to pass beside it.
So they moved toward the only accessible door, at the left of the room. But first, they had to ignite more gel spouts to rotate a valve and create a platform to reach it.
In the following room, there was the entrance to another conduit for the Morph Ball, but before, Samus scanned another mural telling more about the history of Bryyo, more exactly about the Age of Schism, the beginning of the conflict between the Lords of Science and the Primals. Despite the Chozo warning them to seek the balance between old and new ways, the Lords of Science continued to advance, ignoring the Primals who were more and more filled with rage. Then, one of the Lords of Science denounced the Primals and their Traditions, igniting the fuse to the civil war.
Prideful fools.
Sweetie Belle and Samus entered the conduit and reached a cliffside where, with the help of some Snatchers, they were able to find another Missile Expansion before reaching the exit.
The new room had more ice blocking one of the paths, leaving them only one to continue through, with a lift that they had to manually activate by pulling a lever. The rift led them down, and once out of it, they had to destroy a Red Blast Shield before they could continue.
They entered a cavern where some Phazon was present in the ground and the wall. After killing a Hopper and advancing some more, they reached a literal pool of liquid Phazon with Phazon vines blocking the way.
"I would have definitively started to mutate if I had been normal," Sweetie Belle stated as she looked down at the Phazon.
"You would have started to mutate well before," Samus said. "But yes, nobody without protection could approach such a high amount of Phazon without being poisoned."
Samus then activated her PED Suit to fire Phazon beams at the vines to destroy them, quickly helped by the filly.
But then, after destroying a few vines, Samus suddenly stopped firing and pressed her arms against her abdomen before more Phazon than usual began to escape her Suit, roaming it and becoming unstable. Sweetie Belle could feel a huge increase in energy from Samus' body to the point of overflowing it as she could see, the Phazon filling her more and more.
"Samus!" she shouted, worried that her new friend will explode.
Samus, however, quickly recovered from the sudden Phazon overload and began to continuously fire Phazon without stopping for several seconds. She first started by destroying the remaining vine before she randomly fired in front of her. The more she fired, the more Sweetie could feel the quantity of Phazon in Samus diminishing. Understanding what Samus was doing, Sweetie Belle quickly began to help her by placing a hoof on her Suit to absorb the Phazon before releasing it from her horn as a continuous beam.
It took a flew second before the overloading Phazon was entirely expelled, letting Samus return to normal.
They both sighed in relief, but before Sweetie could ask Samus anything, the Hunter stopped her with a sign of the hand as she received a communication from the Aurora Unit.
Once the communication stopped, Samus gave another sigh.
"I guess the other shoe finally dropped..."
"What happened?" Sweetie asked. "I mean, I know what happened, but how did this happen? How did the Phazon start to overflow like that?"
"Well... The Unit said that they will analyse the data they collected from this from my Suit and will contact me again if they find anything. But it's not hard to guess. Somehow, using the Hypermode caused the Phazon in me to overload. Not sure how this happened however, but it's clear that this PED Suit isn't without side effects contrary to what the Federation thought. And I imagine that if I hadn't released all that Phazon in time, I would have become corrupted, and I don't think that I want to know what I would have turned into."
Sweetie Belle thought a moment, her frown becoming a sad one. "It's easy to find out, judging by Rundas' behavior. If this also happened to him..."
"Shit..."
"At least, he was able to resist seven whole days before he lost the battle! If it's the same for you, then it means that we have seven days too before you become corrupted! Maybe even more! That's more time than we need to find a solution to destroy that seed in you!" Sweetie Belle tried to reassure the woman, giving her a Class A Pinkie Pie SmileTM (the "everything will be alright so turn that frown upside down" smile). "You just gotta resist until then. Let's avoid using the Hypermode unless it's necessary."
Samus nodded. The filly's reassurance wasn't necessary as she wasn't intending to let this stop her and she was thinking something similar (notably that maybe that killing Dark Samus will save her since the Phazon entity was at the origin of the seed inside her), but she still acknowledged her effort and, to be frank, she was grateful for this. Her words, the fact that she wasn't alone, made supporting all this easier.
It felt good to have someone.
But she still felt awkward to have someone.
