Summary: What happens when you take the greatest bounty hunter the galaxy has ever known, two of her greatest arch-nemeses, and stuff them all into a 300 sq. ft. apartment on modern-day Earth stripped of their outstanding qualities and power armor? Obviously, you get flying objects, personal space issues, and a slice of hilarity to top it all off. Takes place branching off after Corruption, rated T for language, sick humor, and some intense scenes in the first chapter. Rating may be changed to M if needed, NO lemon planned at this time.

Forgive my OOC instances, inaccuracies, and anything else that may infuriate you. This is my first Metroid fanfiction. Ever. That said though, constructively criticize the hell out of this. I would be ever-grateful if you do.

Chapter 1: Singularity

BABY'S CRY

A distress signal with the urgency of a crying baby. When faced with the decision of seeing your child growing up properly or starving to death thanks to your ignorance, you answer the cry.

So when a BABY'S CRY signal reached Samus' Gunship nine months after the destruction of Phaaze, she turned the directional controls toward the signal and punched the hyperdrive without a second thought. Her second thoughts came halfway through the trip. The signal came from near the core of the galaxy, an area notorious for being densely populated by black holes, to be avoided at all costs. Why anyone was even out here to drop the signal was beyond Samus' comprehension.

She was pulled out of her thoughts as her gunship dropped back out of hyperspace, and she took the controls, guiding the ship carefully. One cannot see black holes as just black circles in space. Light bends around their event horizons, looking simply as if an enormous blur was passing by. She needed to watch carefully for the signs of refraction, as well as keep her eyes open for any sort of starship that could have called for help.

Searching and searching and searching. More and more space dust, dead stars, and just as much nothing. The signal had been lost long ago. Debating on giving up her search, Samus found herself literally staring into space at a small, light blue glow far in the distance, coming closer. Her ship accelerated, and the speed at which the glow approached more than doubled. After a short moment, she realized the glowing object was about to hit the gunship, and she began making evasive maneuvers. The results were not what she expected, however. The glow altered its course to continue pursuing Samus's ship. A crashing sound rang in Samus' ears, and who should be on the window but-

"You!" Samus yelled at her, through the window. She was damaged, and her form seemed to be clinging to her "life" by a thread. Samus thought her gone altogether with Phaaze's destruction. As it happens though, she never actually SAW Phaaze go with her own eyes. It was either watch the pretty explosion and go to Hell with it, or hightail out of there with her life. What may have happened to Phaaze's remains is anyone's guess. Hers was that Dark Samus, with not even the shape of a power suit adorning her any longer, was all that remained of the Phazon of the planet that assumedly went nova. As far as appearances go, the evil clone had looked much better. What was left of her was an unstable human form more akin to Samus'. Her skin was a deathly pale blue and her eyes glowed like Phazon, Samus was unable to tell where the sclera met the iris. Her hair was long, black and unruly, with the black void of space letting it go wild as if it was suspended in water. Even her face was barely holding together properly.

"You've been a thorn in my side since we first met on Dark Aether, Samus! I should have killed you rather than let the Ing put you down for only a few minutes." The crude, distorted voice played in Samus' mind. Its distortion and nigh-imcomprehensibility wasn't what unnerved Samus. It was that Dark Samus was speaking Galactic. All she'd ever heard of the clone was grunts, screams, and laughter.

That sick, sick laughter.

Samus was torn from her thoughts by the gunship shaking, and a thrashing sound coming from the upper hull. Turning back in her seat, she watched as talons pierced the gunship's armor and tore it open like foil, the air rushing out of the opening. Were she not in her Varia suit, she would have been torn apart by the vacuum that now occupied the ship's interior. Once the hole was sufficiently opened, a snout, followed by glowing yellow eyes entered the ship, the mouth opening wide and beginning to glow.

