Another Hatchling

by Tatsurou


Corruption: Hold on Tight

"So what next?" Scootaloo asked eagerly, bouncing up and down in midair. "What next?"

Samus couldn't help but chuckle at the filly's eagerness, seeing it mirrored not only on the child's peers, but also her elders' expressions. "Well, Ghor was right that I could use his Plasma Beam to repair the networks. So that was the first step, repairing the networks so the Aurora Unit would have control of Skytown again."

"After that, we found out that the Pirate shield generators were hidden below the storms, beyond our ability to reach," Spike explained. "There was nothing that could penetrate the cloud cover to destroy them, and we had nothing in our arsenal that could penetrate the shield. However...the Aurora Unit had a plan."

"I'm certain, given the abilities of such organic supercomputers, that it was a truly clever and elegant one?" Celestia hypothesized.

"Sort of," Samus explained. "We were going to build a giant bomb and drop it on the shield."

Luna snorted in amusement at Celestia's expression, though Discord was howling with laughter. "So how did you go about constructing such a device?" Luna inquired delicately.

"First we needed to collect a new upgrade for our ship," Spike explained. "A Ship Grapple, for use in collecting the components in the proper order to assemble the bomb, and depositing it where it was needed."

"I'd managed to retrieve Ghor by the time the ship was repaired enough to fly where they needed it," Rundus added. "Even with Spike's repairs, he was in pretty bad shape."

"I was perfectly functional," Ghor countered acidly.

"You were supposed to be on bed rest, not trying to hack the Chozo security in the ship to study Spike," Rundus sniped back.

"You were what?" Samus asked harshly.

Ghor glanced away nervously. "I...admit that I sometimes have difficulty controlling my curiosity. Besides, the information I discovered did prove useful much later!"

"Then tell us later!" Pinkie piped up. "I wanna hear about the bomb!"

Samus chuckled. "Well, first it was getting the upgrade, which proved to be difficult with the abilities I currently had. Beyond that, the area was too turbulent to risk riding Spike there. Thankfully, I remembered some parts of Bryyo that I hadn't fully explored before. Given their alliance with the Chozo, I figured that they might have something I could use there..."


Landing in Bryyo Fire, Samus made her way into the Fuel Gel refinery. Once there, she followed a Morph Ball path she remembered to a part of the facility that was blocked by ice. While the location itself was one Spike could get to, melting the ice with her Plasma Beam unfortunately only revealed another Morph Ball Tunnel. Samus passed through, emitting a beacon Spike could follow, in the hopes he could rejoin her from the air.

Her path took her through a strange portal into a realm of frozen ice. Much to her surprise, no signals could travel from here, whether to her ship, to the Aurora Unit...or to Spike.


"Scariest part of the whole mission for me when I lost track of her," Spike admitted. "When her signal vanished like that, I...I kinda lost it."

"How much did you break?" Twilight asked calmly.

"...lots..."

"Sorry for worrying you like that," Samus apologized. "I didn't think I'd be that long." After stroking Spike's neck consolingly, Samus turned back to the listeners. "While I was there, I reacquired my Screw Attack."

"Nice!" Rainbow crowed, pumping her hoof.

"While she was gone, the missing Valhalla was also located," Spike added.

"With that," Samus continued, "we were able to make our way back to Elysia and continue on to get the ship upgraded..."


The Eastern portion of Skytown proved just as straightforward for the pair to explore. On Samus' end, there were a greater number of narrow passages to be explored via Morph Ball in the interior of the city. On Spike's end, the Pirates had a much stronger presence in the East than the West. Neither proved much of a challenge to the skills the pair had acquired, and as a great deal of the indoor path led back and forth to the outside, there were a great many opportunities for the pair to cooperate to progress.

It didn't take them long to reach the landing site with the upgrade, and Samus activated the upgrade systems once the ship had landed.

"I have a question," Spike asked.

"Shoot," Samus replied.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to have the Aurora Unit feed my suit the Landing Site coordinates and have me fly here?" he asked. "I do have access to those Command Visor functions, after all."

Samus scratched her chin in thought. "We'll do that for future upgrades," she commented as the upgrade process finished.

"Couldn't I also just overfly the bomb component locations?" Spike continued. "And you could ride in the ship while we collected them."

"Not a bad plan," Samus agreed.


"While there weren't any other ship upgrades," Samus explained, "Spike's plan worked rather well, for the most part. While I declined on riding around in the ship - with the Grapple activated, the ship could neither land nor open a hatch - I did let him guide the ship to the components."

"Mom did run afoul of another Berserker Lord," Spike added. "But it was in an open air chamber. With me attacking from above and Mom from in front, it didn't last long."

"However, Spike found the second component was locked in with a Seeker Missile lock," Samus groaned. "And, unfortunately...the Seeker Missile upgrade was inside a Metroid Containment facility."

"Which you had to...disable in order to access the upgrade?" Twilight whimpered. "Which...set the Metroids free?"

"Yup," Samus confirmed. "And the overexposure to Phazon had given these Metroids the ability to phase slightly out of normal reality, making it impossible for me to shoot them. Thankfully, they couldn't hurt me in that state, either."

"Oddly enough, my Fazite breath still worked on them even when phased out," Spike indicated.

"And I'm suddenly a lot less frightened of Metroids," Twilight admitted, startling laughter all around.