Author's Note: Text contained *as such* denotes a Perk or Item from the Jump that I took, and will be included if I feel it necessary to explain what in hell my Jumper is doing.
Chapter 1: A Different Side
Samus Aran slowly felt… wait… felt? Then, she wasn't…
With the confusing realization that she wasn't dead, multiple times affirmed by the steady pulses of pain reverberating through her head, she forced her eyes open to find herself on the ground, staring into the same sky as there had been over her landing site. How, how was she still alive? Wait…
Through her pounding headache she heard a small sound, whistling, as one might hear from a human's mouth. Struggling to do so, as her limbs seemingly didn't want to obey her brain, she turned to look at the source. It was the same hulking brute of a humanoid, just, they were seated on the ground not five feet away, their helmet was off, and they were whistling away to an unknown tune with the biggest of smiles on their face.
She must have made some noise, because said individual turned to look at her. "Oh good, you're awake!"
As surprising as the shift in demeanor was, the tone of voice was equally so. Far from cold and professional, this character seemed, well, the exact opposite. That smile he, or at least their facial structure led her to believe it was a 'he,' wore had smoothly morphed into a self-sure little smirk that she found vaguely irritating. As casual as casual could be… or so she figured. General human interaction was very far outside of her wheelhouse.
The figure made a small sound, resembling a laugh. "Heh, you really don't talk much, do you? I would have at least figured a 'how the hell did you beat me so hard,' maybe in not so many words." She scowled, not particularly pleased to be reminded of her first loss, and the other's grin only widened. "Hey, don't feel bad." One of the man's hands touched the chest of his armor. "When you have well over a thousand years of warfare experience and kit as obnoxiously overpowered as mine is for this universe, there isn't anything you could have done to win. And I'm just being blunt about that. Nothing you can get your hands on in this universe can even scratch Cataphractii-Pattern Terminator Armor."
Her expression did not change. Though, in the back of her mind she had to wonder if this man, she was just going to go with that based off of appearance, was quite sane. "A thousand years?" If he were that old the Chozo would have known about him, doubly so if he were as powerful as he claimed. And "Cataphractii-Pattern Terminator Armor?" She found it almost impossibly hard to believe that something so insurmountably more powerful than her Chozo heritage existed… "Almost," being the operative word. She had failed in a particularly horrid fashion to even scratch his armor, and that was a very bitter pill to swallow.
Clearly reacting to her obvious displeasure, the man stood, his grin becoming mildly more apologetic. "Ok, well, I can see you need a bit of time to cool off. So…" They put their hands together gently in front of them. "… I'm sorry. Sometimes it takes a little while for my mind to catch up to myself whenever I drop in to a new universe and all I've got to go on is what's around me." He started to chuckle a little. "I mean, Federation wants my ass on a dissection table. So do the Space Pirates. Bounty hunting is really kind of the go to thing out here. And, so, I may have taken an anonymous bounty for combat data on you, from the Space Pirates." The man shrugged, a very impressive gesture given the sheer bulk of his armor. "Again, all of my mind wasn't with me. But they may start trying to grapple with you en mass instead of trying to shoot you, like, ever." The grin became cheesy as he backed away. "So have fun, again, so sorry for bruising your ego, and your flesh." His backwards walk stopped at the hatch to leave the area. "I'm gonna go now."
With a small motion, what was it, a donkey kick? The man smashed open the hatch and crouched backwards through it, shoulders screeching against the ruined metal frame. And just like that, he was gone, save for the fading sound of his massive armor suit clomping off into the distance. She quietly put a hand to her forehead, feeling a headache not just from lingering post-beating trauma, but now mental, what was the phrase, mindfuckery? Regardless, she assumed she would just need to file this individual away under 'dangerous' and 'possibly mad' if she ever ran across him again.
She shot a glance sideways, and was pleased to find that her ship seemed completely unharmed. She'd patch up her suit, head towards that energy signature beyond the crashed frigate, and put this nonsensical mess behind her… Though she would bear in mind what he'd said about the Space Pirates trying to engage in close-quarters combat. And if Ridly took that information to heart… She scowled even more as she climbed to her feet and walked towards her ship.
Tallon Overworld:
Jumper, or rather Jacob, slowly marched along through the canyon that led towards the Chozo ruins, humming aloud the Metroid Prime theme to himself as he went. It was where he was standing, after all, though he could have arrived here under better circumstances. But, by the same token, he had to admit it was also a little bit funny that he hadn't been on-planet for more than an hour before beating the piss out of the star of the franchise. It wasn't surprising to him that he'd done it, he was just amused that it had happened so fast.
