02. Blip
It lunged at her.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Samus could soon make out every detail of the soulless, black, abyssal eyes from a mere couple feet away from her. Even more apparent was the snarling, dual mouths and sets of teeth from the corrupted monstrosity, illuminated by the golden light of her charged Power Beam shot.
With her cannon squarely locked on the target, Samus released the charged shot with honed timing and precision. With a sudden cannon blast and a sickly, feral death scream, the mutated creature was sent sailing back whence it came when the ball of energy slammed into its chest. From the amount of residual blood spatter that trickled down her visor, Samus thought the damn thing was torn right in half.
But as Samus stood up, it seemed that wasn’t the case. The abomination lay motionless on the ground ahead, a couple feet back from it initially struck out at her. The downpour was washing away the quickly pooling blood from its chest while its tongues lolled out of its mouths.
A quick glance around her, followed by a confirmation from her barren motion tracker, Samus marched over to her downed enemy and gave it a quick look-over. At this angle, it certainly had hooves, so she confirmed she wasn’t too crazy… yet. She further confirmed the whittling away of whatever coat or fur this creature had on account of the Phazon infection and corruption.
So much of this creature looked… unnatural.
But in the end... not unlike so many other monstrosities Samus had come across in her travels and missions.
[Scanning…]
[Scan Complete]
[Entity Unknown. Genetic and Zoological data suggest equine relation, likely pony, though the presence of the horn complicates this link, and matches no known ungulate. Unknown, aetheric force detected flowing through the body, though it is unconfirmed whether this force can be called upon at will. Further unknown if this ability was present before Phazon corruption. More research and data collection will be needed to complete this logbook entry.]
[Lifeform status: Alive; Critically Wounded]
Samus blinked.
Wait… alive?!
It spit a massive globule of Phazon-laden saliva right onto her visor.
“FUCK!” Samus shouted…
...and then stumbled away. She was literally seeing colors as her defensive shielding sizzled at the contact of the mutagenic saliva. Wiping her visor clean with her hand and further helped by the rainfall, Samus aimed at the now-screaming, mortally wounded abomination.
She executed it with a single power-beam round to its head. And then confirmed its death properly.
Bastard.
Samus glanced back over her shoulder. More feral, inhuman screeches…
...and more…
...and even more.
She saw swarms of silhouettes moving through the veil of the forest and the rain, and even more than that, her motion tracker lit up like a metropolis. From all sides, her systems cautioned a horde of hostiles about to envelop her position from all around.
Ahhh hell.
Deciding to pick her battles again, Samus was more than content with getting back to her ship and letting its defenses take care of the dirty work. She pivoted on her heels and started running in that direction, intending to just fight off any of these creatures that got in her way.
This plan was promptly interrupted when two massive blasts of energy erupted on either side in front of her, stopping her mid-step. These coalesced instantly into spiraling pillars of neon-blue energy that disappeared as quickly as they were known, leaving two of the same unicorn entities in their wake, snarling and screeching.
Samus immediately threw her entire body backwards and into a roll to put distance between her two assailants. Once back to her feet, she fired a quick torrent of Power Beam rounds into the unicorn on her right, all but one of which struck it in the chest and forced it to stumble in place. The Hunter jogged horizontally to strafe her target and finish it off with one last blow to the head but her entire world was rocked when she felt herself being lifted off the ground.
What the hell?!
Eyes wide, Samus glanced all around her when she found herself horizontal to the ground, with some modestly transparent, intangible field blanketing her entire body. Her suit gladly reminded her of the rather obvious development:
[WARNING! Unknown Force acting upon Varia Suit!]
Thinking quickly, she was able to get one last good shot off on her original target, dropping it with one good Power Beam round between the eyes…
...all before she was thrown with frightening force against the nearest, fully-formed tree, back-first. She cried out through gritted teeth as she struck the solid tree-trunk.
“GAH!”
Bark splintered and shattered at the point of her impact before she fell to her briefly-wobbly knees. Her defensive shielding, unfortunately, did little to protect her from non-energized melee strikes… nor getting tossed like a ragdoll against a solid environmental object.
Shame.
Now kneeling while recovering from the sudden disorientation, Samus was much too quick on the draw for the remaining unicorn to follow up on its success—she made short work of it with a single charged Power Beam blast to its head, which blew it apart like a melon.
No sooner did Samus get back to both of her feet than a wave of these creatures burst through the flora wall of her immediate area. The first thing she noticed when she snapped her gaze to them was the distinct lack of horns on their heads. Quickly putting two-and-two together that the lighting of the horns produced this telekinetic force that threw her for a literal loop, Samus went on a quick offensive.
Through the chorus of screeching and cries that seemed to overwhelm her sonic inhibitors at times, Samus unleashed a fusillade of Power Beams straight into the wave of horn-less entities. She swept her field of fire over her mass of attackers, watching as individuals cried out hauntingly and stumbled over themselves when they were fatally struck.
