Captain's Log, Day 17
A couple of weeks ago, I received a distress signal from the planet PM-18C. Knowing of the possible danger, I recruited multiple assets to accompany me on this trip. The planet's geography nearly parallels that of SR388. I only hope that this new planet doesn't bring back the horrid memories.
On this trip, I have six others to aid me: an Italian plumber, a Princess, the King of Dreamland, the Mother of Lumas, a Boxer, and a Prince. Though their experience in intergalactic travel and investigations is limited, they are an able crew.
When we arrived in the PM-10 system, I noticed that there were two stars with close to ten planets orbiting both. All of them are tidal-locked except for PM-18C. Hopefully, this is the only surprise on this mission.
After the gunship landed on the rocky terrain, Samus left the cockpit of her ship and turned left. She put her helmet on and walked towards the main hold. There, around a dark blue table, sat her main crew members: Mario, Peach, King Dedede, Rosalina, and Little Mac. When Samus entered the room, the others did not move and kept talking to each other. However, Marth, who sat away from everyone else, sighed heavily and asked, "We're finally here, right?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," Samus said, her tone obviously annoyed. She turned to the rest of the room, "We've landed on the planet. According my analysis, the atmosphere here is heavier than most; just a warning in case you find it hard to breathe."
Rising from his chair, Marth responded, "A heavier atmosphere? So, we can't breathe out there unless we have a suit like yours?"
"Would you stop being so difficult, Marth?" Mario asked, almost pleading as he helped Peach rise, "You just traveled across space for the first time in your life. You aren't the least bit, I don't know, excited?"
"I didn't even want to be here," Marth muttered. He drew his sword and swung it around briefly to warm up his arm, "All I said was—"
"You insulted me and my profession to my face," Samus corrected, tapping some buttons on the walls. Once she saw that the ship was locked, she turned back top Marth, "And I invited you to accompany me on a mission. You're the one who accepted it."
"Just to prove to everyone here that you're a fraud," Marth fired back, "A galactic-renowned bounty hunter, they call you. Well, how hard could your job be?"
Instead of firing back, Samus stared at Marth maliciously. She walked past the cocky Prince and said, "We should head out. Little Mac, you can stay here and look after the ship with Dedede and Peach. If one of you could go down to maintenance and make sure we have enough fuel to get home, that be great."
"This place is beautiful," Rosalina commented as they walked between two large rocks. The mustard-yellow rocks spiralled into the air and curved back towards the ground. She looked ahead of them, into the sky: there were two bright suns that looked like they were stacked onto one-another. While she marveled at the suns, Marth wiped some sweat from his forehead.
"Beautiful? This place is horrible," Marth said, "It's so hot."
"I would say that it's humid, not hot," Mario replied, trying to peak over Samus's shoulders. In her hand, she held what looked like a small screen. On it, she followed a line that guided them to, presumably, where the distress signal came from.
"Same thing, basically," Marth whined. He also looked ahead at Samus, "Hey Samus, where are we going?"
"The distress signal came from an area just west of here," Samus said, still looking at the screen, "I'm thinking that a spaceship crashed onto this planet and sent out an S.O.S. signal."
"And you went across the galaxy to check it out?" Marth asked, his voice full of doubt, "Really? You're supposed to be a bounty hunter, not some galactic rescue ranger."
Quickly, Samus turned around and shouted, "Would you cut it out?! I get it; you don't want to be here, even though you told me that you'd come. Just keep your mouth shut and let me focus on finding the source of the signal!"
Passively, Marth complied, looking away from her and began to pout behind the others. They continued following Samus, who lead them down a rocky hill towards even more mustard-yellow rock structures. Mario scratched his shoulder, feeling the dry, heavy atmosphere take its toll on his skin. He squirmed around, becoming increasingly uncomfortable as their walk continued.
