After a brief break for refreshments - and to double check that Celestia had the sun in the right place, much to Cadence's amusement, followed by fielding Ghor's questions about 'having the sun in the right place' - Samus sat back to continue. "At any rate, the Spider Ball allowed me to get into a lot of places I couldn't before...and it didn't mean getting into them alone anymore, since Spike could now shrink to Morph Ball size and crawl along the tunnels with me."
"It was such a relief to have that ability finally," Spike proclaimed happily. "It meant I could stick with Mom no matter what."
"Not to mention making the ship a lot more comfortable," Samus indicated. "While it could house us both with him at full size, it didn't leave much room to move about inside. With Spike able to shrink down, we were able to move about easily."
"And I could sit in her lap," Spike added happily, shrinking down until he could sit in Samus' lap, resulting in many "Daw"s.
Samus chuckled, patting his head as she continued. "At any rate, as we headed back towards where we needed to go so I could get a Hazard Suit upgrade, we got a communication about the location of the control unit for the Pirate Base's shield generator. We needed to shut it down to let the fleet in."
"The Hazard Shield itself wasn't that far from where Gandrayda'd led us to," Spike added, hopping out of Samus' lap to return to normal size and go back to eating. "Of course, as soon as Samus got it, we came under attack by Pirates and had to fight back in the acid rain...which was no longer a hazard."
"Actually, between the two of us and Spike's size changing, there really wasn't much we'd already encountered that was still a threat to the pair of us," Samus admitted. "Of course, it wasn't long before we encountered something new..."
In a large chamber with three large turbine vents Samus was able to access with her Morph Ball, Spike and Samus moved about carefully, searching for the way forward. After triggering two of the vents, however, a large creature burst out of the third. It had a large blue and red nucleus, heavily armored, with four tentacles hanging down below a massive fanged maw. Samus' scans revealed it to be a Metroid Hatcher, a mutation from the local metroids. While it couldn't phase, the armor was rendered impervious to nearly all weaponry - including Spike's Fazite breath - and could only be slain by damaging its neural pathways via the removal of all four energy draining tentacles. However, the tentacles moved too fast to be dealt with easily, and unlike the Hunter Metroids of Tallon IV, the entire tentacle could drain energy, not just the tips.
Spike was forced to stay back during the first portion of the battle, acting as distraction and charge target while Samus focused on the tentacles, locking onto them with her Seeker Missile until the Hatcher withdrew them into its body to recover. At that point it started releasing the local strain of Metroids from its maw, which it could apparently control and command. At that point, Spike lunged forward, catching hold of the beast and stunning it with a Frost breath into its maw. His frost breath also proved effective on the released Metroids when caught off guard.
Once it was stunned, Spike grabbed hold of one tentacle with a claw, gritting his teeth against the energy drain. Samus latched onto another with her Grapple Beam. With grunts of effort, they each tore the tentacle they had hold of from the creature's body, causing it to roar in pain.
Once that was done, the beast reared back to fight again, and Spike and Samus repeated the sequence. The creature was more careful the second time around...but it was still outmatched by the two pronged assault.
"Hoo-wee!" Applejack gasped out at the end of the description of the fight. "Bet those things were a doozy ta fight."
"At least until I got the Nova Beam," Samus replied.
"Nova Beam?" Twilight asked.
"Another added effect for my beam weapon," Samus explained. "It let me fire shots at ultra-high frequency modulations, which let the shots pass through most types of armor. Not only that, but combined with the X-Ray visor, I could lock onto a nerve center and shoot straight through that for an instant kill. Worked on most Pirate enemies, and the Metroid Hatchers."
"Awesome!" Rainbow shouted out as she took further notes.
"How'd you get it?" Scootaloo asked eagerly.
"Well, first we had to get to a mining site..." Samus began.
After using a large drilling mechanism to open a new path, the pair followed along back to the outside. A heavily armored Phazon Harvester Drone proved a bit of an obstacle since it could not be destroyed...but Spike found it could be stunned by heavy kinetic impacts to its blast focus, so he clung to it and punched it every time it became un-stunned. This allowed Samus to progress readily.
Eventually, they reached the Phazon mining site. The Nova Beam - which Samus knew she needed - was suspended atop a mining laser that cycled between cutting up the Phazon and sucking up the deposits.
"So...what's the plan?" Spike asked.
"Break the laser," Samus replied.
"Good plan."
Going down into the Phazon deposit region, they came under attack by several Pirate troops. "I have an idea for how to break it," Spike suggested.
"Go for it," Samus instructed firmly.
While the laser was breaking up Phazon deposits, Spike and Samus held the attacking Pirates at bay. When it was sucking up the deposits, however, Spike and Samus stayed well back, gripping the ground as they blasted the pirates into the suction. When a Pirate smashed into the mining laser, it extended an alert sensor with four energy shields. Samus and Spike focused their fire on the shields. When one went down, more Pirates attacked and the sensor was withdrawn, the laser returning to its normal cycle.
After three more rounds of that, the laser fell, completely broken, to smash into the ground. Samus then leapt up to collect the Nova Beam.
"Clever," Ghor complimented as the rest of the table cheered. Samus and Spike both took playful bows.