What didn’t exactly help was seeing some of them ‘revive,’ mortally wounded with holes in their bodies, missing limbs, bleeding profusely… yet still attempting to get back into the fight before they collapsed and died.
Goddamn these guys take a lot to bring down…
Samus had little time to reflect on this development though. Once she had cut down a sufficient number of the wave in front of her, she turned on her heels and started sprinting back towards her gunship, knowing full well that she was going to run into another group of them courtesy of her motion tracker.
Just a little farther…
Samus burst through the next band of brush, finally arriving at the enclave her ship was nestled within… but three more bright flashes of blue cut her off, revealing three gnashing and snarling unicorns in their wakes.
Not even flinching, Samus hunched low and launched herself into the air, aiming to just sail over her new attackers and take refuge in her ship to outsource the defense…
...but that once again proved easier said than done.
Her eyes widened when she felt her stomach lurch, as the nigh-invisible hand of the mysterious unicorn force coiled itself around her midsection, stopping her in mid-air.
She was further rocked when what seemed like a few energy bolts—or whatever it was—were shot at her and absorbed by her shield generator, registering damage. Battle senses going into overdrive and her heart pounding in her chest, Samus was able to scour her immediate surroundings. She homed in on the one unicorn that was holding her in place as evident by its horn being perpetually lit up blue.
Samus leveled her cannon at the offending unicorn and fired four times. All rounds found their target and the last one struck her enemy right on the horn, killing it and letting her drop unceremoniously to the soppy earth beneath her.
Another bolt of mysterious ‘energy’ slammed into her side as she recovered, making her stumble a little bit before she could properly counter with another salvo of Power Beam rounds, neutralizing the second threat in the wake of another death roar. Now having understood a modicum of the threat she was facing, Samus was able to side-step another energy shot sent her way.
She began to feel the binding, tendrillic hold of this barely-seen aetheric energy around her armored body once more, but once again Samus was much too quick for her corrupted enemy. She sent a single missile sailing its way right into her enemy’s chest, the concussive blast then making short work of the unicorn’s bodily structure... and sending what remained sailing backward several feet.
All that remained was just pure carnage in her area: three mutilated bodies with massive amounts of blood having been spilled onto the ground below.
She was free from immediate assault, and her motion tracker having pretty much turned entirely red by now, Samus somersaulted into the air and stuck her landing atop her ship’s elevator. After her ship’s systems doing a system-level handshake with her Varia Suit, she dropped back down into the safety of her cockpit, disengaged her Suit, and sat down properly at her controls.
Her finger roamed across her instruments and holographic touchscreens.
“I’ll let the defense turrets deal with you guys,” she spoke aloud to herself as she stared into her ship’s defensive grid configuration.
The soft warnings of energy shield activations didn’t bother her much, as thankfully, her ship’s shielding was more than capable of standing up to more incoming unicorn’s energy blasts without any issue. It was built to protect her from the fire of Pirate capital ships, after all.
Her motion tracker was still red all around her, but Samus knew well that it would thin out pretty soon when she activated her ship’s defenses. She was just about to execute the command, when a familiar—yet foreign—alert caught Samus’ attention right before she engaged the turrets.
[WARNING! Space Pirate signatures detected! Pirate Forces en route to your location!]
Samus could feel her pupils shrinking to pinpricks as she inhaled sharply.
Oh no…
She scrambled to another window on her computer and widened the area of the motion tracker.
Sure enough, heading straight to her area from the direction of the impact crater and Pirate base, there were indeed blips that her systems recognized as Space Pirate signatures. She pursed her lips as she watched them approach her general area for a couple of seconds. Samus deduced that these blips were either a patrol or vanguard of some sort sent out to retake any lost territory from these creatures…
…or they heard or detected the happenings of the last couple of minutes, and were sending troops to investigate.
In the end, it didn’t matter what the reason was. All Samus knew was that she needed to get the hell out of here immediately. And with the Pirates in this close proximity, it wouldn’t serve her interests of ‘stealth’ to activate any defensive turrets right now.
“Alright… let's get fuck outta here…” she said aloud as she began starting her ship's engines and anti-gravity generators. It wasn’t more than a few tense seconds—with bright, flickering ambience from outside due to energy fire lighting up her forest enclave—until she was beginning to float up towards the forest canopy.
Samus’ relief turned into abject concern, however, when she spotted almost a dozen unicorns stepping forward from the horde of Phazon-corrupted ‘ponies.’ Said concern morphed into alarm when they all fired up their horns at once…
…and her ship ceased its movements completely, mere moments before she was about to break the forest canopy.
You have GOT to be kidding me…
Samus increased the power of her anti-gravity generators and her engines. No such luck, and in fact, she felt the lurching of her ship as it was partially willed lower from its ascent. Samus moved to desperately dislodge her ship from this unseen hold with extreme urgency.
“Oh now you’ve really got to be fuckin’ kidding me ri—WHOA!”
