"You say that's the only odd point," Luna asked carefully as Samus and Spike paused in the retelling to take a drink. "Does that mean it was a straight trip back aside from that?"
"Definitely not," Samus murmured. "There's a reason we didn't get a chance to investigate it. See, as we were making our way back to the main path, we found one of the doors had been completely slagged. As best I could tell, someone had taken a high-heat beam to it and melted it until it was unusable. It looked like the damage Spike's hottest flame breath would have made..."
"Or the plasma torch modification I gave you for your Arm Cannon?" Ghor asked hesitantly.
"Precisely," Samus admitted. "We found a way around it by bombing our way through some cracked flooring...but..."
As Samus and Spike dropped into the ventilation pathways of the room below, they froze. Down below, they could hear the sound of footsteps. Gazing through tiny holes in the grating below them, Samus could see...herself, her old Power Suit carefully walking towards the door out of the chamber, gaze sweeping back and forth in search. Feeling her breath catch in her throat, she saw the figure starting to look up. With a mental command, she shut her entire suit down to turn off every light and reduce the reflective glare of her faceplate, so the SA-X's searchlight wouldn't catch on her. She felt the cessation of the hum of Spike's armor, a sign that he'd deactivated it completely as well, though whether to avoid detection or in case of direct confrontation, Samus couldn't be sure.
The SA-X started to turn away, but stopped. It then swept its searchlight back, and Samus froze as she saw it glinting off Spike's gauntlet. Spike held perfectly still, but ready to act. Samus could see the energy gathering around his muzzle as he prepared to open a wormhole. She herself began to reactivate her own suit, in case the SA-X began an assault.
The SA-X continued to stare...and then, to Samus' and Spike's surprise, lifted its gauntleted hand to its helmet. A signal on their communication frequency was picked up, but was nothing but garbled noises and static. The same set of garbled noise and static repeated, this time seeming more insistent. In the end, the signal cut out and the SA-X continued out of the chamber.
It was a full minute before either Spike or Samus dared to breathe again. "What was that about?" Spike whispered as he reactivated his armor.
"Don't know, don't care," Samus whispered back. "Let's get to a Navigation Room, pronto!"
"What was that about?" Twilight asked curiously, once she got her nerves under control.
"No idea," Samus replied. "It was...strange, with the SA-X. Sometimes when we encountered it, it would attack us mindlessly, trying to kill us. Other times, it would only attack me...and every so often, we'd get that signal again, and each time it was more and more intense." She shook her head. "We couldn't make sense of it."
The various figures around the table thought it over for a time, trying to apply their own logic...only for it to be cut off by the sound of a balloon deflating. Pinkie Pie lay slumped against the table, her eyes wide and staring, tears at the corners. "Pinkie, darling," Rarity began, "is anything the matter?"
"I...I think I understand..." Pinkie began.
"Really?" Twilight asked eagerly. "Then tell us!"
"Don't wanna..." Pinkie whimpered. "I wanna be wrong..."
Those who knew Pinkie well stared at her, their expressions a mix of concern and terror. Spike made his way over to her and scooped her into his claws. Sitting back, he held her close and started stroking her mane. "Feeling better?" he asked as she started to relax again.
After a time, Pinkie's mane and tail floofed up again. "Meow!" she let out happily, startling quite a few laughs all around.
Once the tense atmosphere faded, Samus continued the tale. "We made it back to the Navigation Room after that without incident...but..."
"Adam, do you read?" Samus called out as she activated the Navigation Room computers. "We had a close encounter with the SA-X. We're unharmed, but the behavior it exhibited-"
"Download your system's logs for us to go over later," Adam cut in curtly. "We have other problems. Releasing the Security Lock may have been a mistake. The SA-X has invaded the water environment in Sector 4 (AQA) with several thousand X."
"That thing sure moves fast," Spike muttered worriedly. "We just saw it here, not ten or so minutes ago."
Pinkie let out a startled whimper, but quickly motioned for Samus to go on when concerned expressions were turned her way.
"It slipped in easily with the blue hatches active," Adam explained. "The creatures and systems in Sector 4 are already showing multiple irregularities. Melissa is monitoring them, and should have more information for you when you get to Sector 4's Navigation Room."
"And there's another concern," Ghor spoke up. "I've picked up several automated signals emanating from the station that I can't intercept. I believe the members of the Federation directly in charge of this station may be getting regular updates from all its systems...so we can expect Federation forces to arrive before too long. We need to have this situation handled before they get here, or we risk the X getting into their ships."
"Understood," Samus replied wearily. "We're on our way."
"At that point, any chance of taking things slow and taking breaks when we could went out the window," Samus concluded. "Even the thought of stopping for any length of time was anathema, no matter how appealing it sounded...not with a clock over our heads, endlessly ticking away..."
"Making this simultaneously our most terrifying and exhausting mission ever," Spike added, sinking back into his seat, even the memory of it exhausting him.
So what does Pinkie know I wonder?
7238530 even the wisest could not say, for Pinkie Pie knows many things. things that were...things that are...and some things, that have not yet come to pass...
7238569
So you think SA-X will be making a return appearance after this story completes then? I can buy that, the question is how screwed will it be when it shows up in My Little PWNY?
I hope that pinkie only knows that there's more than one sa-x.
7238530 Rule #1 Pinkie knows everything. Rule #2 if you ever think that pinkie doesn't know something check back with rule #1
7238580 Yah, that it's ONLY that, and not some 'oh fuck' even bigger than that. Tats, you bloody cocktease!
that has troubling implications.
