Metroid: Lambda Squad 2
Chapter 3
After running through the whole station, searching for Katrina via our Mother Brain cells, while shooting with our guns any alien clones that wanted us dead, and hacking into doors, traps, and security systems with Eric and his hacking-tool, that got in our way, we would arrive in the same metroid-cloning room she was in. There were thousands of pods containing sleeping metroid clones, but no signs of Katrina.
"Where do you think she's hiding," Jenny asked me.
"Just connect your brain with Katrina's," I responded, "and you'll help us find her."
"Right," replied Jenny, "I've forgot. Sorry."
"No harm done," I said to Jenny. I then said to my team, "It's too dangerous for us to split-up and find her more easily, since she could pick us off just as much so. Besides, she and the rest of us have Mother Brain's cells. Why not use them, instead?"
"Right," replied the rest of my team.
We would then connect our minds with Katrina's, sensing everything she senses, like what she sees and feels for example. We could see her slowly walking around the room, searching for us, until five-minutes of silence later, she would appear behind us. Taking notice, we would disconnect from her brain, return to ours, and fire several shots from our guns at Katrina, who successfully and flawlessly blocked all our bullets with her psychokinetic powers. The bullets in front of her would float in the air, then fall to the ground.
"Not bad," Katrina would say to us, "for a group of traitors. You've connected your minds with mine via our mother's cells, and took notice of my sneak-attack. For that, I must commend you."
"You don't have to do this, Katrina," Alexis said to her. "None of us have to submit to Mother Brain at all!"
"Alexis is right," said Jenny. "We understand that she's too powerful even with all eight of us, but we can still choose to defy Mother Brain and decide for ourselves!"
"You lie," proclaimed Katrina, as she psychokinetically pushed us backward on the ground. After falling, our backs were on the ground, as we slowly got back up on our feet and continued to face her.
"It doesn't have to be this way," Eric said to Katrina. "My teammates atoned for serving Mother Brain, while I atoned for the crime of illegal hacking and identity-theft. Surely, you can atone for the Rendalion VI High-School Massacre, too."
"It's too late for me," Katrina replied. "I killed fifty-three people with my immense psychic powers, and was considered a threat to the Federation military ever since. I'm beyond redemption, and thus do you have two choices: Rejoin our mother and repay her for making us the most perfect beings in the galaxy, or fight me until either you or me die."
"Hmph," said Joseph, aiming his chozo minigun at Katrina, "looks like we'll have to settle for the latter choice. I wouldn't mind a kick-ass, difficult fight, anyway."
"No," said Eric, as he put his pistol back into his holster and outstretched the palm of his right hand at Katrina. "There's a third option."
"There is no third option," Katrina responded to Eric. "You either fight our mother until you either win or lose, or join our mother and become more powerful than you can ever imagine."
"That's not how I see it, though," replied Eric.
All of a sudden, Katrina would fall on her knees, grasp her head, and scream at a high-pitched tone-of-voice. "What's... going on," cried Katrina.
"Why bother beating or joining you," Eric said to Katrina, "when we can just as easily redeem you of high-school mass-murder?"
"It's the Mother Brain cells the eight of us have inside our heads," Alexis said to Eric, "isn't it?"
"Well yeah," Eric replied, "Mistress of the Obvious! I'm connecting my Mother Brain cells into hers, so that I can free her from Mother Brain's grasp!"
"I can't," cried Katrina, struggling to regain herself. "I... must not... betray... our mother! Pain... stinging... so cold... like a syringe!"
Suddenly, Katrina would float in the air and unleash a powerful blast of psychic energy at us, slamming us into a wall and dealing massive damage to us. The psychic explosion she created was so powerful, it even caused the glass pods to shatter, dropping the sleeping metroids, and Samus's sleeping body, on the ground. As we lied on the ground, Katrina was floating in the air, surrounded by a psychic barrier, her eyes glowing a bright, white light.
"Foolish siblings," Katrina proclaimed to the seven of us, as we slowly got back up on our feet. "You don't know life like I do! It's filled with pain, suffering, and sorrow, and the source of this chaos is the order the Galactic Federation brings forth upon the galaxy! The Federation, like my high-school, would underestimate us, limit our potential, keep us from gaining anything our hearts desire! That's why our mother gave us her cells, to free us from their boundaries and limitations, and gain unlimited power over anything and anyone we want, in exchange for our loyalty to her! Her cells were a gift to you, and you'd spit on her in return, rejecting her gifts so that you can allow the Federation to keep you away from your desires! And for that, you must die!"