Samus’ back slammed into her pilot’s chair as her ship’s upward thrust was completely negated, and she plummeted to the earth like a stone. The nose of her gunship slammed into the ground, a hit that the Hunter-class gunship’s shields were most certainly not designed to protect against. She had strapped in at the last possible second, which prevented her face from acquainting itself with the control panel…
...but as she shook off the impact, she almost wished that she had been unconscious as to not hear that horrific cracking and metallic bending sound coming from the front of her ship. That had definitely broken a thing or two.
She couldn’t be bothered with figuring out what the damage was at the moment, even with the constant stream of alerts streaming over her ship’s HUD. Samus took manual controls back, and re-oriented her ship with great difficulty despite the struggle with this telekinetic force.
Come on… come on…
Samus flicked her eyes constantly back towards her motion tracker, which showed the Pirates nearly on top of her. If they got just a little bit closer they would probably be able to catch sight of her bright-orange ship in the middle of a green and brown forest… or at the very least hear the engines.
In a game of ethereal tug of war, Samus was able to free herself just a little bit, before her ship once again was willed slowly back towards the earth despite the thrust of her engines. She didn’t have any more time to play this game though. Going over her options in a flash, she armed her ship’s turrets, which promptly found their targets on the offending unicorns literally holding her back. She’d take her chances.
Samus remarked as she engaged her weaponry:
“Fuck… OFF!”
And with that, the four turrets on Samus’ gunship fired off a salvo of explosive rounds right into the small masses of unicorns and ponies, obliterating them where they stood. Her last-resort defense certainly lit up this patch of forest, briefly setting the vegetation alight which was quickly quelled by the falling rain. If the Space Pirates were in the dark as to what was going on here, Samus figured they definitely knew something was here.
Not that she cared right now… so long as she could skedaddle.
And in a literal explosion of fire, flora, bodies, and limbs, Samus’ ship was finally free of the foreign force acting upon it. Still taking manual controls, she piloted her ship up and out of her little enclave, clearing the canopy and the tops of the fog-blanketed trees entirely. She could’ve sworn she heard what sounded like Pirate weapon’s fire in the distance as they engaged what remained of the horde of corrupted beasts.
That was okay by her, as she was totally fine with letting them clean up the mess.
Her systems—along with a healthy dose of speculation—told her that she wasn’t detected by the Space Pirate forces yet… and Samus had every intention of keeping that a reality. And with that goal in mind, she leveled her ship off and disappeared into the clouds as she further put distance between her and that particular section of the forest… and the impact crater.
But getting away from physical danger at the moment presented a host of new problems that her systems were all too happy to inform her of:
[ALERT: Catastrophic damage to Cloaking Module! Detection profile significantly increased!]
[ALERT: Hypercomm Buoy destroyed! Long-range communications and transmissions offline!]
Samus cast a death-dealing glare at her systems as her ship continued to cruise through the cloud layer… as if by force of will alone, the broken modules would magically repair themselves immediately.
God. DAMNIT.
The first alert was of pressing priority to her. Samus ran over her options through her head at lightning speed, but all roads led to the fact that she needed to ground herself soon. Her cloaking module provided all the needed stealth and dampening to evade even the best Space Pirate detection systems… and remaining airborne with it severely damaged meant it was only a matter of time before they found her.
She flicked her eyes over a holographic map of the local topography she was passing over while she considered just jetting off back into space in retreat. She conceded that there would still be a high chance that her signatures would be detected leaving the atmosphere of the planet, and even though she’d be safe as a result, it could send the Pirates packing.
She couldn’t take that risk. Not without the Federation alert of the full strength of what she was dealing with on the planet.
And that in and of itself presented a problem in the way of her destroyed long range communications node. She couldn’t even alert the Federation of even the most basic defenses around the crater that she snapped pictures of.
The most important thing right now, though, was to get out of the air and somewhere where she wouldn’t be easily spotted—somewhere ideally outside of the Pirate patrol zone.
Samus narrowed her eyes when a structure came into view on the map she was using.
“Is that… a castle?” she asked out loud.
Checking her own radar and detection systems, nothing indicated that she was being tracked or followed in any way. It seemed that she had escaped the eyes of the Space Pirates… for now, and if only just. She pushed her controls forward ever so slightly, descending her to just below the cloud level.
Sure enough, as if Samus was flying in from the sea—a literal sea of forest—the figurative shoreline appeared to be a small settlement. Samus narrowed her eyes in deep thought as she took in the town-sized area that drew ever closer. Though admittedly, her eyes were much more drawn to the massive castle that seemed to spring out from right in the center of it… looking from a distance like it was literally sprouting out of the ground like a tree.
And as she drew even closer than that, she spied within its walls a rather deep courtyard, fully shielded from view save for the top-down. And it appeared that her ship would easily fit, despite the dilapidated and partially-compromised structural integrity. She made the split second decision.