You just summed up the entire game with that chapter title.
7238579 Riddley...Emperor Ing....both these past baddies have shown up again in Equestria along with others...SA-X would simply be one more...
What does Pinkie know?
Oh my god! What does Pinkie know!? Is SA-X trying to taunt or comunicate with Samus and Spike. Like "You can run but you can't hide" or what I wanna know!!!
I think you meant unharmed
7238741
It's what I typed too, grr...
7238622
What I think Pinkie has figured out is that, like some horrible, messed up mirror pool, that maybe, just maybe, each one got a different portion of the memories possessed by the suit's original owner. After all, they were all once part of Samus... but not necessarily the same part.
... Which is how I will chose to believe it went, until Tastsurou inevitably proves me wrong in a creative- and awesome- way.
well that sa-x encounter #1, excluding the boss fight there 3 more encouter to follow if i remenber correctly.
7238808
Or it could be that they were cloning Samus in there too but they didn't come out right, and that one is resisting infection somehow but can't tell them 'hey, I'm alive in here!' because it can't talk. The armor is probably a poor attempt at duplicating Samus' suit as well. That could be an alternate explanation for multiple SA-X as well... the X didn't bother making multiples, it just infected the ones already there. As far as this story goes, there seems to be at least one that's immune or resistant to infection somehow, but it can't escape because it can't communicate and tell them what's going on. Or something.
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vibrating intensely in preparation of verifying having called it
Well that was certainly interesting. In the game the only communication the SA-X gave was "ice beam to your face." I wonder what's changed?
No... don't tell me... one of them learned to feel?
Oh that's adorable. And now they have to be concerned with Pinkie scratching the furniture or lying on someone's face when they sleep.
That describes any time the SA-X is around pretty well.
That might have worked.
Oh shit...
Careful...
... I think it's trying to communicate.
I don't know, my best guess is that it wants to try and communicate, which is odd because the only interaction the SA-X in the game ever gave Samus was trying to kill her.
Neither can I.
What?
Yep.
Of course, some want to attack, some want to communicate, some want to attack only Samus, very interesting, I always forgot there are more than one SA-X. Also, trust me, you want fast, you'll GET fast.
Ah crap.
OuR. Also, yeah, while most Metroid games did have creepy moments, with the threat of the SA-X looming over you and in unfamiliar territory, not even on a planet, Metroid Fusion felt almost like a survival horror at times.
7238968 In the end would you've rather she say woof?
That... is actually really clever. The SA-X is fucking with them mentally and harassing them via commlink. Clever girl.
7239274 Ha! Nice! And yeah, I'm more a dog person.
7239142
Hmmm..what the open communication may be a few things.
For people who Know the game
It could be the SA-X communicating with the OTHER SA-X For what reason???
The other reason could be Samus's memories
She remembers Spike. The Armor the SA-X saw was familiar and it tried to make communication with her son.
But the SA-X can't communicate like that, not to our knowledge.
So it is just reacting. A conditioned....reflex from the Original Samus when she wanted to hear her son.
To know if he was okay.
It's Pinkie thinking that maybe SA-X was intelligent itself and tried to communicate?
Interesting. So, one very schitzo SA-X, or multiple ones running around?
In canon, there were at least 10 SA-X. And it's been stated that the X Parasites can copy memories. I think this one got most of Samus' memories and, through those, her personality. However, the suit is a copy, meaning that some systems aren't at full capacity, likely including communications. Pinkie is probably hopeing that the SA-X isn't a flawed copy like the Mirror Pool clones, because that means that some of them are fully sapient.
7238677 No, the X were destroyed at the end of Fusion (and Samus absorbed SA-X, allowing her to get her Ice Beam back)
7239790 ...There went my idea. I like yours a lot better. Not that I want it to be true, but it makes sense.
7240098 at the end of cannon Fusion, yes...who is to say that an SA-X did not survive somehow in this continuity?
7240138 touché
Yeah, creepy. Especially if the SA-X are coordinating their efforts via radio. Poor Pinkie, it's not fun being genre savvy and knowing something that really sucks is about to happen.
7238579 I can honestly see Fluttershy being able to calm it down and become a productive member of society. If anyone could tame the SA-X, it would be her.
7238920 .... that makes a scary amount of sense. But it would also be a great way to give Samus some back up later.
7240205 It might also help explain the one SA-X that actually "Helped" Samus take out the Omega Metroid
7240612 Very true.
7240629 the solution here would be to splice her with something with an extremely high resistance to cold, or simply tailor-engineer a gene-splice from scratch directly from her existing DNA to the same effect. This is all after the fact, of course, but now that they have the perceived down-time (they don't know about Ridley) it's a thought they can possibly look into.
7240665
Except that the issue gets addressed as part of Fusion.
Adam already stated they were working on Varia Suit data. The Varia Suit protects from all temperature extremes.
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7240750
The Varia Suit will indeed protect Samus from temperature extremes, but that's only a temporary fix given how frequently Samus's suit loses functionality when damaged in certain ways.
Anyways, my best guesses: The SA-X shown is giving either an "all-clear" or "proceed with attack" signal... or The SA-X shown is trying to communicate with Samus or Spike.
7241067
Exactly
I'm worried about what Pinkie knows.
8656429
What Pinkie knows, just in the show, that others don’t know or that others don’t know she knows fills several filing cabinets. You’re not the only one nervous...
8780994
I agree and I think that she knows that SA-X was trying to replace Samus the same way that a rouge clone would do to its original.
SA-X prime the most like Samus