He shrugged to himself, pausing briefly in his forward progress to avoid stomping on one of the innocent zoomers crawling around. "Well what can I do? Jump-induced drama is inevitable when I understand where I am." He paused at the junction in the canyon, openly, and vocally, contemplating what to do. "Ok, so, is there anything here that I want? Something Sammy back there hasn't scarfed up already…" He did a quick inventory, checking what Metroid-related gear he had on hand in his hybrid suit. "Power beam, Nova beam…" He paused, realizing that was it for beam weapons. "Huh, well 'Nova beam.' Really can't do much better than that in-universe unless I start splicing Phazon into the mix. And everyone and their brother should probably know that's a bad idea." He did a quick mental recap, charting out the general route Samus would be taking to "victory" on Tallon IV. "Wait, Oooh hoo hoo, Plasma beam!" And almost immediately, he realized it was a bad idea. "Fuck. I yoink that toy and Samus won't be able to enter the lower levels of the mines. And if she doesn't do that, she doesn't fight the Omega Pirate. If she doesn't fight the Omega Pirate, she doesn't get the Phazon Suit. And if she doesn't get the Phazon Suit, she literally can't finish the adventure." He rolled his eyes massively. "Fucks sake, I never took the time to think about how much Metroid leans on a very specific chain of dominos."
Of course, one of those dominoes resulted in the creation of Dark Samus. And, considering the pain that evil clone would cause it might be for the greater good for him to cut that out before it could start… but he wasn't going to. He was here for adventure damn it, and Dark Samus made things happen for him to fix. In the privacy of his own head he knew full well that made him sound like a selfish jackass, and maybe he was, but he was here for ten years. Ten years of the Federation and the Space Pirates gunning for his ass. They probably couldn't get him with anything short of orbital bombardment, but he was going to stay far away from any possibility of that happening. And if both sides got fucked up as they were supposed to, partially because of Dark Samus, he would happily allow that to happen. And frankly, weren't the Prime 3 planets mostly deserted anyway? He couldn't remember right now…
He shrugged again. "Who cares? Now, back to the topic of new toys…"
If everything left for Samus to collect was essential, then, what about the Space Pirates? Surely they had a nice piece of gear he could help himself to…
He clapped as the thought came to him. "The cloaking tech, YES! Oh holy shit think of how terrifying that is! A terminator armored Space Marine, that's also INVISIBLE!" He immediately pulled up the area map on his HUD, only to find it almost completely empty save the two 'rooms' he had been in recently. "Well, shit. I played this when I was a kid. I don't remember the damn labyrinth!"
That was mostly true. He could recall the overall layout of the place; Chozo Ruins over here, Magmoor Caverns there… just not the metaphorical wires running between them. If he didn't want to step on Samus's toes, that meant he'd need to head for the Phendrana Drifts and crash into the Pirate's research base. Doing the deed once he got there wouldn't be a problem. He was certain that Pirate weaponry was as laughably weak against terminator armor as Samus's weapons had been. It, was just a matter of getting there.
He looked left, and right, talking himself through it. "Ok. I'm pretty sure going right gets me directly to the Chozo Ruins, the kiddie area where Samus reacquired her basic gear. Not sure if there's an elevator to Phendrana from there." He rolled his eyes at the thought. "Elevators, elevators, elevators. Did the Chozo not know how to fucking walk?" He shook his head once and looked to his left. "And that way… off into the overworld. I think there's a way down to Magmoor that way, and that volcanic pisshole connects to everywhere, even the mines, and it's really easy to navigate, being more or less one long tunnel string."
He looked left, right, and back again. Then he took two steps towards the Ruins, only to change his mind and spin about back to the left.
Phendrana Drifts: Pirate Base
Jacob let out an exasperated sigh as he finally set eyes on the utilitarian structure of the Space Pirate base, absently putting a bolt round through one of the local arthropod wildlife. The bugs weren't a threat to him at all, but it was a massive nuisance the way they kept flying into his face trying to sting him. The rest of the wildlife had been just as hostile, and just as uselessly annoying.
He paused, eying the floating platforms. "So funny that the environments seem SO specifically designed for Samus alone." He mapped out the path he'd have to take, ignoring the morph ball stuff around the area walls. "Yep, totally not specifically designed. Like they KNEW she'd be here and designed their whole planet to accommodate Samus's exploration after everything they built fell into ruins…"
He rolled his eyes at the massive contrivance. Sure, the Chozo were mildly precognitive, he was aware of that. But building morph ball lanes into uninhabited cave roofs? His bullshit alarms could not ring any louder. Granted he wasn't thinking about this area specifically, but it was a pointed observation regardless.