Little Mac walked around the large cockpit; there were three chairs lined up in a row, a few feet apart from each other, in front of the main console that was tinted with dark blue. Outside the large windscreen, the orange exterior of the ship was barely visible. Peach sat in the middle chair, staring outside at the rocky, steep mountains of the planet, as Little Mac inspected the various buttons, levers, and screens on the console.
"You know, for a barren wasteland, this place isn't that bad," Peach said, admiring the terrain, "It's very picturesque."
Curious, Little Mac asked, "Princess, if you don't me asking, why did you come here?"
"Get away from my responsibilities," the Princess answered, turning away from the windscreen, "I mean, I wasn't going to, but Luigi got sick, and Mario didn't want to go alone."
"Understandable," Little Mac nodded, "You know, I've never been on another planet before… Even if I was only brought along to look after the ship."
When the steel doors slid open, Dedede entered the cockpit with an iron mask on. He took it off and hung it on a hook beside the door. "It's ridiculously dark down there," he said, panting from the long walk, "and hot, too."
"How much fuel do we have left?" Little Mac asked, turning his head to see him
"Should be enough to get back home," King Dedede responded, "If it isn't, we'll be close enough that Fox or Falco could pick us up."
"I never realized that you had a knack for space-age technology, Dedede," Peach complimented sweetly, looking in his direction.
The compliment surprised Dedede, evident from the way he drew back and smiled. He shrugged his shoulders while grinning uncontrollably, "It's nothing, really. You know, Samus originally wanted Kirby, but he was busy."
"So, you were the next best option, then?" Peach asked, "Not Fox nor Falco?"
"Well, they were busy too," Dedede responded, still grinning, "Something about Star Wolf or whatever."
"I guess everything happens for a reason," Peach smiled back, turning to face the mountains again, "I'm sure that you were the best option all along. Maybe Samus just needed help seeing that."
"I guess so."
After climbing up a steep, rocky hill, Samus saw something strange: it looked like a facility, or lab, of some kind that seemed to be abandoned. The steel exterior had burn marks across it, and all the windows had been broken. Shocked, Samus quickly ran over to the facility with the others following closely. At the base of the facility, Samus knelt when she saw something that looked like a deflated balloon. As she felt the circular body, Mario looked inside the opening in the steel wall; the hallway was covered in debris and ash.
"This must be it," Mario said, awestruck, "What happened here…?"
"I don't know," Samus muttered, standing up. She looked inside, seemingly hesitating to enter the building.
When Rosalina looked down at the deflated body, she noticed something peculiar about it. "Is that a Metroid?" she asked curiously.
"It is…" Samus said, her voice confused. The sight of the body clearly disturbed her.
After drawing his sword, Marth poked the lifeless Metroid with it; the Metroid had been drained of all it's energy, apparently. "I though you destroyed all the Metroids on SR369 or whatever," he responded, almost mocking her.
"I did," Samus said quickly, still thinking.
Marth, Rosalina, and Mario followed Samus into the facility. The hallway was completely empty, asides from the debris and ash. It was unnerving; the sounds of glass cracking under their shoes, the blinking of the destroyed lights above them, and the dark rooms ahead of them. There were no windows inside the hallway, and the hallway felt like it kept getting smaller and smaller. The longer they walked through the abandoned facility, the more anxious Marth became. Eventually, breaking the silence, Marth spoke up, "What are we looking for exactly? You have to tell me why you wanted to come inside this place."
Stopping in front of a large steel door, Samus turned around and said, "Anything, really. This place has to be a testing facility of some kind. I destroyed all the Metroids in the galaxy when I blew up SR388. And, that baby Metroid outside the facility… It was killed by another Metroid."
"A Metroid killed another member of its species?" Rosalina asked, "That's impossible. Metroids don't attack their own."
"I don't think these are normal Metroids," Samus responded, turning back to the door, "Mario, help me with this."
As Mario and Samus began pulling the door open, Marth put his sword away and approached Rosalina, "How do you know so much about Metroids?"
Rosalina looked down the eerie hallway, smiling slightly, "I've always been fascinated by them; in my travels, I've read a lot about their creation and their history. But, I've never actually seen one of them in person."