“Let’s see how lucky we get…”
Samus accelerated forward, further drawing her eyes over the clearly abandoned settlement as she aimed for this castle’s courtyard. Despite its outwardly desolate appearance, the castle itself appeared in somewhat decent structural condition, at least the parts that looked to be made of crystal versus stone… though she figured she could get a better look soon enough. Fully over the courtyard, she drew her ship to a hovering stop and carefully lowered herself into her new refuge.
Her anti-gravity generators were whipping much of the overgrown grass and plants inside until her landing gear compressed safely against the secure ground. Samus then cut her engines and just… waited.
The natural quiet of a land devoid of life returned, and her ship’s systems did not detect any pursuit or any other unusual activity from the Space Pirates. Nevertheless, she kept her eyes diligently glued to her systems, flicking her gaze between each of the various alerts, idle warnings, and placid data feeds.
Nothing stirred. All was quiet once more, with only the rain falling atop of her ship to keep her company within her extra layer of castle walls.
Samus then drew her thoughts back to her choice of sanctuary: a rather prominent castle, despite it having clearly seen better—and more peaceful—times. She could explore it a little later. But for now, it was time to figure out exactly how the damage her systems warned her about, manifested physically.
Welp. Let’s see how fucked I actually am…
She got out of her seat and made her way out onto the top of her ship via her elevator, her face being greeted once again by the welcome, persistent rain. Cooling off what remained of any nerves and adrenaline from her previous engagement, she hopped onto the ground with a gentle grunt upon making groundfall. Her boots in no way sank into the ground like the forest, courtesy of the concrete-like material.
Alright. Am I fucked?
Shrugging off her jump and righting her posture, Samus casually strode in front of her ship. She could feel her natural stoicism melting away, revealing the raw layer of sheer annoyance underneath it with every step she took... and with every inch of the nose of her gunship coming into view.
By the time she was standing in front of her ship, she could feel the scowl weighing down her face. She put both her hands on her hips as she stared at the crumpled, conical nose of her pride and joy.
Looks pretty fucked to me.
She pursed her lips and nodded a couple times as she now considered her situation in full once again. While the Pirates hadn’t seemingly detected her, she was pushed into her own little corner with very little means of escape at the moment. Any attempt to break out through the atmosphere would not exactly be guaranteed to be not tracked.
Nor could she get the Federation to bail her out—long range communications abilities to the nearest extranet node were completely destroyed. Or at least, that’s what she gleaned from reading over the alerts on her wrist console that had popped up during the heat of battle.
Her irritation was welling up exponentially, but Samus took a deep breath and exhaled. Wishing everything worked the way it did twenty minutes ago wasn’t going to solve her issues in the present.
Samus keyed in a couple commands on her console and initiated her ship’s auto-repair function… to which she could hear the whirring of the internal machinery getting right to work, much as it diligently did when she made a pseudo crash-landing on Aether.
Her wrist vibrated in a most… peculiar manner. Samus rolled her eyes as she brought her console back up to view:
[Auto-repair functions initiated. Repair status: 0%]
[ERROR: Long Range Communications Buoy has suffered catastrophic damage. Auto-repair systems cannot remedy. Please seek appropriate servicing at the nearest certified shipyard.]
[WARNING: Cloaking Module has sustained heavy damage. Repair time projections significantly increased.]
Of course, of course…
“It can never be just an easy one, can it. Always gotta prove me right somehow,” Samus said out loud.
With that getting underway, and as the slowing rain continued to fall on her, Samus decided to draw her gaze over her current surroundings… or rather, her literal surroundings of the stone walls of her courtyard sanctuary. Any artificially planted flowers, trees, and plants that were on display had long since died… and instead replaced by moss and nature’s own personal choice for flora.
Flora that had no problem claiming these walls as its own.
If Samus had to hazard a guess, she would say this castle hadn’t been maintained in the last twenty years or so.
Each of the windows that overlooked the area were dark… barren. Either completely open where the deathly-quiet air would flow through, or covered with some kind of stained glass that was in no way properly cleaned nor maintained. This, on top of the horrors in the forest confirmed to her in full that there was indeed a civilization here.
A grand one, at that.
The questions that occupied part of her mind now were… what happened to this society? Were the Pirates solely to blame? The Phazon? Both?
These questions continued to rattle within her head, until she noticed something. Out of the corner of her eye, through a window that she thought she had scanned over… something was there that certainly wasn’t before. A mass of color peeking through that didn’t seem to belong in the slightest.
Samus shot her gaze to that very window. The moment she did, a purple head ducked back into cover behind the window. The Hunter blinked… her systems didn’t detect any Pirate signatures, but sparing a glance at her motion tracker which she hadn’t done since she put her literal boots on the ground, she indeed could see some unknown movement being returned.
Out of an abundance of caution though, Samus engaged her Suit with a bright flash of light and quietly stepped behind the cover of her ship opposite of the window about two stories up. She held her arm cannon at the low ready whilst still continuing to peek out back towards the window.