He chuckled. "Well, not really my problem. I'm here for looting right now." He glanced up, mentally running through his jump path again. "And, just a bit of platforming stands between me and the power of invisibility!"
He squared up, leapt, and immediately had to jump again in a semi-panic as the platform almost instantly failed to support him. In retrospect, he should have expected that. Cataphractii terminator armor was MUCH bigger and heavier than any Chozo gear, after all.
Situated at the top of the area's central spire, he turned and looked down at the crashed, smoking wreckage that he'd left behind below. "I am winning myself no points with Samus or dead bird-people like this." He glanced towards the next hatch ahead, shrugged, and started walking. "Meh, worst I'll have to deal with is angry ghosts. And as Samus proves later, they are perfectly vulnerable to getting destroyed. Hell, the Pirates manage to do the same, and they're massively incompetent at the best of times."
Completely unconcerned for collateral damage insofar as Pirate structures were concerned, he opened the way ahead with one brutish forward kick. The steel shattered with an ear-splitting shriek, and he paused for the briefest of moments to savor the idea of the alarms blaring deeper inside at his intrusion.
He stepped into the base, pausing and raising his trusty Bolter towards the entry hallway. "Now, Shadow Pirate should be jumping towards me…" Five seconds passed, nothing. "Guess not." He shrugged and started walking again. "No big deal, gonna be plenty of them inside. I think, what, three plus in the next room by itself? I'll have that stealth tech in no time."
He kicked the next hatch open as well, mildly delighted at the brazen destruction, and paused to slowly scan the ceiling where he knew the Shadow Pirates would be just hanging out, waiting for him to walk by beneath them. True to their name, they were rather difficult to spot in the darkness. But, given that he knew they were there, and a bit of cheating from the X-ray visor he'd picked on entry to this universe, he picked out four targets. Four, essentially, loot boxes to him.
He raised his Bolter, setting the sight square on the dangling head of one of the Shadow Pirates, the one closest to him. "You gonna move at all when I've got a gun pointed at ya? I mean, I can obviously see you…" He waited three seconds, holding his gun steady. "… Guess not."
He tapped the trigger, squeezing off that single, hilariously powerful round. The Pirate's head, and neck, exploded with a wet crunch as the now senseless body thumped to the floor. Apparently, that shot was enough of a cue, as the other Shadow Pirates leapt down to face him.
He smirked at they rushed towards him. "Heh, sure, that'll work. Doesn't even work on Samus." He paused, struck by a thought. "Well, never worked on me when I was playing as Samus. Maybe she herself isn't so observant…" He heard a click, and looked down to see one of the Shadow Pirate's bayonets pressed point first to the carapace of his armor. "Right, forgot you were there for a second."
Giving that Pirate a single moment to feel apocalyptically stupid, he hauled off and punched the crustacean alien in its ugly mug, more or less duplicating what he'd done to its compatriot with a Bolter shell. He then plugged the next one in the head and, going for a bit of style, he shot out both knees of the last Shadow Pirate before putting two in the chest, all before it hit the ground.
Smirking like a demon, he stepped over to the body of his first kill in the room. "Damn I'm good. More importantly though, did I leave enough of you intact to salvage the stealth tech…" He brought his hand up to the side of his helmet and engaged the Scan Visor. "Waiting, waiting…" The scan beeped positive. "Yes!"
He paused momentarily, unsure of how to proceed simply by virtue of never taking advantage of this particular feature he'd picked up before.
*Legendary [600sp] The true power behind Chozo technology is not merely its staying power over the course of centuries, but how easily it can integrate both the best of its own world and the best of other worlds. In short, the power armor can take damaged or stolen technological devices from a foe or an ally, and immediately install it without error or fuss. Taking the module behind a flamethrower will give you that same flamethrower's ability, taking augmented limbs that enabled a foe to jump extremely high will let you do the same thing. As long as the technology still has some capacity to function, you can integrate it immediately with your power armor. The only downside is that the energy and size requirements do not change – space station-sized superweapons still require more power and space than a normal person-sized power armor can hope to generate, and generally will not function without some modifications on your part. Still, you'll find that the discarded weapons of foes will be ever more useful in your hands.*
It told him that he could, just not how.
He thought for a moment, vocalizing to himself. "Well, Samus just walks into whatever tech she's picking up. Why not try that, just to see if it works. If not, I'll look stupid for about two seconds and try something else."
Putting action to his words, he stepped over the corpse of his designated target… and nothing happened. He really should have expected that, given that as hard as it was to avoid the comparison, he was NOT in fact playing a video game right now. Rolling his eyes, and mildly irritated that he could imagine a Space Pirate watching him through a security feed and… oh, wait, *Noise in the Void* took care of that. Scanners and cameras couldn't track him, duh.