"Like Hell, we will," replied Eric, as the seven of us were cornered in-between Katrina and her immense psychic powers, and a wall. Our resident engineer would then face us and say, "Guys, it's just one of her and seven of us! You know what to do!"
"You don't mean," Jenny asked.
"Yes," replied Billy.
"Oh," Jenny said, as she and the rest of us got the point from Eric and Billy, "right."
The seven of us would put our guns away and outstretch the palms of our right hands at Katrina, melding our Mother Brain cells with hers, infiltrating it in the process. Because there was seven of us and only one of her despite her immense psychic powers, Katrina would, again, fall down to her knees, grasp her head, and scream loudly in even more pain with all seven of us than just Eric alone. Slowly and painfully, we would push back any part of Mother Brain's control on Katrina, until thirty-minutes of telepathic fighting later, she would collapse on the ground, in a coma, no longer glowing in psychic energy like when she was conscious and fighting us.
"Katrina," called Eric, as the seven of us ran to her comatose body.
Alexis would place her hand on top of Katrina's body to feel a pulse, and then say to us, "Thank God, she's still alive. She's just unconscious, nothing else."
"And about damn time, too," Eric replied.
"Would've preferred to kill her anyway," Joseph said.
"It's too little, too late to do so," Billy replied to Joseph.
"He's right," I said to Joseph. "Once we save her, we just bring her back to Federation HQ and hope that she recovers, nothing else."
"Again," said a woman's voice, "I knew you wouldn't have to rely on me." We would then look up from Katrina's comatose body to discover Samus, slowly walking toward us and grasping her left arm as if she was in pain. "And," Samus continued to us, "it appears you've saved not only her life, but also my own like on Doleous. Love to repay me for saving you ten years ago, huh?"
"We're glad you're still alive," Jenny said to Samus, "but we need to get Katrina to a Federation hospital!"
"Right," said Samus. She would then face Eric and ask him, "And you must be?"
"My name's Eric," he would respond to Samus. "I'm their new team-member and a military engineer, because every military squad needs an engineer."
"Right," replied Samus. "Now I remember you. You're that 'Man-Hacker' I used to read about in the newspapers, during my time disguised as Massux Raxan. Any reason for joining Lambda Squad and rescuing the same girl that captured and used me to clone a metroid army?"
"Two reasons," Eric said to Samus. "One, because we believe that Mother Brain controlled Katrina and thus needed to be free from her grasp, and two, I once committed online identity-theft during childhood and joined Lambda Squad to use the same skills I used for evil, to atone."
"Now that's noble of you," replied Samus. "As for that girl, I knew that it wasn't her fault that the baby metroid's DNA inside me, which once treated me of the X Parasite, was being used to clone metroids. After all, when I first met her at my house as she infiltrated it, she did constantly refer to Mother Brain as 'her mother.' And I've got to say, you've saved her life alongside mine, when it would've been much easier to just kill her in combat. After all, you said it yourself: There's always a third option besides fighting or joining the bad guys."
"Well, yeah," Eric said. "Everyone knows about that, even the most ignorant of people in the galaxy!"
"So," Alexis said to Samus, "what now?"
"The metroid clones are not dead," replied Samus, "but they're not fully-developed or stable either. Eventually, they and a variety of others of their kind, each in the millions of other cloning-rooms in this facility we're in, will wake-up and, out of instinct, break out of this facility and invade the galaxy, just like the metroids I used to destroy in the past."
"Then how do we get rid of those bastards," asked Joseph.
"I'm going to the main control center," Samus replied, "where I'll activate the station's self-destruct mechanism. Around the same time you take the comatose Katrina to the nearby escape-pods and get out of here before this station explodes."
"You're joking," Jenny replied, "right? Even though we have plenty of time to escape, you won't! There are thousands of cloned alien monsters running wild across the station, and you don't have your power-suit or any other means of self-defense against them. They'll get in your way and you won't have any time to escape!"
"Here," Eric said, taking out his pistol and passing it along to Samus, "take my pistol."
"Eric," Alexis would say to him, "you might need that pistol to defend yourself! How are you going to fight without one?"
"I won't," replied Eric, as he picked up Katrina's comatose body and placed her on his back. "Besides, Samus needs something to defend herself, and without my pistol, she's as good as dead."
"Then I guess we have no other choice," I said, "but to entrust Eric's pistol to Samus."
"Just remember," Eric said to Samus, "if anytime you survive and escape on time, I expect you to give me back my pistol. Otherwise, if you're dead or keep the pistol for yourself, things could get ugly."
"Don't worry," Samus replied, "I'll survive and give the pistol back to you."
