Author's Notes:

Still trying to get back into the swing of things, so updates will be a little late for the next couple of weeks. I refuse to give up on this though, so just keep reviewing and commenting and the chapters will come whenever they can!


Chapter 8: The Pirate Ghost

After defeating the mighty reborn titan Thardus in the Space Pirates' former quarantine room in Phendrana Drifts and using their Morph Ball upgrades to scale the nearby Cliffside, the heroes arrive in a small room with a single elevator suspended in place by about four latches around its circumference. In front of the elevator lies a panel that the hunter is capable of scanning to activate it. With a click of her visor Samus mumbles out to Riku "This elevator will take us to Magmoor Caverns…From there we will be able to make a quick trip over to the Phazon Mines."

Turning her head to the side as a symbol of the Chozo of Tallon IV appears in an orange holographic manner at the center of the elevator. With a bit of concern in her voice the hunter asks "Do you think your suit will be heat resistant?"

Riku nods his head in response, saying with a grin of confidence "I was in the deeper parts of Norfair and everything seemed just fine with my systems, so I can imagine that Magmoor Caverns won't give me much trouble."

Samus nods slowly in agreement, and with nothing else to say between them the two heroes walked onto the center of the elevator and watched as the hologram disappeared and the latches sprang up to release the elevator. The heroes descend rapidly, the platform they stand on being guided to the bottom of the incredibly long and dimly lit shaft by four iron bars in the corners. The occasional beam of light shone through the slits in the walls, the heat projected from them slowly growing warmer as they neared the volcanic caverns of Tallon IV. As they quickly left the icy domain of Phendrana behind them, Riku faced the backside of the hunter as she appeared to be deep in thought and asked her "Samus, what do you think your dark counterpart is up to?"

It was a question that was on his mind that he felt the hunter herself would also be thinking about, but it takes a moment for him to receive a response as Samus coldly tilted her head to the left and glared at him before saying in stoic puzzlement "I assumed that Dark Samus was planning on corrupting planets again to take over the galaxy, but these apparitions prove that theory invalid. There is no way of knowing just what that abomination plans to do until we confront it…" The hunter turns to face forward and proceeds to say "Right now, all we can do is get rid of these apparitions one planet at a time…"

Riku's mouth is made partially agape out of surprise towards Samus' lack of a true answer regarding the dark hunter's motives, but after putting on a neutral expression the boy nods his head once in agreement of what their main focus would be and decided to keep any further theories on the dark hunter's motives to himself. After that conversation had come to pass, the elevator came to a slow and sudden stop at the very bottom of the shaft. The humid air is just barely countered by the frigid sensation still lingering on the armors of the two heroes, and Riku knew that this feeling of warmth would be replaced with a more searing sensation outside of his armor once the two heroes passed through the door in front of them.

After the elevator has been locked into place by another set of latches, Samus walks forward slowly and uses her arm cannon to undo the shield and open the door behind it, welcoming the influx of heat on the other side with stoicism as she enters the room with Riku following not too far behind. To be expected from a volcanic domain, the air in the room is painted with a thin red-orange hue, the rocks either brown or black in color and the ceilings crawling with stalagmites galore. However, because of the Phazon that has dug its way into this planet, the lava underneath the grated floor below where the heroes stand is light-blue, with the bones of some poor creature being entangled in the grasp of the vines that crawling between the holes in the grates themselves.

Samus barely bats an eye at what she sees, her focus moving more towards the blue-barrier door on the eastern end of the room that stands at the top of a few elevated metal platforms that have grown a few Phazon shrooms on their surfaces. While the two heroes head over to the door, Riku preemptively shoots at the shrooms to detonate them so the spores won't attach to his armor by the time he makes it there. Samus opens the door with a single power beam shot, and the heroes make their way inside of a winding tunnel that has a cooler air to it than the room the two were in just briefly. Near the end of the tunnel is a metallic six-sided passage with holographic, glass-like blue windows that are barely holding back the Phazon that has latched to the metal bindings.

As the holograms briefly fade in and out of view, Samus and Riku look at the end of the tunnel and are surprised to see that the door that is usually there has been blown apart at the seams, meaning that the barrier that would usually protect it is gone. The hunter takes a moment to kneel down and examine one of the door fragments that had fallen on the ground in front of the door, and after a few moments of looking at how the fragment is bent she comes to an obvious conclusion and notes to Riku as she stands back up "Whatever type of explosion caused this door to come apart came from inside…"

Samus pointed on ahead and proceeded to say "Be careful, the Phazon Mines were set up by the Space Pirates, and there's a likely chance they came back to try and acquire some more Phazon for themselves."