The same figure sloooooowly poked out again, and with her eyes glued to the window, Samus could now discern the shape of something distinctly reptilian, with the facial structure of what she would consider a…
A… dragon?
She shook her head, attempting to eject those thoughts from her mind… until they were promptly reinserted when the figure raised a clawed hand visible through the window, and waved tentatively.
Samus blinked, but she lowered her cannon just a tad, and poked her visor out a bit more so she could optically zoom in.
What the…
It stood up even more and sure enough with her own eyes, she saw what appeared to be a rather muscular looking dragon that was standing on two legs… and waving out at her curiously.
[Scanning…]
[Scan complete]
[Unknown entity. Reptilian and Saurian traits observed. Logbook entry will be updated when more necessary information is gleaned.]
Samus rested her hand on her cannon and steeled herself.
“Hello?!” she called out… which apparently startled the creature, as she saw it recoil, its eyes widening in surprise.
Samus didn’t sense any hostility from the creature, nor did she suspect it was affiliated with the Space Pirates. Nevertheless, she kept ready to start shooting at any second should that change.
She called out again, casting the figurative gamble that the creature could understand her in the slightest:
“Identify yourself!”
Of all things Samus expected, it wasn’t a voice that had a pitch identical to an average human teenage boy.
“H-Hi?”
And even less so, a response in English.
Samus blinked. Hard. And again called back tentatively:
“You can understand me??”
A response came without much hesitation:
“...am I not supposed to?”
Samus nearly rolled her eyes at that—she wasn’t blind to the slight sarcastic tone to that… but even the use of sarcasm further underscored the point: she really couldn’t believe her luck at finding someone not affiliated with the Federation, seemingly fluent in English.
She was about to come back to that when the creature had its attention drawn to something just beyond the side of the window… and began whispering to someone out of the Hunter’s view. Whatever this conversation was, it was pretty animated, based on the facial expressions and the hand gestures.
So… clearly intelligent life. And smart-ass life.
The draconic creature then turned back to her and beckoned with his hand.
“You uh… wanna come inside? Meet you halfway?”
She wasn’t really sure how to feel about that. But at the very least, it was a nicer invitation than being snuck up on like with U-Mos... and then suddenly assigned a whole ass mission to save a planet.
Umm… okay…
Be that as it may, this was certainly one of the more… colloquial meetings that she had in a good while. She sensed no threat from him, and in a call back to her own experiences to make sure and keep her humanity as intact as possible in these missions, she nodded.
Samus answered back a bit awkwardly:
“Okay… sure,”
Samus stood up carefully from out of cover but kept her hand right atop her cannon lest anyone try anything. Once fully into view, she looked back up toward the window, to which the dragon silently pointed to her left—towards one of the archways leading out of the courtyard.
“Go through the archway there. There’s a massive set of stairs you can’t miss. Go up and then go straight. I’ll uhh… meet you at the corner,” he said.
To confirm, Samus stood up straight and pointed to the same archway.
“That one?”
He nodded.
“Yup! See you soon!” he said, and then disappeared from the window, ostensibly to ‘meet her halfway.’
She glanced back at her motion tracker, and as expected, she was seeing a single blip moving in the general direction that she was instructed to do so. But as Samus kept her guard up and glided out of the courtyard through the designated archway, one question arose prominently in her mind:
Who was that creature conversing with? Shouldn’t there have been at least two blips on her tracker?
She could hopefully answer that later.
Out of the rain and carefully watching all her meters, Samus was still able to spare glances at her new, sheltered surroundings. Inside this castle proper, things seemed much like she would describe a castle to anyone… except instead of stone everywhere, there was lots of crystal. It was interesting to see some manner of her reflection on almost every wall and floor as she passed by.
She remembered that her ‘host’ was a couple floors up, and coming through the archway revealed the legitimately gargantuan stairway upward, as promised. It appeared that it would bring her up the entire three floors.
Samus started ascending the set of the odd hybrid crystal-stone stairs, and took note at more of her surroundings as she continued forward… namely, the occasional stained-glass windows that let what little light in there was from the rainy day outside. What stood out to her the most were the depictions within the stained glass:
Ponies…
So, we’ve got ponies and dragons… sort of. Every mission has its charm.
Indeed, Samus let her guard down just that much so she could study one of the larger windows. Even though it had faded and was covered with so much dust, she’d probably die from suffocation, she could observe the sheer amount of color that was present in the scene being painted. The scene looked like a bunch of multi-colored ponies just frollicking in the field in front of this very castle, and basking in the sunshine.
And amongst the depictions she could see horns on some of their little heads… as well as some wings on other ponies, too.
Unicorns. Interesting… which means that those ‘ponies’ in the forest gotta be what’s left after the Phazon had their way with them. Shame.
And… winged ponies? What’s the name uhhh... Pegasus?