"You must be-" Samus never got to finish, as the plasma breath attack from Ridley's mouth seared the inside of the ship, melting the window that kept the doppelgängers separated from each other. Samus, who had taken cover from Ridley's attack behind the backrest of her seat, watched not Dark Samus entering the ship, but the refractive object hurtling toward all three of them.

A black hole.

Samus' eyes widened within her helmet, and ignoring the other two, she unstrapped herself from the pilot's seat and fired her power beam to free her arm cannon from its rest, using her sheer strength to tear it the rest of the way free. Now she could focus her attention elsewhere. Looking to her left, she moved and pulled the trigger in Dark Samus' direction. It didn't really damage her, per se, but it certainly knocked her back to the wall. Pushing herself up, she moved for the opening that Ridley created earlier, only to be stopped when Dark Samus grabbed her ankle and pulled her back inside.

Desperate, Samus lashed out with her free boot, repeatedly kicking the Phazon clone without aiming for any particular spot. One strike hit home, and fragments of the volatile substance were shaved off Dark Samus' face, her nose essentially gone. However, she showed no sign of letting up. Samus' attacks rose in ferocity as her desperation heightened, going so far as to pull the clone closer and start trying to beat her with her arm cannon, letting a few (missed) shots loose in the chaos. Samus had officially lost her cool.

"You! Stupid! Bi-!" Another crash interrupted Samus' curse-punctuated attacks. She looked out the window to see Ridley holding onto the gunship, being pulled toward the singularity with his mouth gaping open. The words [GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALY INBOUND] appeared on her HUD, highlighting the borders of the refractive sphere, adding to the stress she was dealing with. Screaming out her anger in her helmet, she turned her attention to her clone and pushed her to the ground, holding said clone down with her boot. She took aim at Ridley and opened the front of her arm cannon, firing a Super Missile in his direction and not caring about any result beyond forcing him to let go of her ship. The warhead hit home, going partway down his throat and detonating with the explosive force of five normal missiles in one. The ship was released from his talons and he was sent barreling for the black hole. Dark Samus was the next concern.

Samus looked down at the damaged clone and saw the fruits of her handiwork. Dark Samus was holding onto her "life," albeit barely. Her earlier beam hadn't damaged the clone, but her physical combat had done a number on the black-haired imposter. Her face was barely recognizable as having any semblance of a human's, and her body was bent at angles that no one would disagree to being unnatural. It didn't take a doctor to see that her odds of survival at this point were astronomically slim, and her ability to fight back any further was long gone. Taking her boot off of Dark Samus, Samus reached down and inserted her hand into Dark Samus' chest, eliciting a pained grimace from what remained of her face. Grabbing what she thought to be Dark Samus' spinal column, she pulled the clone up and suspended her close, their faces separated by only a few inches of metal, visor, and vacuum. Seeing the pained expression in Dark Samus' increasingly lifeless eyes, Samus felt her stomach twist. This thing didn't deserve emotions after what 'it' had done. She shot the most unfeeling look she could muster at her clone, and with all her strength, threw it out the open window toward the black hole.

Wasting not a second, she moved to the controls of her ship and tried interfacing with it. Nothing she tried was working.

"Weapons systems offline. Life support offline. Engines offline…" She wasn't even drifting at this point. The gravitational force of the black hole before her was pulling her in. She sighed and slumped back in her chair, realizing that there was no escape now. She groaned to herself and spoke only four words before the shitstorm finally ended:

"Son of a bitch."

It went black from there.