After struggling for a bit, Mario and Samus finally got the door open. Inside the room was a trashed lab; broken equipment covered the tables, chairs, and ground. A few large tubes had been broken around the room, and several deflated Metroids covered the ground along with the remains of some scientists. The sight made Marth look away from the beakers in disgust. When inspecting the remains, Rosalina and Mario saw blue liquid splashed on the heads of the scientists. On the other side of the room, Samus saw a computer beside another broken tube. Quickly, she turned it on, and, to her left, she saw a memory stick.
"Hey Samus, how do Metroids… Kill their prey, exactly?" Mario asked, lightly running a finger on the broken glass of the tubes. When he looked at his fingertip, it was covered in a blue liquid.
"Depends on what kind of Metroid there are," Samus said, focusing on her current task. When the computer finally booted up, Samus saw the wallpaper of the desktop and had her suspension confirmed; this was a Federation facility.
"There are multiple kinds of these monsters?" Marth groaned, trying to hide his fear through frustration, "This place is an absolute nightmare."
"Well, Metroids have different stages of life," Rosalina explained, ignoring Marth's angst, "From what the bodies look like, these poor guys had their energy completely drained from them."
Shaking his head, Mario looked away from the beakers, "That can't be enough to kill somebody… Can it?"
Samus unplugged the memory stick from the computer tower and put it away. She turned to the others and said, "Let's get back to the ship. We'll move it closer to this facility and investigate further tomorrow."
"How long are we going to be here for?" Marth asked, his face curling from the stench of the bodies.
"A couple days, maybe," Samus said, shrugging, "The Federation was up to something here. I don't know what they were doing here exactly, and we shouldn't leave until we figure it out."
"A couple days?!" Marth shouted, his anxiety clearly taking over, "Well, why don't we leave then come back when you figure it out?!"
Sighing, Samus shook her head, "You clearly have no idea how space travel works—"
Emerging from the shadows, something attacked Marth. He screamed and fell to the floor, flailing around violently on the floor. Because of the scarce light in the room, nobody could see what was happening. They only heard Marth's slightly muffled shrieks and his limbs hitting various objects around them.
"What's going on!?" Rosalina shouted, trying to see.
Mario clinched his fist and opened it quickly, summoning some fire in his palm. Now, they saw a Metroid on top of Marth's head, sucking energy out of his body. Marth's screams only got louder as Samus fired at the Metroid several times. Finally, after the sixth or seventh strike, the baby Metroid flew off Marth's head. It nearly hit Mario, but he ducked just in time. As it hit a nearby table, Samus stuck out a hand to help Marth up. Stubbornly, Marth pushed her arm away and rose to his feet. He drew his sword and approached the baby Metroid.
"You mother—!"
Marth's curses were soon suppressed by the sounds of his blade. He stabbed down at the Metroid several times, each strike becoming harder and faster. After the initial yellow liquid flew around, blue liquid began to do to the same. Samus and Rosalina stood still, surprised by Marth's sudden turn from scared to bloodthirsty. While Marth continued this, Mario ran to him and shouted, "My God, Marth! Stop! You've done enough!"
Mario wrapped his arms around Marth, as he continued to curse and yell. The Prince soon calmed down, taking multiple deep breaths to do so. When he finally settled down, Marth looked down at the mess he created. Before he walked back to the others, he spat on the Metroid.
"Let's get the hell off this cursed planet," Marth said, walking towards the door from which they entered the room.
Rosalina followed Marth out of the room, but Mario stayed behind with Samus. Samus inspected the Metroid further; it was noticeably more red than other Metroids than Samus encounter. In addition, Samus saw that the yellow liquid had melted the table and ground around the Metroid. She felt some of it in her hand; it was gooey and thick, unlike the yellow liquid that melted everything around it.
"You coming, Samus?" Mario asked, looking down at Marth's work.
"I'll meet you outside," Samus said, not taking her eyes off the baby Metroid.