Straight down her path was a cross-hall where she could hang a proper right turn and meet… whatever or whomever had beckoned her inside.
Rounding the corner though wasn’t necessary when a rather purple figure poked out from around said corner, stopping Samus in her tracks. She lay her hand on her cannon once again out of reflex and steadied her breathing, but did not feel the need to shoulder her weapon.
Yet.
For a few seconds that felt like they lasted minutes, Samus stared at this draconic creature and studied it… with it seemingly doing the same back to her. Based on what she could see right now, it was just under six feet tall and a smidge below eye-level, completely purple save for a light, almost seafoam green ‘underbelly’ portion that extended from their mandible all the way down their torso…
...and apparently back towards its tail as they stepped out completely from behind the corner, even if a little bit tentatively. And Samus thought that the ‘underbelly’ observation was probably not technically correct since, to her partial-astonishment, the dragon stood on its hind legs and walked like any human or other biped would, naturally.
Broad shoulders, angular jaw, a pair of draconic wings, and a muscular chest and core stood out prominently, as did the green, upright scale plating that ran from the top of its head down its tail. But what stood out even more than that were it’s bright green eyes… one that Samus could stare into without words and already confirm sapience and intelligent thought.
He spoke out finally, cutting through the tense, awkward silence:
“Hey there, stranger.”
Samus needed an extra second to take in such a… colloquial meeting like this, but nevertheless, her reply was somewhat just as awkward.
“Hi… sorry for staring. I’ve seen some interesting things in my travels but this is kinda up there,” she said, deciding to just go for it and accept the galactic miracle that they can understand each other without any translation software between them.
He cocked his head.
“Wait… so you’re not from this planet?” He asked.
And before Samus could even respond to that, his face shone of one connecting some dots and coming to conclusions… and his expression hastily darkened. So much so that Samus almost felt the urge to take a step back to potentially diffuse any situation that would arise.
“So… you’re with those invaders?” he challenged.
Ah… that explains some things.
Samus stepped forward, holding her hand and cannon up by her chest and urged calm as she put forth some descriptions to immediately distance herself from his accusation:
“Easy there… I’m assuming you’re talking about the Space Pirates, right? Their giant flying machines floating in the sky? Big hulking bipedal creatures with armor and energy weapons? Got three hinges on their jaw?” she asked, gesturing appropriately.
The dragon blinked the coming storm of anger out of his eyes and nodded slowly.
“Y-Yeah! We—I see their weird, giant chariot things flying around occasionally. Sometimes some of their soldiers pass through the town. Not sure what they’re looking for though. Not much left…
“But… you’re not with them? These… ‘Space Pirates?’” he asked hopefully, snapping right back to the point.
Samus shook her head.
“Nope. In fact, the reason why I came to this planet was to see what they’re up to, and ultimately remove their presence here,” she said, purposefully leaving out the details of the Phazon until she could gather more information… for now.
She could see his shoulders relax and get his feet back into a much more neutral stance… and she could also see the questions burning in the dragon’s eyes, and sought to pre-empt that.
She motioned, open-handed to him.
“And since you’re not with them, I’m not your enemy. And you’re not mine. It’s… a long story.”
A sudden but young, smooth, and feminine voice broke into the conversation.
“Well, I happen to like long stories! And so does Spike here!”
Both Samus and the dragon glanced suddenly towards the sound of that, and found a violet-coated pony making her way around the corner. She appeared a good foot and a half shorter than the dragon, sported an indigo mane and tail with a lone, pink stripe down the side of her mane-part and down her tail. All this was accompanied by large, bright lavender eyes, and a hopeful smile.
And what stood out most to Samus was that horn on her head, which she regarded with a little more than passing interest…
...and residual stress. She tightened her hold on her cannon by just that much.
Even more than that though, Samus realized that this unicorn only just appeared on her motion tracker. That certainly raised a question or two in her head.
Spike seemed to cringe the moment the unicorn revealed herself, and he turned to speak… reasoning with her through gritted teeth:
“Twilight… it’s not safe for you right now, especially in your physical form… double especially with strangers around!”
Samus opted to just listen right now, and observe this interaction while she stewed in her own thoughts of this… rather unorthodox meeting of intelligent life on an otherwise abandoned planet. These two had already said more than U-Mos had during her entire time on Aether, so this was already proving to be more… entertaining in a sense.
Among other things, such as remembering names.
Twilight and Spike.
Twilight, however, seemed more than okay to dismiss those concerns.
“I think it’s fine, Spike… besides, look at her!” she gestured to the armored Hunter. “She…”
Twilight turned to her for a second:
“‘She,’ right?”
Samus had to stifle the tiniest of chuckles but nodded once.
“She doesn’t look like she’s with the Invaders… she said so herself! And she sure as heck doesn’t look like she’s with... her,” she said.
Samus cocked her head again at the mention of yet another, yet nameless entity… one that clearly they’re afraid of when she arrived on the scene. Nor was she blind to the clear relief written on their faces at this fact.