And so, we would split up from the cloning-room we were in, Samus heading to the main control room of this facility, the seven of us, eight if you count the comatose Katrina, heading to the escape pods. Because Eric gave his pistol away to Samus, he had no other means to defend himself except rely on us for protection from any of the alien monster clones that would get in our way. After several minutes of navigating this labyrinth-like place, we would arrive at the escape-pods. Only one person could go in each pod, so Eric placed Katrina's comatose body inside one pod, while the seven of us entered our own pods. The eight pods we were inside would then be ejected out of the facility and into the dark recesses of space, flying at hyper-speed just to get us somewhere that is safe.
Our escape-pods would then crash-land on a rural planet, where as we got out, and Eric got Katrina out of her pod and on his back, we then heard someone say, "Hey, what do you think you're doing on my crops?" We would face what appeared to be a male farmer, waving his rake high in the air, as we then looked down and, to our surprise, saw that we were on a small crop-field, the seven of us and our eight pods crushing his farm-crops.
We would then face the farmer as I said, "Listen, we're Federation military personnel, but we didn't mean to..."
"Oh, right," replied the farmer fearfully. "We're supposed to respect the Federation, not berate its personnel."
"Yeah," Billy replied, "even though we've mistakenly crushed your crops."
"If you don't mind," said Alexis, "we'll get off your farm and wait for a certain friend somewhere else."
"Just don't you dare destroy any more of my crops," replied the farmer, as we walked off his crop-field and away from his farm.
As we stood in the middle of a grassy field, waiting for Samus, Eric, who still had Katrina's comatose body on his back, continued, "What the Hell's taking Samus so long? She promised to return my pistol to me!"
"It should've been us that activated the self-destruct mechanism," Alexis said, "then Samus wouldn't have to be the one to suffer."
"Yeah," said Jenny. "After all, we're often the ones that do all the work. All Samus does is stay at her house, twiddling her thumbs all day and night, not minding our inevitable deaths until we complete each of our given assignments."
"If she dies," Joseph would say, "I kick her ass!"
"Ungh," groaned Katrina's voice.
As we faced Katrina on Eric's back, Eric would say to her, "Katrina!" As Eric placed Katrina on the ground, the rest of us would gather around her to see her wake up from her coma.
"You..." Katrina whispered to Eric. She would then face the rest of us, including Eric as well, as she continued, "All of you... sacrificed yourselves... to save me."
"You're not in any condition to get back up," Alexis said to Katrina.
"She's right," Eric continued. "It's best that you save your strength for recovery!"
Katrina would slowly and painfully sit up, grasping her head, as she said to us, "I remembered hiding, running as far away from society as possible, so that I wouldn't be taken into custody by the Federation for the Rendalion VI High-School Massacre. And then, I heard a familiar voice, saying that I'm her daughter, and she promised me power, hospitality, and freedom from the Federation. And then, everything faded to black, and I was caught in the middle of the darkness."
"That familiar voice must be Mother Brain," I said to Katrina.
"Yes," replied Katrina. She would then face each of us, one by one, as she would say, "I remember six out of seven of you. You were the people I befriended back at military school, right before I was discharged for killing several personnel with my uncontrollable psychic powers. Before the seven of us joined the Federation military, we were once Mother Brain's slaves, and she gave me those awful psychic powers that turned me into the very killing machine that would soon be responsible for all those murders in my lifetime. And then, the bounty-hunter, Samus Aran, rescued us at the cost of her life, and the rest needs no explanation."
"You do realize that you were responsible," said Joseph, "for helping Mother Brain use Samus's metroid DNA inside her to clone an army of metroids, right?"
"I... was," asked Katrina.
"Joseph," Eric said to him, "do you have to make bad situations like this worse?"
"What," asked Joseph. "I'm just saying here."
"You don't remember using Samus's metroid DNA," Jenny said to Katrina, "to clone those metroids for Mother Brain, right?"
"I," replied Katrina, "cloned metroids?" The eight of us would be silent for the moment as Katrina thought to herself. After a minute of thinking, Katrina would then say to us, "Samus! What happened to her? Where is she?"
We were silent for the moment, as Katrina continued, "Is she... dead?"
"We don't know," I said quietly to Katrina. "But, even if she's dead, at least she sacrificed herself to save us and the galaxy from those cloned metroids."
"That's okay," Katrina said as she smiled to us. "Besides, you are Samus's successors as protectors of the galaxy!"
"And you know this," asked Joseph, "because?"
"It was because of her connection to us," Mariana answered. As we faced Mariana, she would continue, "As she was possessed and enslaved by Mother Brain, along with the darkness surrounding her, she probably also saw us come for her. She knew we'd be her only hope, her lights within the darkness that was Mother Brain and her control, so she watched us from afar, waiting for us to save her from Mother Brain's reign on her mind."