The two heroes traverse on ahead, making their way around one more heated curve of this volcanic tunnel until they arrived at a more technologically advanced passage whose walls and machinery appear similar in aesthetics to the six-sided tunnel they just passed through moments ago. It appears as though there should be an elevator at the end of the passage, but instead there is a malfunctioning panel in front of where the platform should be along with a long shaft leading further down into the depths of Tallon IV. "It seems as though the explosion also took out the elevator…Thankfully we don't have to ascend to reach the Phazon Mines from here, so lets get a move on." Riku says in regards to what he sees.

Samus and Riku leap down the shaft, with the teenage Overlord activating his back thrusters to slowly descend while the hunter hangs against the side of the shaft and slowly grinds down with the help of the magnetic plates on her feet. It takes quite a long time for the heroes to make it to the very bottom of the shaft, but when they do they find the burning wreckage of the elevator platform lying in a ankle-deep pit. Judging by the size of flames, the platform had been destroyed just recently, a suspicious act if there ever was one.

Samus leaps off of the wall she was descending along and makes lands in front of the door out of this room while Riku hovers forward, taking a glance at the wreckage before he himself lands and asks the hunter "What do you think happened here?"

"Dark Samus probably destroyed the platform when it came here to spread Phazon. The other likely explanation is that the elevator short-circuited after whatever explosion came through this area." Samus offers her thoughts on the subject as she looks on ahead and notices another door has been blown off in front of her. Squinting her eyelids, the hunter goes on to say "…If anything, the Space Pirates must have recently destroyed this facility to tie up any loose ends regarding Phazon."

As both heroes walk down the passage beyond the door, Riku tilts his head slightly and asks "So does that mean we won't encounter any Space Pirates here?" with hopeful optimism in his voice.

"If our visit is short, yes." Samus responds with stoicism. "They will likely notice the return of Phazon if we don't deal with the problem quickly, and for once I'd like to avoid encountering them."

The conversation ends right as the heroes truly enter the Phazon Mines. The first room they encounter is a expansive one with a large glass window lying off to the left that gives a grand view of the decaying remains of the Leviathan that first brought Phazon to Tallon IV, the place where it arrived aptly named the "Impact Crater" by both the Space Pirates and the Chozo that once lived there. After glancing briefly at the gargantuan seed, Samus' eyes widen as she notices the tip of some Phazon roots at the bottom of her vision. Tilting her head down as she walks to the edge of the hallway allows the hunter to see a large pool of Phazon that has spread out along the floor of the mines, most of it already climbing up the walls and platforms.

Whatever isn't infected with Phazon is either wrecked or scorched thanks to a explosion that swept through the entirety of this mine. Samus blinks twice, looking down at the Phazon pool and noticing that it was just about to consume a small passage that she and Riku would be able to pass through with their respective Morph Balls. However, the Morph Ball would be consumed by the Phazon pool, so she had to wonder just how the two of them would make it to the room that she wanted to check.

"What are you looking at Samus?" The boy asks, seeing as his vision of most of the area below is obscured because of his current position.

"There was a particular room I wanted to check out to see if we could find an apparition, but there is no way to access the Morph Ball passage and with the condition the mine is in I can only imagine that it would be rather difficult to get there the long way." After Samus points out the problem at hand currently, the teenage Overlord smiles and says with confidence "Give me a couple seconds Samus, I got an idea."

Riku moves past Samus and leaps out onto a stable platform to the right of the passage, using the thrusters to cover the full distance needed and making a rather soft landing as he summons his dual-barreled cannon and kneels down, pointing the tips of the barrels towards the far edge and firing a close range plasma shot to melt two holes right through the platform itself. He moves the cannon to the edge of the rightmost hole and creates two more with another shot, moving along in specific intervals and firing more and more shots until he has broken the platforms off from the rest of the wall.

From there, Riku quickly stands up and points his weapon at the wall while the platform begins to descend from its original point. With one charged up blast that explodes right in front of him, the teenage Overlord manages to push both himself and the platform he stands on away from the wall and towards the Phazon pool. The platforms lands with a high-rising splash following soon afterwards, and after every single drop has settle back into the corrupted pool Riku turns with his back facing the passage and uses short bursts of Plasma beam energy to push the platform closer to the passage. It takes but a few seconds for the platform to be anchored in place by Phazon roots that grow out of the pool, but by then it doesn't particularly matter seeing as Riku managed to get to his destination and thus allowed both himself and Samus the ability to use their Morph Balls to proceed.

Looking up after dispelling his weapon, Riku smiles behind his visor and says as though what he did was no big deal "Come on Samus, I got us a way to access the passage."

