It was a Good Idea, At the Time
by J. Rolande
Prologue: In which Samus Aran has an idea that seems good at the moment
It was a flawless plan, easier to execute than most bounties. Anyone with the abundance of motivation and lack of scruples could have pulled it off. Actually, anyone had; lots of anyones, to be quite honest. Some got away with it; some got caught; and others discovered their sense of morality at the last moment and decided against it.
Needless to say, as Samus Aran finished her business at the Federation Postal Station, she was hoping to be included among the anyones who had gotten away with this flawless plan.
Really, she deserved to get away with it. "Some gratitude," she muttered to herself as the airlock whooshed closed behind her, sealing her in her ship, away from the listening ears of the populace all crowded into this particular station, the only station that could be certain to process their paperwork quickly enough to make the strict Federation deadlines. "I save their asses from the damned pirates how many times? And they make me pay taxes." She muttered a few other unsavory thoughts and phrases as she lifted off the landing platform. "Should have let the pirates let the Metroids loose on them. Should have let Ridley get away and take the baby with him. But no, had to follow him to Zebes."
She punched a few buttons on the control panel and winced as the ship's engines groaned in protest. The money she would have to pay if she were caught would certainly make a new ship, let alone engine repairs, an impossibility. However, it was an impossibility now, as it was. In a strange twist of irony, or fate, or something conspiring against her, the peace Samus had brought to the galaxy had put her out of work. Foolishly she had squandered most of her earnings early on, assuming her skills, honed and perfected and flawlessly lethal, would always be in demand.
"Stupid," she grumbled to herself. Stupid, probably, but maybe ignorant was the better word. There had, after all, been quite the rash of bounties in a short span of time. Other hunters probably could have taken care of the threats, and could have used the money. But because of her skills, Samus had been chosen for the jobs. Hell, they were probably in the post station, trying to inconspicuously execute the same plan she was attempting.
Finally, the engines stopped their groaning and grumbling, and thus Samus stopped hers. The ship's trembling and shivering stabilized a bit, and Samus relaxed. Well, she relaxed about this, anyway. Her restless mind kept jumping back to the forms that were now probably buried under many other peoples' forms, ready to be sent out and processed by the gigantic processing plant at the Galactic Federation head quarters. Would her falsities be discovered? Would she pass through with flying colors? And if she were discovered, would the Taxing Agent see her name on the forms and pass over it, as a kickback for her services to the galaxy?
She wasn't one to break the rules; while she had been a rogue agent and feelancer in her early bounty hunting days, she had always stuck to the codes. Yes, early on she had had her slip ups and share of mistakes, but none of them were permanent, and she'd always learned from them. She had eventually earned the respect, and later on, the fear, of other hunters. She'd gone from a laughingstock to actual competition. When she was planetbound, or on any of the Federation's platforms, she abided by their rules. She paid their landing fees. She gave a portion of her bounties in taxes to the Federation. She had never even jaywalked, for Chozo sake! And while she was thinking about the Chozo, they had raised her to be noble and just and a credit to any society she was a part of, be it human, Chozo, Pirate, hell, space slugs.
She sighed. She wanted to be noble; her Chozo foster father had taught her better than this. But there was no denying it; desperate times called for desperate measures, and she could take comfort in the knowledge that she probably was not the only person, bounty hunter or otherwise, who was going to try and cheat the Federation tax system this fiscal cycle.
"It's probably corrupt anyway," she said aloud, feeling a strange need to verbally reassure herself. Somehow if she said it, it seemed alright. If it was out in the open, rather than cloistered away in her mind, it seemed less... criminal.
She winced in spite of herself even as the word entered her mind. "Criminal" had been part of her vocabulary ever since she began hunting. "Track down escaped criminal..." Or "The jury didn't convict him, but I know he's a criminal..." So many scenarios. So many bounties. Samus couldn't start equating her behavior with that of a criminal, not now. The deed was done; it was too late to be noble.
Well, it wasn't, not really. But she was trammeled now. If she pulled strings with the Federation, they'd start asking questions. If she made up lies about forgetting information or whatnot, they'd look closely at her paperwork and realize her fraudulent information. So for all practical intents and purposes, yes, it was too late to be noble.
A familiar whistling sound split the white noise of the engines around her, and she looked up to see her Metroid hatchling, having shrunk down since the last Zebes mission, bobbing leisurely in midair behind her. Samus smiled and reclined in her pilot's chair. Well, she had formed a bond with the creature. It had imprinted on her, as the animal behaviorists would have said. So in a way, it was like her child, and she was like its mother... wasn't she? It depended upon her to provide for it, making it, thus, a dependent. Right?
"Of course," she said decisively, as the Metroid, presumed deadly, and possibly the most dangerous creature in the known universe, settled on her shoulder and nestled its oddly gelatinous body against her neck, almost seeming to purr. She just had to believe that this would work out alright, that this one small bit of fraud, which she figured she deserved anyway, would be enough to change their fortunes.
Mere days later, just past the Federation Standard Taxation Deadline, or FSTD (since economic institutions were so fond of abbreviations), Bill, who had been assigned the unsavory task of sorting through the A forms, happened to come across the documents of Aran, Samus. As a young intern, he'd heard the stories about the formidable bounty hunter and how she had once been thought to be a man, and how she'd pretty much single-handedly brought peace to the galaxy (or at least as far as the Federation's arm reached). He handled her form with fear and trembling, his nervous eyes skimming the answers she'd filled in. He couldn't help but wonder what a bounty hunter made in a Fiscal Cycle, and how they filed, and such. And then he happened to see that something was filled in, written in a box that he never would have thought she, the indomitable bounty hunter, would have filled in. And he wondered, when did Samus Aran have a dependent?
Carefully plucking the sheaf of forms from the others, he hit the portable com link attached to his tie. "Hey there, Huston? We have a problem..."