Pain shot through Samus' body as she hit a hard, flat object beneath her and rolled for roughly a meter or two before coming to a stop, on her back, winded, and without her Varia suit. She looked around, dazed, seeing tall metal structures around her with lights going up each side of them, and pairs of lights a few feet off the ground moving in single-file lines moving away from her or toward her, but never coming into contact with either her or each other. She sat up, rubbing her head and running her fingers through her blonde hair. One thing she noticed off the bat was that her hand wasn't clad in either the gauntlet of her power suit or her blue Chozo interface suit, but was fully exposed to the air. She looked down to find herself in simple clothing, the same color of her interface suit. Shirt, long pants, shoes. This was the definition of casual dress. Not her favorite, but it sure beat being stark naked in public

She stood up, looking around, her eyes settling a young man dressed in a purple shirt and grey pants not too far off, on his knees and looking at his hands. His hair was light brown, straight, and reached down to his shoulders. She couldn't see his face as he was turned away from her. He looked like he was bent over a woman in a black tank top and jeans, who looked winded and was looking at the sky, unable to move. She probably fell. Samus walked over to the pair and stopped about three feet away.

"Excuse me, are you two alri-" the man turned his face to her, and she froze as his expression contorted into one of pure hatred. Had she met him before? Then she realized it. His eyes. The irises were yellow and had snake-like pupils. Looking quickly down at the woman on the ground, Samus saw that her skin had a slightly blue tinge, and her eyes were normal, except for her irises being the exact same blue color as Phazon.

Ridley and Dark Samus had taken on truly human forms.

"You!" Ridley shouted, his voice that of a man no older than twenty. He tried to stand, but fell forward, as his legs had changed from those of a Zebesian dragon to those of a human. He also didn't have his tail to balance him while standing on his hind legs. Getting up immediately, he lunged awkwardly at Samus with his hand clenched into a fist. Sidestepping, Samus dodged his punch and delivered her own to a sensitive spot just under his sternum. He gagged before going hopelessly went limp, being held on his feet by Samus' fist. With no remorse whatsoever, she dropped him on the ground, the impact of which woke him instantly. He scrambled pathetically to his feet and tried to balance himself on the single-jointed knees as well as not aggravate the pain just below his ribs. He stumbled to the nearest building and set one of his hands on it for support.

Samus stifled her laughter at Ridley's helplessness until she was tackled to the ground. Mounting her was the sickly-looking Dark Samus, with a sick smile on her face.

"Finally. I finally have the upper hand on you!" She coughed twice and raised an arm up, about to bring it down on Samus' defenseless face. Suddenly, the blue underneath her skin began to glow, and her mount weakened considerably as her head tilted back, her mouth open. Freeing an arm from under Dark Samus' knee, Samus reached up and punched the distracted black-haired woman off of her. Escaping and putting distance between them, Samus stood in a fighting stance, looking down at her clone. Her expression relaxed as she realized that the choking, writhing figure before her would not be standing up. On her hands and knees, Dark Samus was convulsing violently, vomiting up lunch that she never ate mixed in with a blue substance that soon disappeared into thin air. Painful groaning that transitioned into agonized screaming followed as the glowing blue in her blood vessels and beneath her skin receded, disappearing completely. The Phazon in Dark Samus' body was finally gone for good. It wasn't long before she started coughing up blood instead, having screamed her throat completely raw.

There was no doubt in Samus' mind that the pain her clone felt was very, very real.

An ambulance arrived a few minutes later, finding Ridley and Samus both knelt over their 'friend.' Samus, needless to say, was disgusted by the notion of the three being friends.

Okay, just so you know, this chapter only sets the stage for what's to come. This will probably be one of the only ones taking itself seriously. After this, I'll be trying to make you laugh (will probably fail) and carry on the story at the same time.

Background: I got the idea for this story one while speed-running Zero Mission on my 12-13 year-old SP and watching an anime called Hataraku Maou-sama! (The Devil is a Part-Timer!), so you know the formula for this already if you've seen it. It went a little something like this:

GameBoySP: *Ridley dies after taking a super missile to the mouth*

TV: "I'M A HERO! SO PLEASE TELL ME WHY I JUST HAD TO POST BAIL FOR A COUPLE OF ASININE GOOD-FOR-NOTHING DEMONS!"

LSV: I wonder what would happen if that were Samus and Dark Samus...

Ridley got plugged into the formula somewhere around when I started writing this chapter.