A/N; Ideas! Huzzah! By the way, the N'Kren and the Ylla are an actual thing in the Metroid universe. I didn't just make them up.

He looked up now, and said "Alright, now you know who I am. Will you trust me now?" he looked Samus in the eye.

"I already was trusting you," Samus replied, taking off her helmet. "What about you, Sylux?' she said, turning towards the purple alien.

"Anyone who doesn't try to kill me after a few days earns a bit of my trust," he answered. Samus flashed Pierce a quick thumbs up, which he grinned at.

"Wait," Samus suddenly said, remembering what had happened two days previously, "U-Mos. The Federation still ships supplies down to you and your people, right?"

The Luminoth looked at her with a slightly confused look before replying "Yes. However, the shipments are growing scarce. Perhaps it is all for the best, as our planet is in its final stages of being on the mend from the Ing. In fact, a resupply vessel was scheduled to land here today; however, they have not appeared yet. Perhaps they are late…" the sentinel trailed off as he became lost in thought.

"Well, have you heard any Federation officers talking about any strange activity in the galaxy?" the bounty hunter politely questioned further. She also put her helmet back on.

"Hmm," U-Mos thought aloud, before stating "Yes. I have. About a month before, two young soldiers were dropping off our supplies. As I oversaw the process, I heard the two young men say something about a man murdering children. Why do you ask such a question, Samus?"

Aran's heart sank in disappointment. They already KNEW that. They needed new leads; they needed to find out who Strande was in league with…

"It's nothing," she quickly replied. The sentient being of course, had a look of doubt across his face.

But wait… there was something else on his face… a tiny red dot…

Samus's eyes widened as she realized what it was. It was the laser of a sniper.

U-Mos noticed this. "Samus, what's-"

Without saying a word, the blonde quickly rushed forward and pushed the Sentinel away.

"Hey!" Pierce yelled as he ran over to help his former sentient guardian from off the ground, "what was that for?"

Oh, this is going to hurt, she thought for a millisecond.

A millisecond was all that it took for the sniper man to shoot. The beam stroke right on her viser's center, and the impact was so powerful that Samus was thrown onto the ground, several inches away from where she had been.

Her ears were ringing, for some reason. She was seeing double on everything, and when she tried to get up, she immediately felt dizzy. As she tried to check her energy reserves, she realized that she was more than sixty percent down.

Finally, her line of sight cleared, and she saw that Sylux was attempting to fire back at the sniper man, while Pierce was on his knees right next to her, trying to get her up on her feet.

"Samus! Are you alright?" he asked, concerned.

Finally, Samus was able to get up with the aid of Pierce, and she replied "Oh yeah, never felt better," in a groan.

The heroine also noticed that her visor had a crack running diagonally across it. Another thing she noticed was that Pierce still had an arm around her waist.

"Thank you," she said in a bit of a dangerous tone, and she indicated to his arm. He noticed, and he quickly drew it back to his side. "Oh, right," he said, embarrassed.

Samus tried to look up to where the laser had come from, but as soon as she lifted her head, she felt incredible dizziness again and almost fell right back down. Finally though, she was able to look up and see that Sylux would never be able to hit the assailant. He seemed to realize this too, as he abruptly stopped firing.

The temple hindered their lookout, but in the distance, Samus heard an engine screech. Suddenly, a blur of a ship flew straight over their heads, from the direction of the shot. It was a distinct red.

Aran put the pieces together: Long range lazer that took away most of her energy support? Check. Distinct color red? Check.

She was 95 percent sure that the attacker was fellow bounty hunter Trace. He, Samus, Sylux, and several other bounty hunters had gone looking for a Great Power; that Great Power almost ended up killing them all. Samus had managed to destroy the damn thing, though.

Samus's steps grew more confident as she walked towards U-Mos, who was now standing up. She now only felt slightly dizzy. Beneath her visor, her brow was knit together in thought. Why was he here? She wondered. Why would he try to assassinate U-Mos?

They all gathered up in a circle again, and Sylux rasped rather angrily "Please do NOT tell me that THAT was who I think it was?"

"We can't be sure, but for now, we're going to have to assume that yes, it's Trace." Answered Samus grimly.

"I think I've heard of him before," Pierce thought aloud, "was he one of the hunters who went after that message in the Ambilic system about two years ago?"

"Yes, and so were Samus and I," Sylux replied, looking towards his former foe a bit disconcertingly. "We were the worst enemies in that time."

"Yes, but that's all passed, right?" Samus said, slightly annoyed by the memory of the battles they had had. Sylux paused for a second before nodding his head slowly.

"Right. Enough of that, what I want to know is why he decided to shoot a Luminoth in the face," she continued, looking up at the sky once again.

"I'm not sure," responded U-Mos, who began to stroke his mandibles in thought, "I do know classified information, so there is that. But what would murdering me do? The information would therefore still never be leaked."

"Maybe it was the Space Pirates," Pierce brought up.

There was a gap of unabridged silence. Nobody brought up the Space Pirates nowadays, not even Samus Aran herself. After what had happened on Zebes, it seemed as if though they had gone into hiding. Urtagia, the Space Pirate homeworld, seemed completely abandoned.

"That's nonsense," Sylux finally replied. "Are you sure?" Pierce questioned, "from what I've read, they always seem to be able to come back."

Along with a couple of other enemies, Samus thought, remembering the many times she killed Ridley, the murderer of her parents.