The hunter pauses for a moment in disbelief of what she just saw, but proceeds to leap down from the ledge and land beside the teenage Overlord with an impressed air surrounding her armor as she said in a more natural tone of voice "Good work Riku, but stay sharp for what's up ahead." The hunter's warning dispels any pretenses of overconfidence in the teenage Overlord's mind, and as she curls into her Morph Ball and begins to head through the passage Riku grins and says in a jolly tone "Don't worry Samus, I'll be ready to go once I'm at the other side."

He then puts on a serious expression and transforms into his rocky Morph Ball state to follow the hunter to the other side. The passage is short but winding, and the heroes arrive at a thin platform that is low enough for Samus to stand on in spite of her statuesque height. The platform is suspended in the air by some iron strings, all of them surprisingly intact. In fact, the room itself appeared to be structurally sound in comparison to the last one the heroes went through. The expansive, rock domed area only had its computers destroyed below the walkway the heroes were on, besides that the room maintained the foreboding dark air that the hunter was deeply familiar with thanks to her last visit to this room.

On the ground were small empty craters that Phazon once lied in, and Samus was actually surprised to see not a single drop of the corrosive material in the entire room. "…This isn't right." The hunter notes as she leaps down from the walkway and lands on the stable, rocky ground with Riku descending a moment later.

"Well we only assumed that there would be an apparition in the Phazon Mines. It wasn't a definite thing." Riku points out as he gently holds his hand beside his body. The hunter shifts her head back and forth slowly, trying to determine if there is something that she might be missing as she simultaneously begins to walk forward to get a better scope of everything in the room.

"Phazon is still on Tallon IV and there isn't an apparition in any other area of this region of the planet…That means there has to be an apparition around here." Samus says with a serious dialect, but Riku is quick to respond to the hunter's assumptions with "There's still the Leviathan Seed. I know the Aurora Unit said to not bother, but who is to say that Dark Samus didn't create an apparition in there?"

"Well for one…" Before the hunter can give an answer, she senses an enemy's presence thanks to her visor and immediately pauses ready to turn around in the direction of the enemy. Riku notices Samus' uneasy pause and quickly turns around as a pale-blue glow begins to reflect off of his armor and visor. Standing tall above the two heroes is the apparition of a gigantic, mutated Space Pirate with shoulders and legs covered in glowing pods of pure Phazon that are bound in place by solid dark-blue Phazon roots. The Space Pirate was heavily armored from head to two, with the only bits of "flesh" visible being the mouth and the piercing, pupil less yellow eyes above it.

"The Omega Pirate…" Samus recognizes the apparition by name thanks to prior knowledge of the Space Pirates plans during her last trip here, and with her arm cannon raised at the apparition she arches her eyebrows downward and focused on the Omega Pirate apparition as from its ethereal body emerged liquid Phazon that splattered down into the once emptied pits.

The apparition says nothing, not even a single roar emerged from its lips as it lowered its three clawed hands and slowly begins to walk forward to confront the hunter. Riku leaps back to get out of the mutated Space Pirates path, but as he draws his weapon he smiles and says in a joking manner "So wait a second…This is a Space Pirate that has been infused with Phazon, so he's basically a zombie. And now he's a ghost…"

Samus was slightly annoyed by the joke Riku was attempting to make during this moment, but kept her cool as she berated him with "How can you joke at a time like this? Stay focused and target the Phazon pods with your Hyper Mode."

Riku flinches and shakes his head, apologizing to the hunter swiftly before returning to a state of intense focus towards the Omega Pirate apparition. He concentrates on the Phazon spores in his body and puts himself into Hyper Mode, leaping back in sync with Samus as the mutated giant draws Phazon into its bulky arms and raises them into the air with a flurry of blue sparks surrounding them as he swiftly slams his hands against the floor to create a wide shockwave that was half as tall as his body that stops mere inches away from the heroes. This attack made the pirate briefly vulnerable though, and with his weapon charged in the interim of entering Hyper Mode and leaping back Riku raises his cannon into the air and fires a large Phazon meteor that flies through the air and explodes upon making contact with the Phazon pods on the Omega Pirate's right shoulder. This has the added result of taking those very pods out, weakening the power of this mutated apparition and making him appear more solidified.

Riku tries to go for another attack on the Omega Pirate's other shoulder, but this time the mutated giant raises its left hand into the air and summons forth a swirling yellow energy vacuum that sucks in the properties of the Phazon meteor to completely negate its effectiveness against him. The teenage Overlord was surprised by his attack being stopped, but refused to be dissuaded and chose to use his speed to his advantage against the slower monstrosity. Riku zips clockwise around the Omega Pirate, waiting until he was halfway around to charge up another shot and thrust his cannon in front of his slanted, dashing body to fire off a perfectly aimed shot right at the Phazon pods on the titan's left shoulder.