"Your friend's right," Katrina would say to the rest of us. "As I was enveloped in Mother Brain's darkness, I saw through your eyes, coming for me. I also noticed that your friend was also watching me watch you, which explained how she knew."
"Right," said Eric, "our connection, via Mother Brain's cells!"
As she slowly got back up on her feet, Katrina would say to us, "I owe you people my life. I knew that you'd still care for me like when you used to before I was discharged from military school. I should've known that even in this terrible darkness, there's a light in the form of you, my friends." She would then face Eric and say to him, "And you, Eric, right? Even though you weren't abducted, altered, and enslaved by Mother Brain like the seven of us, you still cared for a complete stranger like me."
"Well yeah," replied Eric, "it's my job to protect people. I didn't join the Federation military and Lambda Squad for the sake glory in battle, you know."
Katrina would then hug Eric, as she would start to pour tears down her eyes in sadness. "But," she said to Eric, "I don't know what to do with my life anymore. I slaughtered several Federation personnel and fifty-three of my high-school's teachers and classmates with my uncontrollable powers! The Federation would probably want me imprisoned or executed by now, since I committed all those horrific acts and is now considered too dangerous to live. I don't even think I can control my psychic powers. And, it's also my fault Samus is probably dead!"
"Don't blame yourself for something you can still atone for," said a familiar woman's voice. We would then turn around and face a heavily battle-scarred Samus, walking from the farm her pod crash-landed on. She was so fatigued from whatever it was she went through, that she was probably almost near her inevitable death.
"Samus," the eight of us cried out, as we would run toward Samus.
Samus would take out Eric's pistol, say to him, "Here. A promise is a promise," and tossed the pistol back to Eric as he caught it in the air.
"Never mind my pistol," replied Eric. "How did you survive?"
"He's right," continued Joseph. "There was a corny pitty-party involving Katrina's melodramatic sobbing, and you were late for it!"
"Don't mind me," replied Samus. "I've managed to destroy the metroid-infested facility, and despite all those combat-wounds I received from fighting all those dangerous aliens and metroids, I know how to handle myself in combat, although my skills are getting somewhat rusty ever since I retired."
Katrina would walk closer to Samus, then say to her, "You're saying I can atone for the murders I've committed in my past, right?"
"Well, it's obvious," replied Samus, smiling. "All six original members of Lambda Squad atoned for serving Mother Brain and nearly killing me, while Eric atoned for the crime of cyber identity-theft. So, why not you with the Rendalion VI High-School Massacre and using my metroid DNA to clone Mother Brain's metroid army?"
"Thank you, Samus," replied Katrina. She would then face the seven of us and say, "Do you think there's still a chance that I can rejoin the Federation military, to make up for my crimes of the past?"
"Well," I replied, "none of us really know. But, if we can convince the Federation to get you back into the military to atone for everything you did in your past, then you might be able to fix the damage you've created."
"Yeah, right," said Joseph. "Her powers are too difficult for her to control! I suggest we throw her in a Federation prison so that she wouldn't use her powers to slaughter anyone."
"And I say," I said to Joseph, "you're wrong."
"Hey," Joseph said, as the rest of us laughed.
As we stopped laughing, Katrina will say to us, "Don't worry. I understand the error of my ways, and I know there's some way I can control my powers."
"There is a way to control your psychic powers, Katrina," Samus would say to her. As we faced Samus, she would say to us, "Call Federation HQ to request a pick-up for us, now that the mission is over. I'll help you convince the Federation to get Katrina back into the military, as well as give you a solution to not only Katrina's problems with her powers, but also all eight of you with your Mother Brain cells."
"A solution to another problem," Jenny asked.
"Why don't you explain now," I asked.
"Because," replied Samus, "it's much safer to talk about it at the Federation military base than here."
"Right," I said. I would then turn on my communicator and say, "Federation HQ, this is Captain Richard of Lambda Squad. Our mission is complete, the cloned metroid threat eradicated, and we have rescued both Samus and Katrina. Request pick-up, I repeat, request pick-up!"
"Hold on," said a voice in the communicator, "we have your location, the rural planet of Estell. A transport will come by in two hours."
"Thank you," I replied, "over and out."
"Over and out," replied the voice.
"Well," I said to Samus, Katrina, and my team, I guess we have to find some way to pass the time until a transport shuttle arrives."
"I don't know," replied Billy. "Do you know what to do to pass the time?"
"Hmm..." I replied, as we would find some way to pass the time while waiting for the shuttle.