Chapter 3

Samus eventually stopped walking. "Damn…where am I?" She looked around for a bit before getting up. "This sucks. I need to get out of here. Fast. She took a minute to breathe, and then jogged back the way she came. Man…my breath is really labored…I need to get out of this cave…I could die in here. This place is too hot…even for my suit.

She continued to run, when she heard something strange. She stopped running, and so did the sound. She walked again, and then stopped. She then heard it. Footsteps. Not her own. For the first time in a while, she was…scared. Whoever this was killed ten men in a half second, and most likely was raring to kill her as well. She eventually shook it off, though. I've been in worse situations than this.

She then took a few more steps, and heard gunshots. "Damn!" she said under her breath. She then realized she would need to think this through in order to figure it out. Then she got it. She switched her visor around until she got to the X-ray visor. Looking around, she finally caught sight of her enemy. It had a humanoid build, seemingly male. But it wore metallic armor, not dissimilar to that of hers. "I obviously wouldn't be able to scan it from here, to find out it's weakness…" She kept her eyes on the thing, which was still walking carefully. Aiming precisely, she held up her beam and then shot in its direction. Instead of it getting hit and stumbling, it heard the beam and ran down the tunnel ahead of it. "What?" Samus said. She turned off her X-ray visor to see what was going on. She looked at the wall that divided her and her enemy and realized that she had shot the wall. The beam hadn't gone through like she intended. "Damn it, I forgot to switch to the Wave Beam! I probably led it to me!" Now there was only one thing to do. Surprise attack. She quickly went into Morph Ball and followed the trail. After some traveling, she finally sighted her enemy and boosted. I'll teach him to mess with Samus Aran…

Master Chief followed where he had heard that shot. He had heard it a bit of time ago, so it was kind of hard to remember. He was about to turn a corridor when he heard a sound. What was it? He backed up to a wall, MA5C at the ready, and listened carefully. "Is that…a ball? Rolling?" He then realized that it was coming closer. He got off the wall, moved back about ten feet, held out his rifle, and waited. Huff…huff…heh…heff…hah…The room was silent. The only three noises were Masterchief's breathing, his beating heart, and the faint sound of rolling. And it got louder, and louder, and yet so quiet…until something slowly peeked out from the corridor—Masterchief couldn't see it too well…was it a giant ball? Not caring anymore, he broke the eerie silence by firing his gun.

The ball grew in speed towards Master Chief, him shooting it as it came towards him, and he moved back as he shot. The bullets hit right on it, but didn't seem to be doing much of anything, considering it still rolled. The ball, now having a yellowish aura as it grew in speed, then rammed chief in his legs. "Oaugh!" It hit him with so much force that he flipped over frontwards, and landed flat on his stomach. He got up a few seconds later, to see the ball rolling away, towards the exit of the cave in which Chief came. "Oh, no…you're not getting away from me." He ran towards the ball as fast as he could, and up ahead he saw the ball rolling away up the long corridor. Then he saw something glowing in front of him, something on the floor. What was that? It then came to him. He dove forward, several feet in front of the bomb, and just missed the impact of the explosion. He then got up and ran again. He followed the ball until it got outside. He then jumped outside and confronted the little ball that had caused him this trouble.

Samus stayed in her Morph Ball form and watched this soldier-like thing as it stood in front of her, with its gun pointing at her. "You little freak, what are you?" I could ask you the same thing…Samus thought. Then she decided it was no more time for fun and games. She then went out of her Morph Ball form, and stood tall, pointing her Power Beam at the soldier, the attention-grabbing PED Suit shining in all its glory. The soldier was surprised, and his guard went a tad down. "What the hell…first you're a ball and then you're some kind of robot?"

"I'm no robot," Master Chief's adversary said. He looked through her visor and saw it was a human girl. He paid it no mind and then put up his gun. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He looked at his ammo, and saw it was out. "Stupid thing only holds 32 shots….MA5B held 60."

Samus saw this as the perfect opportunity. She locked onto the soldier and fired a missile. The soldier looked up from reloading and realized that there was a missile coming right at him. Samus heard a boom and an explosion, and figured that she had hit right on the mark. Perfect. But then she looked closely to realize that when the smoke cleared, the soldier had had a spherical shield up. The missile hadn't done anything. "What's better is that my weapon's fully loaded now." And it pointed its gun and fired. Samus realized this was a problem and ran for the top of a tall, flat rock. When on top of that, she tried to move as fast as she could to dodge the bullets. She jumped, ran, went into morph ball, out of morph ball, double jumped, morph ball, boost, anything to confuse the soldier.

Master Chief kept shooting trying to chase this girl with his rifle, but he couldn't get many decisive hits on her. Only a few shots he could tell hit her. So why couldn't he stop shooting? He knew it was going nowhere. Eventually, he ran out of ammo. Thinking fast, Chief pulled out a grenade and threw it at the girl. She didn't seem to realize that he had stopped shooting or he had thrown a grenade. She kept running around frantically. He waited a few seconds for the grenade to go off, and as luck would have it, the girl walked right on top of the grenade when it detonated. Master Chief heard a scream, and the armored girl was sent flying a few feet above the ground, towards Chief, seemingly unconscious. Chief then saw the thing turn into a ball a few feet from him and landed right in front of him. It then rolled back and turned into the humanoid form. Master Chief looked down to see a bomb planted, but was too late to realize it and was hurt substantially when the bomb detonated.

Samus saw the soldier stumble back and then gain his balance. It reloaded its gun, but as soon as it reloaded it, Samus used her grapple beam. She used it to try and wrestle the gun out of its hand. It resisted, and Samus pulled harder, the beam flashing blue and red. Eventually, Samus managed to wrestle the gun from its hand, fully loaded. She held it in her left hand, finger on the trigger. She charged her Power Beam, ready to fire both weapons at the soldier.

"One false move and I'll blow you away." She said, menacingly.

At first Master Chief did not move, but then he realized that he would be gone before he even went for his shield. Giving in, he put his hands in the air.

Samus looked at her Energy. She only had 43. He had taken out her first two energy tanks with that grenade and the bullets. She was low. "Damn…" she then looked at him. "How do I know I can trust you? You probably killed all those Federal Police officers!"

"Federal who?" Chief questioned. "I didn't kill anyone. My own team, SPARTAN team Rocher all got killed. I have no backup either. For all I know, you could have killed them. That's why I attacked you."

"Shut up!" Samus was too exasperated to listen to reason, but she new somehow that he was right.

"Look, all I know is that we've both lost our backup, we're on an uninhabited world, and we're both vulnerable. Fighting like this isn't going to get us anywhere but death, and both of our people need us. Even if I did kill your backup, would killing me change anything? Would it bring back your team?" Chief's voice raised with each sentence.

Samus was shocked by his last two sentences. This soldier was obviously intelligent. Samus finally admitted that he was right. Killing this soldier wouldn't get her anywhere. But she still kept an authoritative feel around her, to make sure this soldier knew who was boss.

"Here." She threw him back his Assault Rifle. She then pointed her beam at him. "Don't make me regret it." She fired her charged beam in the air, and gestured the soldier to walk with her.