"Thank you. For the help. And, uh, also for... everything."
"You're welcome!"
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Samus eventually turned toward the pool of Phazon and jumped in it to absorb some of it as energy. Then, using the grapple, she reached the other side of the pool followed by Sweetie Belle.
After passing a door, they entered a large square room where they immediately spotted Rundas looking down at them from a ledge at the right before he walked away.
At the other side of the room was some statue with two gel spouts that they guessed they needed to ignite, and behind it, they could see another mural. However, as they approached them, a huge gate rose from the ground and blocked them from reaching the statue, and an invincible blast shield locked the entrance door.
Then, three huge quadrupedal creatures warped in the room.
They looked very menacing. They had a horn, two tusks, spikes lining their bodies including a huge one at the back, many sharp teeth, and powerful front legs. Everything in them screamed "DANGER!" Powerful predators that would put Timberwolves and Manticores to shame.
Samus scanned them and said, "Warp Hounds. Be careful, they can expel thermal energy from their mouth. And they can warp, as you saw."
"Weird the dogs on this planet. Not good boys at all."
Sweetie Belle quickly had to jump aside to avoid energy sent by the nearest hound before she 'grabbed' the energy and gathered it into a very small ball that she sent into the mouth of that same hound. One second later and the hound exploded.
At the same moment, Samus attacked the two other hounds with her beams and missiles, moving around and targeting whichever was the nearest to her. Their warping made this difficult but it wasn't long before she was able to kill one of the hounds at the same time than Sweetie Belle killed the third one with her own beams.
Once the three hounds were dead, the gate and the blast shield disappeared, letting them reach the statue and the mural. Samus first scanned the mural which described the Age of War which could be resumed as each sides sending their worst, machines of destruction and dark curses, under the powerless eyes of the other civilizations from the stars.
Then Sweetie Belle and Samus turned their attention to the statue and ignited the spouts, revealing a slot for the Morph Ball to use a bomb.
The bomb caused a large tower, a Fuel Gel processing tower to be exact from what Samus got from a scan, to rise from the center of the room. This made also some Gragnols come out but they were quickly killed as the two heroines jumped on the tower. On it, they spotted two maintenance rails that they had to pull to connect them to the tower, and once done, Samus jumped to an alcove where she found and activated a pumping station, summoning two Fuel Gel leakages at its sides. Samus and Sweetie Belle then ignited them to rotate the Fuel Gel flow regulator and reveal the entrance of the rail they connected earlier. Entering and following it, they reached a chamber behind a gate with another statue with gel spouts and a slot for Morph Bombs. So they ignited the spouts to activate the slot and Samus used a bomb in it, making the Fuel Gel processing tower rise more.
To leave this chamber, they had to use the rail again. Thankfully, despite the tower's rise, the rail was still connected and led them back to the rotated Fuel Gel flow regulator. After dealing with four Gragnol adults while jumping back on the tower, they then discovered a vat of Fuel Gel that was apparently, from what Samus' scan was saying, about to explode. Sweetie Belle used her whip to remove the valve cap to make the Fuel Gem flow out of it, and Samus ignited it with a charged beam. After igniting a second stream that was revealed after the first one, the vat exploded, starting a series of explosions along the wall at the right that destroyed several panels that had been blocking a network of tunnels for the Morph Ball.
They entered the tunnels from where the vat blew up and followed them, killing some insectoids creatures called Pillbugs, Phazon Pillbugs these ones, on the way and avoiding small streams of flames. The tunnels led them to a ledge with displays of ceremonial armor and another statue with a bomb slot. Like before, they ignited the spouts of Fuel Gel to activate it and used a bomb, making the tower rise one last time where pipes from the ceiling connected to it.
Gel Puffers also came but didn't last long.
The tower high enough, they could now reach the ledge where they had seen Rundas earlier and they finally left this room.