‘Her?’
Spike sighed out and balled his hands a bit, countering protectively:
“Twi… you’re too trusting.”
“The tenets of Friendship don’t go out the window… despite everything that’s happened,” she reasoned.
“You and I both know this first hand, Spike.”
Spike wanted to offer more resistance to that, but when he spared another glance back towards Samus, she watched him sigh out and accept the situation. Twilight then nuzzled the dragon’s arm—grateful—before she stepped forward this time.
“I’m sorry if Spike was aggressive earlier. These are trying times, and he’s been very protective of me as a result. He really means well though,” she said, glancing behind her and offering him a sweet smile.
One which he nodded to and reciprocated. Samus smirked under her visor.
“With that out of the way…
“So you’re the mysterious visitor that landed that weird, loud chariot in our courtyard!” she said.
The unicorn closed the distance and looked straight up into and through Samus’ visor with great friendliness… and more than a comfortable air of intrigue lacing her words as. Samus could feel Twilight scanning over every inch of her armor.
The Hunter was first and foremost stunned slightly by the sheer forwardness of Twilight… whether she sensed no danger from her or otherwise. But, she reasoned that crazier things had happened to her in her travels. This was just one of the more interesting. Those two were sometimes mutually exclusive in her line of work.
The unicorn then extended her right hoof out to her and introduced brightly:
“I’m Twilight Sparkle! Princess of Friendship! Welcome to Equestria” she said…
...her expression sullied, averting her gaze solemnly.
“...what’s left of it.”
Not trying to think on everything too long since she was so graciously not attacked on sight by her new hosts, Samus decided to up the ante just a little bit. Samus brought her hand and cannon up to her neck and unsealed her helmet, and after a quick depressurization process, Samus gingerly removed her headpiece and placed it under her right arm. She then shook her hair and ponytail free… the entire display which brought no small measure of surprise to the two.
Samus put her armored hand forward, took Twilight’s hoof in her grasp, and shook firmly.
“Samus Aran… uhh… Bounty Hunter,” she introduced in kind.
Twilight’s smile rebounded as they shook on it.
“Pleasure to meet you, Samus! Oh! And this is Spike,” she said, gesturing back towards him, to which he crossed his arms and nodded once while smirking.
“Nice to meet you, Samus!”
“Likewise, Spike.”
With oddly straight-forward introductions out of the way, Twilight piped up again:
“From what I heard, you’re trying to help drive off the Invaders… or the ‘Space Pirates’ as you called them?”
Samus nodded.
“Yeah… well, technically yes, in a manner of speaking,” she said, intentionally vague… but noticing an opportunity, Samus decided to divulge just a little more:
“We’re kind of in a war right now. And that’s not to mention the Phazon that’s on this planet…”
Twilight looked quite confused, as expected.
“War? And Phazon? What’s that? Is that...”
She brought her hoof to her chin and glanced elsewhere.
“Wait… it can’t… you’re not talking about…” she glanced back up at Samus, wide-eyed.
Samus lowered her cannon fully to her side and continued talking with the gesture aid of her left hand.
“Like I said earlier… long story. And I’ve also got a bunch of questions too. Happy to exchange information for information?”
Spike cut in:
“Maybe we’d wanna move this somewhere more… comfortable and secure?” he ‘suggested,’ to which Twilight understood completely.
“Yeah… that’s probably a good idea Spike. Samus you seem like you’ve traveled quite a bit. Would you like to join us? Seems like there’s… a lot to discuss.”
Spike stepped forward with a smirk.
“We got plenty of supplies. Happy to whip something up if you’re hungry or thirsty, too,” he offered.
Twilight nodded back to him, and now both her hosts turned back to her, awaiting her response.
The environmental and threat-level whiplash was not lost on her. Barely half an hour ago she was blasting through hordes of corrupted ponies, and had a couple close calls with some type of telekinetic force in an attempt to not alert the Space Pirates to her presence. And now, she was being taken in by a non-corrupted pony and her dragon friend with very few questions asked, with the offer of nourishment and the promise of more information.
They were being much too friendly for their own good, but it was a friendliness that was espoused by her Chozo caretakers since she was the littlest of girls… and such an overture brought her no small barrage of memories from her past. Hell, Samus even understood completely when Spike seemed to want to rip her head off initially.
She wouldn't’ve let it happen of course… but she understood.
Samus nodded once, offering up a soft, lopsided smirk.
“Uhhh… okay! Thank you…”
Twilight beamed brightly, her eyes becoming as wide as half her face as she scampered off to Spike’s side. A bit of warmth permeated through her core as she moved to join them.
“Of course! Come, this way!” she said.
Samus nodded as she followed, placing her helmet back on her head so she could disengage her suit in full. And yet, as she trod along behind Twilight and Spike at an easy pace, she watched as Twilight—wings folded on her back—disappeared around the corner first, followed by Spike. She then spared a glance at her motion tracker before she followed in kind.