Samus turned to Pierce. "Thinking that is just grasping for answers," she said, "There's been no activity for a while now. Ever since SR-388 was destroyed, there's been no sight of them. Even if they are out there, they've got no leader. At least, I hope…" Samus trailed off as she noticed the flare of light that was hitting in the corner of her visor. She looked up, dreading what she would see.

What she saw, was a spaceship twice the size of the Lazarus up in flames, plummeting towards Aether.

Pierce followed her line of sight, and widened his eyes. "Holy…"

"What is that?" Sylux asked. U-MOs's eyes became huge glassy orbs as they looked up. "The re-supply ship…"

"It's heading right for us," Samus said as she hardened her look in preparation for whatever it was they were about to face, "We need to get everyone outside the temple grounds. Pierce, suit up."

Before he did, Samus saw exactly how he was able to "suit up": it was a wrist-device on his right hand, so small that she hadn't noticed it until now. Almost immediately after he pressed it, he was encased in the dark blue armor.

"Ready," he said, holding up his weapon. Samus looked at Sylux in questioning, and he nodded a "ready". The four of them ran outside.

The crowd was still outside the temple. The trio of suit wearers were barely able to get to the front, out into the open field, the place where the Federation wreck had been at the edge of the cliff, but had since been removed. The whole place was bare, almost as if it made itself look nice for the fireball of flaming metal about to crash into it.

Samus had checked her scans correctly (which had been very hard to look through, seeing as how her visor was still damaged): it was 90 percent possible that the ship would crash into that area. U-Mos had managed to tell the crowd to go back into the actual temple itself, and he himself waited and watched the ship go down.

Finally, the fiery metal skidded onto the cliff before crashing into one of the rocky walls surrounding the cliff. The explosion was somewhat minor at best, cluing Samus in on the fact that the fuel had been ignited before the vessel began to fall.

They all trained their weapons onto the wreckage. The bounty huntress wasn't sure why they were doing this exactly; she just knew that there was an unpleasant feeling in her gut, the feeling that told you that something in that wreck was watching you.

Calm down, she told herself, though still not relaxing in the slightest, nobody can survive that, not unless they were wearing armor that was fireproof up to thousands of degrees…

But just then, something in the wreck shifted, and Samus immediately aimed her cannon at the location. It was a burning piece of metal: something alive was under it.

Finally, whatever it was got up, tossing away the hunk of metal as if it were nothing. It was hard to see through the flame and mirage, but the body was definitely still burning. The person looked like a women, and was probably tall and skinny; it was hard to tell, however, because the body was hunched over. It's head looked jerkedly around before finally focusing right on Samus, and then the blonde realized: they had been turned into beasts.

Someone on the ship must've had another trigger.

The thing began to twitch and snarled inhumanely before launching itself at the bounty hunter. Samus fired a single charge shot, which managed to burn off half of the creature's body; somehow, though, it was STILL moving. It only had half of its body, the bloody part having been cauterized, and it was now it was crawling on the ground with one hand, still making that horrible noise.

Before she could fire at it again, Pierce beat her to it: a bolt of energy passed cleanly and swiftly through the half of the animal's brain, quickly killing it.

Suddenly, another body popped up out of the wreckage. And then another. And then another…

In total, about two dozen people had been turned into the beasts. They were all up in flames, with some having several body parts missing. They were still heading towards them, though, very swiftly.

They all opened fire, with each suit-wearer being able to kill a handful of the creatures. Samus began to realize just how un-real they were. She shot a part of one's skull clean off, and it was still running to her. She shot it through the chest, and it went down.

Finally, the massacre ended. The bodies lay out across the field of land. She also noticed that Pierce was noticeably angry. She of course couldn't see through his visor, but he suddenly walked over to one of the beasts still struggling on the floor, and shot it several times repeatedly. He had his fist clenched as he was doing it, and when he was finished, he kicked the remains so hard that they flew over the edge of the cliff.

"Goddammit," Samus heard him mutter as he walked back.

Several Hours Later

The trio were once again on the Lazarus, this time flying away from Aether. Samus put it on autopilot, considering that they didn't know where to head to now.

As she walked around the ship in her Zero Suit and another brown trench-coat, she passed by the lounge and noticed Pierce sitting at one of the four tables there by himself. She hesitated to just keep walking before finally giving in and walking over to him.

"Hey," she greeted as she sat down across from him, "what's the matter?"

He had been looking down at the table before she had come in. Now, he looked up. "I'm supposed to help people," he replied slowly, "You know, that's the type of thought process I was brought up with."

Samus nodded in understanding. She too, was raised with the lesson off doing what was morally right. Of course, she wasn't able to apply that to everything she did.

"And now, the galaxy is once again, in jeopardy, like I've heard it was so many times before," he continued, his voice growing a bit hoarser, "and I want to help save it. No, I NEED to help save it. And…how can I do that, if I can't even save a ship full of people?"

"Well, you can't save everyone," Samus replied, knowing that it wasn't very good moral support, "I've had to let….SO many people die, just to save everyone else. Those are the types of sacrifices you have to learn to make."
After a slight moment of silence, Pierce nodded in understanding, and stood up from the table. Samus stood up as well.

Pierce extended his hand out in thanks. "Thanks, Samus. That actually, really helped," he said, half-smiling.
"No problem," she said, grinning faintly as she shook his hand. "That's what allies are for, right?"

A/N: Thoughts are now exhausted. Please read and review.