They entered a hall that was half filled with Fuel Gel, some golem fixture installed on the ceiling constantly pouring it from its mouth. After killing three Gel Puffers as well as some kind of ray jumping out of the Fuel Gel named a Gel Ray, Samus ignited it just as it passed beside some vine, causing a stream of fire to come from the golem's nose to burn the vine. This made a platform with a Missile Expansion fall, and Samus could use it to reach the opposite ledge. As she jumped, Sweetie Belle flew into a passage at the left and found another Missile Expansion. There was another passage at the right that led to a door with a White Blast Shield, but Samus couldn't reach it without jumping into the Fuel Gel.
The following room had a station that let Samus recharge ammunition and energy. They then traversed a cavern with strange structures with Fuel Gel growth descending from the ceiling, followed by a longer cavern with many Fuel Gel pools into which falls of Fuel Gel poured. Sweetie Belle and Samus sometime had to wait for the falls to stop to traverse the pools, and a constant fall was blocking a path at the right.
Not minding the blocked path, they continued to follow the cavern until they reached a tunnel full of little insects called Gelbugs which the shells made of crystallized Fuel Gel made them easy to detonate with weapon fire. However, when disrupted, these pests bounced around, making them very hard to target as they approached to attack.
The tunnel was the entrance of another temple, and they quickly reached a large area in open sky built above a lake of Fuel Gel. Surrounded by cliffs, it seemed to be a dead end.
But then, in the sky, a huge spaceship came and started to bomb the temple with big red balls of energy. Smaller ships then started to come out of it and approached.
"Space Pirates!" Samus yelled to warn Sweetie Belle as the smaller ships began to drop very ugly bipedal, armored aliens with large needle-like teeth and eight eyes on a fishlike head. They were monstrous even by Sweetie Belle's standard.
"Ah! Finally! But yike... Talk about faces that scream 'bad guys'..." the filly said as she began to fire beams at the pirates while taking cover behind the large storage crates that were scattered in the area.
"And again, how they look tend to change because of their constant genetic manipulations to make themselves better and adapt to planets."
Since the transport ships tended to leave after dropping the pirates, Samus didn't bother to target them, mainly attacking troopers. Sweetie Belle, however, destroyed one by grabbing it with her magic before slamming it on a group of pirates, the impact damaging it very badly. This show of power made the pirates understand that Samus wasn't the only danger and more of them began to target the filly.
"I'm kinda disappointed," Sweetie Belle eventually said as she destroyed another ship by slicing it in half with one of her swords.
"Why?" asked Samus.
"I hoped that these pirates would be more the "Aaaarr!!! I'll send ya to the space Kraken, ya scallywag!" type. With hooks instead of hands, eye-patches, beards made of plasma, iron, or whatever, and metal legs."
Samus almost let out a laugh. "That's definitively not their type. But thanks for the image," she said before she kicked a pirate that got too close, sending it on its back. At the same time, Sweetie Belle beheaded two pirates, including a very armored one.
One last armored pirate was killed by Samus firing a missile right in its mouth before, suddenly, a pillar of ice came out of the ground in the center of the area. This made the pirates run, only for ice to spread toward them, freezing them right where they stood. Before long, all the pirates were turned into ice statues before the ice pillar split apart to reveal Rundas.
The pirates stopped coming after that, leaving the two heroines to focus on the new arrival, not certain of what to do as he remained immobile.
"Uh... He killed the pirates. Maybe there's some hope..." Sweetie Belle said, not really believing what she was saying but... she really wanted to hope.
However, when Samus began to approach Rundas, he suddenly sent ice toward her, and only her reflexes saved her from finishing like the pirates. Instead, the ice blocked the entrance of the area.
"Guess it answers this..." Samus said with a sigh.
At this moment, Samus saw a ghost-like manifestation of Dark Samus briefly appear over Rundas, and she understood.
This wasn't Rundas.
It was Dark Samus puppeting him thanks to the Phazon in him.
As the ice Hunter made a ice pillar rise from under him, the heroines understood that a fight couldn't be avoided. Several giant spikes of ice also came out around him, probably as a show of power. Samus did say that Rundas had a big ego. Maybe that was also why he froze the pirates, to fight them by himself. Corrupted or not, under Dark Samus' control or not, you can't stop an ego as big as his.
Then, Rundas created some ice on himself to serve as armor to protect his more vulnerable parts before he jumped from the ice pillar to face Samus and Sweetie Belle.