He looked down at the corpse, smirking again. "Ok you, I don't know, recall, or care if there is an appreciable difference between Space Pirates being male or female. So I'm just going to go for the brute-force idea of tearing that stealth system off of you and slapping it onto my armor's carapace. If that doesn't work, I don't know what will."
Using his knife, because every Space Marine had one just in case, even a Devastator like him, he started peeling the thin fabric off of his victim, letting his mind and gaze wander around the chamber as he went. Assuming he figured out how to integrate his prize, what else could he, or would he, do on this planet before calling it quits and leaving Samus to do her thing and fight Metroid Prime? He'd already established, at least to himself, that there were no items left that he could take without screwing Samus's "adventure" over. So…
His gaze fell upon a door/hatch/passageway/whatever in the back of the room. Not the hatch Samus would use to leave, but the locked one, the one that required a Space Pirate bio-scan to proceed through. Doubtless the bulk of the Pirate presence in this base was nice and cozy behind there, feeling safe in the assumption that they couldn't be reached by assailants… Well, mass murder was always a good way to pass some time. And killing Space Pirates benefitted both him and Samus in the long run.
He peeled off the chest section of his victim's suit, draping it across his shoulders given the vast discrepancy between the size of a Space Pirate and a suit of Cataphractii terminator armor… and a message proudly popped up in his HUD, 'Phantom Stealth System acquired.' He mentally played the Metroid "item acquired" jingle.
Mentally engaging the stealth system he held up his right gauntlet, pleased as punch to see, or rather, not see his own hand without a respectable amount of effort on his eyes part. "So, *Noise in the Void* makes me undetectable to scanners, cameras, and radar. And this 'Phantom' system makes me almost completely invisible to the naked eye?" He cackled out loud. "Oh this combo is fucking broken!" Grinning once again like a demon, he turned his gaze back to the bio-scan hatch. "Now, how many space crabs do I get to riddle with bullets today…?"
He cackled as he advanced, hauling his Heavy Bolter out of the ether as he moved. Because why the fuck not?
Tallon IV: Phazon Mines
Samus Aran let out a long sigh as she walked back out into the mine's processing yard, physically and mentally drained from this experience she'd just left. That little warning she'd received from her mystery assailant, perfectly accurate. The Pirates had spent FAR more time rushing her down and trying to wrestle her to the ground than they'd spent shooting at her. She'd come out of it fine, but the added stress of the situation, of the weakness she now knew her combat systems had, was exhausting. For the time being, she was more than happy to leave this place behind while she acquired additional gear elsewhere.
Halfway to the exit, outright ignoring the turret on the right-side wall taking scattered shots at her, the earth suffered such a violent tremor she was very nearly thrown to the ground. This was accompanied by an explosion she heard a mere couple of seconds later, given how sound traveled faster through solid matter than it did through air. What in blazes…?
Her HUD seized her attention, dragging its Map out and flying over to the Phendrana Drifts. More specifically, the heart of the Space Pirates base out there. The rather obvious flag her computer put over the area was 'extreme seismic event detected.' No, really?
She recovered her balance, looking off into the sky towards the Drifts. Was this, that other entity's work? What… what terrible power did they actually have? None of the weapon systems she'd seen could cause something even close to that level of devastation. Could, they have actually been telling the truth about being an extra-dimensional entity? That was the only thing she could think of right now that made sense…
The turret, not bothered by the tremor, knocked her out of her bewildered mental state with a hit to her core, and her instincts took over as she vengefully moved to engage. But, in the back of her head she couldn't help but keep thinking about that other figure…
Tallon IV: Phendrana Drifts
Jacob proudly strode through the smoldering, twisted metal remains of the Pirate base, swaggering as he moved. Had it been hard to butcher them en mass? Absolutely not, exactly as he had assumed. Had it been fun? Hell to the yes. And blowing the whole place up was something the game had never let him do. He paused at the edge of the smoking crater, recalling that there was one critical component to Samus's adventure on this planet that he might have mucked with by blowing the base up. The Artifact, which one, by name, he couldn't be bothered to recall, but it was supposed to be stowed behind/beneath the base Control Tower. The tower that he'd just reduced to rubble.
He spun around, laughing nervously. "Ha, ok, floating alien glyph, can't be that hard to find, right?"
