The utterance came from the man immediately behind her. Samus' instincts told her to whip around and face her threat, but just as she twitched, the man spoke again. "No monkey business, Aran. Just get in the holding cell and we'll be fine."

Without moving, Samus replied, "On what charges?"

"You are being held responsible for the fiasco at the Biologic Space Laboratories. Now get in the holding cell, or we'll put you there!"

Immediately Samus wanted to protest her charges, but she remembered just in time that doing so wouldn't do any good. Instead, without warning, she pushed off the ground, allowing her Power Suit to launch her high into the air in a somersault. A flip and a landing later, she had her Arm Cannon pointed at her assailants. A preliminary headcount on her part let her know twelve enemies crossed her warpath.

"Now, I'd like to know how you'll put me anywhere," Samus challenged her enemies.

Immediately, the soldiers threw Samus a large wall of gunfire as alarms started blaring from the ship. She lunged to her right, rolling on the ground in an evasive maneuver, recovering just in time to see three of them demonstrating jumping power on par with her own. She executed another rolling dodge, this time moving under the jumping enemies, only to feel a series of heavy impacts on her back afterward as the other nine hit their mark.

Samus turned around to face her attackers once more, this time returning the favor with Power Beam shots to the group of riflemen. No hits were scored, as they did similar rolls to get out of the way, but at least it made them stop firing at her. Without missing a beat, Samus leapt up to the top of the ship and turned to meet the first following jumper. Her turn gave her the momentum to lift a leg in a roundhouse kick, and the unfortunate soldier received an armored boot to the side of the head just as he landed. As his body rolled off the side of the ship, another jumper sailed through the air, fast approaching her side. She barely rotated into firing position when he landed and ducked under her Arm Cannon. Samus responded with a frontal kick, expertly blocked by the combatant.

The failed kick turned into a problem, the enemy grabbed her leg and began to execute a judo throw. Quick thinking prevailed for Samus, though, as her armor again curled up around her, forming her Morph Ball. The thrower, realizing his adversary's leg escaping his grasp a hair too late, turned around to promptly catch a breast plate full of mule kick and a launch off the top of the ship.

Her kick flowed seamlessly into a third dodging roll, barely avoiding a missile shot. The roll did not, however, flow seamlessly into another maneuver. As she recovered from it, a follow-up missile struck home, jostling the Huntress around a bit and opening her up to more fire.

A realization struck Samus as she shook off the blast and jumped off the top of the ship. Their guns' reports sounded similar to her own! Sure, it was more rapid-fire than her own, but that unmistakable firing sound erupted from her enemy's weaponry.

Similar guns...Missiles...unprecented mobility...she wasn't fighting herself, she was fighting multiple copies of herself! Noticing more of them pouring out of the ship's hatch as some of the original twelve closed in on her, she knew she was in for more than she planned.

Samus dove into the nearby woods, bobbing and weaving through the trees to avoid the enemy weapons fire. The three jumpers kept steady pace behind and to the sides of her...wait, make that five jumpers, according to her in-Visor radar display, as two more of them joined in the display of incredible speed and agility through the forest. Every trick Samus knew to throw pursuit, these five matched perfectly, even as they shot at their target. Retracing her steps, Samus hoped to get to a decent fighting spot. If running wasn't going to work, she thought, she may as well put up a challenge.

That plan quickly went out the window as she suddenly found her left leg immobile. A sensation of cold accompanied the lock-up as she stumbled into the dirt. However, she pulled off another display of her Fusion Suit's advanced musculature, applying enough brute force to shatter the ice encasing her leg joints.

WARNING: ENEMY LOCK

In the distraction of enemy Ice Beam weaponry, another noted similarity, one of them managed to get a fix on her. With no time to react, and no countermeasures to speak of, the lock completed.

And Samus' visor went static before fizzling out, taking all Suit power with it.

One of the armored personnel approached her with a strange electronic box. He tapped away at it as his comrades moved in behind him, and as Samus' suit rebooted.

The box left the man's hand, and a fraction of a second later, the man found himself ensnared in the grip of the Grapple Beam and hurled into the tree behind Samus. The box itself landed square on her back, exposed from the throw, and sprouted a multitude of wires which embedded in the Fusion Suit's membrane.

Samus, not noticing the attachment of the strange device, led the pursuit out of the woods and back out onto the grassland which had originally greeted her arrival. Taking advantage of the wide open spaces, she began to run faster, and faster, and faster, the Speed Booster activating and sending her rocketing forward. As she soon discovered, though, she was far from the only person using one.

"Samus! Samus! What's going on?" Adam's voice came in over the radio, much to Samus' relief.

"The Federation want me imprisoned! They've copied my abilities! I'm outgunned!" Samus replied, continuing her sprint across the field with the Federation hot on her heels.

"I was hoping this wouldn't happen," responded the AI. "I knew there'd be repercussions, but not..."

The comlink died, and to Samus' horror, so did everything else. Massive discharges of electricity arced into her suit from the box through the wires, sending a massive disabling charge coursing through her. Suddenly lacking stability control, her momentum sent her tumbling forward at triple-digit speeds to finally come to a halt, on her back, powerless.

The musculature of the Suit began convulsing as if having a seizure, flopping Samus around inside. POP! POP! POP! One by one the Suit's fuses blew, cutting power in a vain attempt to rescue the Suit's more sensitive components from the voltage surge and the massive short-circuiting. With a final convulsion, the battle ended as the heavily damaged Suit went dead once more, slamming Samus' head hard into the ground.