Samus quickly scanned him to see if she could find a weakness while Sweetie Belle put a frontal shield to protect the both of them from the ice sent by their foe. Seeing this, Rundas spread ice to their sides before making spikes of ice sprout from them diagonally to impale them. Samus jumped backward to avoid them, and Sweetie Belle began to fly while firing back with fireballs. Rundas also began to do like when they first saw him in the temple of the cliffs, jumping, creating ice under his feet, and sliding around in the air, using ice pillars and ice spikes as cover.
"Sweetie Belle! Target the ice on his neck! That's his main weakness!" Samus instructed as she began to fire at the ice Hunter.
"Roger!"
At this moment, Rundas charged at Samus with his ice, two ice swords materializing around his hands. Samus had to stop firing to use her cannon to parry one of the swords, then kicked the other sword to deflect it before she punched Rundas on the head. This didn't stop Rundas from attacking, and they exchanged more hits, one with martial arts, the other with ice swords. Sweetie Belle quickly came with one of her own swords and Rundas swung to intercept her. Sweetie Belle easily sliced the ice sword before she headbutted Rundas, making him stagger. Despite this, Rundas was able to create two ice spikes from his feet to force the two girls to move back, only to get a charged beam on the head, stunning him. Samus then used the grapple on the ice on his neck, ripping it off and leaving him vulnerable.
The girls immediately fired at the neck, and Rundas retreated, running around and using the ice as cover to make their job harder. After a few seconds, he was able to recreate ice on his neck and he restarted his assault, now sending small spikes of ice as projectiles as he slid in the air.
Sweetie Belle kicked him off his self made slide to force him back on the ground where Samus could easily target him. Then, the filly landed on his head, turned one of her hooves into claws, and planted them in him before sending electricity through them. Screaming in pain, Rundas spasmed a few seconds before he was able to catch Sweetie Belle and to throw her away, only for Samus to rip the ice on his neck again. Samus then joined him in a jump, put her arm cannon right under his neck, and fired a missile, sending him crashing into an ice pillar.
It still wasn't enough however as he recovered and put ice again on his neck. However, for a few seconds, he seemed to lose control of his movements as his body, especially his limbs, spasmed and he began to speak gibberish.
In that gibberish, Sweetie Belle and Samus perfectly heard two words... "Kill me."
This put tears on the filly's eyes. "He's still fighting the corruption and Dark Samus."
"Rundas..."
But then, Rundas' PED activated, he jumped on a pillar, and created a huge ice battering ram that destroyed all the ice spikes and pillars around before he sent it at Samus who was pushed out of the way by Sweetie Belle. Rundas followed this by sending dozens of ice blasts, and Sweetie Belle teleported the two of them at the opposite side of the arena where which they could fire at Rundas' back. A particularly large explosive ball from Sweetie Belle sent the ice Hunter flying from his pillar and crashing at its base, shattering the ice protecting him. As he recovered from this, Sweetie Belle and Samus took the occasion to attack his neck, but it only took a few seconds before the ice was back.
Still with his PED activated, Rundas unleashed his full power over ice to not only slid in the air but also rain ice spikes and form ice stalagmites all over the arena. Sweetie Belle grabbed chunks of broken ice now littering the area to form a strong shield above Samus and her to protect themselves from the raining ice while the two of them destroyed the stalagmites to make place, Samus having to activate her PED. Avoiding them was hard as they had to remain together, but their constant movement made it so they weren't hit once, and when they could, they fired at Rundas. But their ice shield was quickly destroyed by another ice battering ram that almost crushed them if it hadn't been for Sweetie Belle destroying it with a powerful punch.
Rundas was now sliding close enough that Samus was able to grab one of his legs with her grapple, and Sweetie Belle quickly used her whip to grab his other leg. The two then pulled to make Rundas spin around them, causing the ice Hunter to crash into the many ice pillars, spikes, and stalagmites that now circled them. Once there was nothing for Rundas to crash into anymore, Sweetie Belle and Samus then violently smashed him on the ground, shattering the ice protecting him. Samus then quickly unleashed all the Phazon in her as the Phazon Overload was starting, and Sweetie Belle used her own powers to send beams of Phazon.