As he pawed through the rubble it occurred to him, again on a meta level, how bullshit it was that the Chozo would know that the Space Pirates would build their control tower right on top of the artifact, far enough in advance to encode that hint in one of the obelisks in the temple over the Impact Crater. It was hilariously inconsistent. If they were THAT precognitive, they would have known the phazon meteor was coming, and done something more substantial about it. Like, oh, getting the hell out of dodge before they devolved into phazon-corrupted wraiths that attacked anything living. They had the technology. He knew that, or at least they HAD, past-tense. He couldn't remember the specifics of how much "in-tune with nature" the Chozo on this particular planet had let themselves be before the meteor hit.
He shoved aside a twisted beam, and found the prize. "Oh good, good, I was worried for a second that I'd have to cheapen Sammy's win here by cracking the temple open like an egg." He chuckled a bit. "That, and she'd probably be pretty pissed if I did that." He looked back at the artifact, a thought occurring to him. "Well, collecting the artifacts is really just a bunch of running around. Wouldn't really be a loss to Sammy's experience if I just, oh, ran around and did that bit of legwork for her. Might even win me some points if I let her know it was me. I mean, they aren't flowers or nothing, but much more useful." He thought about it for a few more seconds, and nodded to himself. "Talked myself into it. Let's go on a treasure hunt!" He grabbed the artifact, letting it blip away intro that data-hammerspace that all the other trinkets got shunted to. "Hell, I'm happy to just have something else to do. Floating around in the void is boring." He started walking, dictating his destinations as he went. "Ok, so the next closest artifact is at Phendrana's Edge, way at the top, behind a hidden wall… And then the other one in Phendrana is hidden in that temple near where Sammy picks up the… wave beam? And fights the big sheggoth…"
Tallon IV: Tallon Overworld
Samus Aran exhaustedly staggered back into her landing site, momentarily leaning on the edge of the hatch to catch her breath. The mines the second time around… oh why did that other bounty hunter have to share that combat data? Regular Pirates and the beam troopers had been stressful enough, but the Omega Pirate… she'd been pinned and pummeled nearly to death before she dislocated her arm to make the beast flinch and let her go. And still, that thing's blows had hurt LESS than the enigmatic figure from before.
She sucked in a deep breath before taking about ten steps forward, and tripped over a bit of uneven terrain. Embarrassing as it was, it served only to highlight why she'd come back here. She was in no shape to keep going right now. She needed a break, maybe a short nap if she could justify it. She hadn't been pummeled this badly in… ever.
Groaning, she forced herself up to one knee, refusing to stay in this state any longer than necessary. But as she lifted her gaze back towards her ship, something out of place caught her attention. Just in front of her ship, piled haphazardly on the ground, was a cluster of… her mind sparked as she realized that she was looking at utterly priceless Chozo artifacts. Fatigue and pain momentarily forgotten, she rose and cast her baffled gaze about, counting. Twelve, twelve priceless artifacts just, left here? Who…
And then she saw it. Stuck to the front of her ship with a tiny piece of plas-tape was a simple piece of white plastic with a messy, if legible scrawl on it that read "I'm sorry." Well, that made the identity of the gift-giver perfectly clear. No one else on this planet had any inkling whatsoever to apologize for anything. Even if at the time the spoken apologies had sounded, to her, hollow and trite.
She held a hand to the side of her helmet, almost beyond able to process this right now, but she did notice something else. The artifacts were not lumped as messily as she had thought at first glance. They were, arranged in an arrow? She followed the direction with her eyes, and spotted another plastic placard on the ledge that the other hunter had first appeared from. This one simple read "This way," above a large, black arrow. Injuries still forgotten, she climbed up to the ledge… and screamed out of sheer shock as she found Ridly, or, more specifically his head, staked to the ground, with what appeared to be his own tail. There was another note tacked to the tail, a rather smugly phrased "You're welcome."
Breathing hard from the sudden onset of fear, she slowly composed herself, just as slowly processing everything that had come to light over the last several seconds. The artifacts could have explained all of the damage she'd seen in the mines when she'd gone back through. Morph Ball tunnels excavated, hatches smashed open, dead Pirate bodies littered like leaves in various states of chunky mess. Would she find more of that over the rest of the planet if she looked? Probably, his presence seemed rather conducive to indiscriminate destruction. Ridly though, she'd almost forgotten that the dragon was still on-planet. Her last sighting of him being a mere shadow passing over the Phendrana region. Not that she wasn't displeased that she wouldn't have to throw down with him again. But…
She looked back towards the severed, impaled head. She'd never imagined Ridly being trounced so completely. But, she supposed at this point she really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. That was the phrase, right? Well… regardless, her ship was calling to her again as her body reasserted its desire for rest. She would deal with what lay within the Impact Crater in a little bit, as soon as she recovered.