There was only one blip.
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Will this story have original Metroid aliens in it?
10776799
I imagine that would only happen if Space Pirates brought any with them. Not all planets in our galaxy and beyond will have the same beasts and animals on it, so Samus is going to be learning/fighting all new monsters.
Uhh...there being no motion blip for Twilight, her wings not being mentioned, and the talk of "what's left of Equestria" has me very worried...especially since the description of Spike sounded like post-finale Spike in terms of size and body shape.
How...how dark is the Phazoned Equestria going to get? Especially in terms of...characters we know?
10776876
FUCK I forgot to mention Twi’s wings. They’re there. I’m just so used to them I forgot about them. I’ll add them in. Thanks!!!
...the hell's happened here? At first I was confused as to whether Samus landed at Twilight's castle or the Everfree castle given the mention of a courtyard, but...no, Twilight's got a courtyard. And...an ability to be immaterial? Even when "physical" she's not showing up on the motion sensor so....odd. The Pirates already have a presence at the Impact Crater, so I wonder what they wanted from the town? Samus's communications being knocked out is rather unfortunate. I wonder if she'll find some form of substitute like in Equis 1. Different story I know, but can't help but be curious.
10776876
Added the wings quickly. Should’ve remembered that, thanks again.
As for your question, I intend for this story to be a lot darker, more in tune with the games. There of course will be lots of glimmers of light, many victories, giggles, and all the good stuff. But there’s gonna be A LOT less... airiness than say, Equis.
English is influence from the mirror.
... will Samus get magic?
Hey if there’s not many left I’m sure Samus can just get all the ponies, dragons and other intelligent creatures and drop them off to Villager’s planet. (Animal Crossing)
Ok so survivors (Yay) one of them is a ghost or apparition (Not so yay) so now in the next chapter (when it comes out) we get info about what happened twenty years ago and who the unfortunate souls to become corrupted are so yeah this is already starting to turn into a horror situation and my heart is pounding just thinking about the habitants corrupted by the Phazon
This is really good!! If this was a game and I was in control.. I would not make progress til I've scanned every thing. And I mean. Everything lol
Always add some extra head shots. Just to be safe.
Magic OP. Nerf, please.
Wait, they're still smart enough to coordinate?!
Oh, dear. Something tells me this is gonna be a lot messier than the old story.
The mention of a she has me worried we have a corrupted Princess around here somewhere... and probably not Chrysalis like the first story.
This looks good. I wonder what are Twilight and Spike's current ages there?
Where are the other princesses? Where did the phazon seed crash?
And who is her?
Too many questions...
Twi taking the story title a bit literally I see. There's plenty of room for the details: we know Phazon can both create actual-ass ghosts and play interplanar fuckery that might just resemble ghosts, and given who we're talking about and that she's coherent she may have been able to control the process -- so who knows exactly what's up just yet.
Careful Samus, the day's still young and you're on a planet due for a whole ass saving
10777337
Phazon-enhanced Chrysalis was quite hard in the other crossover. I shudder at the though of a phazon-corrupted alicorn...
Well it wouldn't be a Metroid story/game if Samus didn't have a stroke of bad luck leaving her with the minimum vital.
As of the description of Spike and Twilight, seems to me we are post final and the cataclysm seem to have stripe Twilight of a portion of her power or she's now a mere manifestation of what she once was.
...Is that TWILIGHT Twilight, or the spirit of the Tree?
So, a possibly ghost-like Twilight and a "her".
I can see it now, A bit of phason was first to arrive, and Twi being Twi, decided to experiment. Luna came around to check in on Twi, experiment goes boom, and now we have a transparent nerd and Nightmare Moon Mk II-Phason edition.
All this talk about this 'her' has me getting some.... PARTICULAR.... flashbacks.
10777267
Well we know that the Phazon meteor crashed in the Forest since the Pirates set up shop right on top of it. So very likely the Everfree Forest.
Great questions though
Worth it though. Wondering if Twi is a ghost.
10776810
Right you are!
Please don't tell me that Twilight is dead.
So the motion censor didn’t detect Twilight only when she appeared before Samus?
Strange indeed...
Honestly, not the weirdest structure she has seen.
Anybody else get the EXTREME urge to scan them? Gotta get the full logbook.
Please tell me it's not who I think it is; I got used to Her being dead the last of the three times I killed her.
Ah, so that's what "ghosts of harmony" means.
hay when will the next chapter come out?
10777621
Don't be silly. It is simply a physiologically challenged Twilight Sparkle, and her opposite number: Midnight Sparkle, soulless Devourer of Worlds.
10811076
Indeed, I think it doesn't necessarily have to be a "Nightmare-someone". I also would prefer to see another alicorn than Luna get corrupted, to be more original.
Rip YouTube channel
Okay, so...this story got real. This takes place after the finale, given that you described Spike as muscular. I'm sorta scared of what has become of the Mane Six.