They stopped when Samus' Phazon Overload ended, and it seemed that Rundas was done for as he wasn't attempting to get up again. Instead, as he recovered from the onslaught, he simply looked around, seemingly confused.
"Rundas?" Samus asked, hope returning. If Rundas was himself again, maybe he could be saved.
Her call made Rundas look at her and at Sweetie Belle who slowly approached, and he raised an arm toward the Hunter.
But then...
Large stalagmites of ice erupted from the ground under Rundas and impaled him. He just had time to let out a last guttural yell of pain before a stalagmite impaled him through the head, killing him and freezing his body.
Sweetie Belle let out a shocked gasp as she watched this in horror, and Samus screamed, "No!"
The stalagmites and the ice covering Rundas' body then broke, but the body remained floating as a dark, winged, wraith-like entity appeared from behind and floated above it.
The entity was gaseous, but had the silhouette and a visor similar to Samus', excepted that this one was glowing blue.
"That's Dark Samus?" Sweetie Belle asked.
Samus simply nodded as she stared wordlessly at the dark entity who began to absorb Rundas' body.
As the entity finished, Sweetie Belle finally got over her shock and fired a beam of energy that should normally be able to hit such a ghost-like entity. But Dark Samus dodged it, done with Rundas, and flew away into space, leaving behind a capsule with an upgrade for Samus.
Sweetie Belle growled. She wasn't entirely sure of what happened, but it seemed that, as Rundas was regaining control, Dark Samus decided to use his own power to kill him before absorbing him. They were about to save him only for that thing to ruin everything! Once Sweetie Belle will be done with her, nothing will remain!
Samus placed a hand on her head to calm her.
"We will get her," she said. Judging from her voice she also had difficulty controlling herself.
Sweetie Belle nodded determinedly. "Yes."
Now that was personal. You don't kill an innocent in front of her and get away with it.
With Rundas dead, all his ice in the area melted, and an elevator in the center activated. Before that, Samus took the capsule that contained an upgrade of ice missiles as they expected.
It wasn't long before they put them to use as, after taking the elevator, they had to use ice on Fuel Gel to create platforms to traverse a cavern full of it.
The fact that Fuel Gel could be frozen was a new one for the filly.
In the room that followed, they had to activated a pumping station to make streams of Fuel Gel appear so they could freeze them to cross a large chasm.
Finally, they reached the room with the generator.
The first thing they saw was a console and another mural describing the Downfall, how the war destroyed Bryyo and turned it mostly inhabitable. Activating the console only displayed a hologram of the generator so it wasn't useful at all. The generator itself, however, was out of reached, behind a red forcefield. The Leviathan and its shield could be seen at the right.
Samus crossed her arms, thinking of how they could reach the generator.
Sweetie Belle placed a hoof on the forcefield, thinking that she could certainly destroy it, but... "Another upgrade necessary?"
"Maybe."
"Need to explore elsewhere to get it?"
"Certainly."
"Could be useful in other situations?"
"I guess."
"So we will have to come back later?"
"Yes."
They both sighed at this.
The Aurora Unit contacting Samus confirmed it. They needed to find a new weapon.
So they retraced their steps and explored the region with the help of the ice missiles. Sweetie Belle's ice powers were also welcome.
If she had known before that Fuel Gel could be frozen, their life would have been easier.
First, they reached the White Blast Shield and destroyed it, entered a hallway with a large chasm where they had to put targets for the grapple into position by firing into switch so Samus could cross it. This made a shortcut to the gel Refinery Site by the door on the ledge that was previously blocked by a White Blast Shield. Making a pipe collapse then created a way for them to get on that ledge so they won't have to make a detour again.
They then returned to the cavern where a fall of Fuel Gel blocked a path and froze it, letting Samus reach another transportation shaft that transported her back to the first one, activating it by the same occasion. Sweetie Belle joined her with a teleportation.
With nothing else to be done in the region, they returned to the ship where they received another communication of the AU who revealed to Samus the presence of a Federation landing site on Bryyo that could upgrade her ship to give it what could destroy the generator. And apparently, it was back in the first region with the temple on the cliffs.
So they took off and flew toward it.