The pods are blown apart, as to be expected, but this time around the Omega Pirate reacts to this damage with a quiet low-pitched growl and a slight retreat of three steps. However, Riku wasn't fearing any retaliation from the apparition, for he knew that the Omega Pirate's attacks consisted only of the shockwave he demonstrated just moments ago and a simple few shot barrage from the hand he used to drain the Phazon from his last charged shot. With his speed providing him with a clear advantage over the monstrosity, Riku quickly used two more charged shots empowered by his Hyper Mode to deal with the other pods, thus robbing the Omega Pirate apparition of all of its Phazon and making him completely solidified in the process. However, the rate of which Riku used his charged shots meant that he was already forced out of Hyper Mode, which wouldn't be a problem if the apparition was defeated by that last assault.

To restock on Phazon in the puddles around him, the Omega Pirate swiftly turns invisible and vanishes on top of one of the Phazon puddles around him with a single warp jump. Thankfully for Samus though, the Omega Pirate isn't going to summon any Beam Trooper variants. The hunter notes, however "I don't have my X-Ray Visor right now, so do you have a plan to figure out how to find the Omega Pirate?"

The inquiry was directed towards Riku as Samus scans the puddles to see if she can notice any movements, realizing not long afterwards that the ethereal body would be incapable of creating ripples in the puddles despite the fact that it was able to interact with the Phazon. Riku looks at his arm cannon and thinks to himself "Hmm…I can't use my fire anymore, and I shouldn't risk another use of Hyper Mode right yet. Come to think about it, I have two other beam functionalities, don't I?"

With this last thought on his mind, Riku's eyes widen and he looks towards his arm cannon, focusing his thoughts onto it to switch the color of the energy from red to a glowing white, signifying a switch to the Light element. He then points his weapon at the ceiling as a smile crosses his face, and with a brief charge of the Light element he fires a miniature glowing sphere at the middle of the sky that radiates a shining spread of rays across the battlefield. A couple of them reflect off of the surface of the Omega Pirate as it stands in the bottom right puddle, and after Samus takes notice of this she readies her arm cannon to fire a Super Missile while Riku thinks in his head "Huh, I guess he has elements of a vampire as well…"

The hunter releases a mighty Super Missile that flies through the air and impacts hard against the Omega Pirate's body and forces him out of his invisible state before he is able to fully absorb the Phazon from the puddle it stood in. Samus wastes no time in charging up another Super Missile and launching it, the second impact pushing the phantasmal mutation back and causing it to growl in pain. Samus fires two more Super Missiles in rapid succession, the final one forcing the Omega Pirate onto its knees as it lets out a light, dying growl. It holds its right hand out pitifully as its body begins to crumble forward, but before the apparition perishes out of existence with rapid flickers the two heroes notice the phantom of Samus appearing in front of the path of the Omega Pirate's fall. The phantom is consumed by the apparition's fallen body, and this moment makes Samus recall the acquisition of the Phazon Suit in painful detail.

But nonetheless, the apparition was done for and Samus wouldn't have to think about past experiences on Tallon IV for much longer. In the place of where the Omega Pirate once stood are two spheres, one of them containing a large glowing golden bomb and the other containing a single rose to represent the Grass element for Riku. The hunter gives a warning to the boy this time around, saying to him "You might want to be careful here…" before she walks forward and collects her sphere. "Power Bombs reacquired…" The armor states.

Samus puts herself into her Morph Ball state and drops a large glowing sphere where she stands. In a matter of seconds the sphere detonates, creating a powerful widespread explosion that expands to cover an area twenty times larger than the Morph Ball itself. Riku stands in awe of the Power Bomb demonstration, waiting until the explosion has fully subsided before he walks forward and recollects his Grass element from the Phazon sphere. Once again the corruption grows within his body, but instead of spreading further across his face the Phazon begins to root itself around his heart and becomes one with the veins spreading out from the vital organ itself. The process of corruption spreading within his innards along with the use of Hyper Mode earlier easily tire the boy out, leaving him with quiet heavy breaths as he turns his body away from Samus and holds his left fist against his chest plate, realizing only a moment later that he would be unable to feel the beats in his chest thanks to the PED Suit.

Samus unfurls from here Morph Ball state and notices Riku's stance, but before she can comment on it the ground begins to tremble much like it did when they defeated the Mother Brain apparition on Zebes. Phazon was being purged from the planet, and if the hunter and the teenage Overlord failed to escape in time then Tallon IV would vanish as well. Riku, feeling the trembles in the ground, wastes no time in looking towards the walkway in the ceiling, pulling his left hand away from his body and summoning his Grapple Beam to pull himself onto the walkway as Samus does the same thing at the exact same time. Once both heroes were on the walkway and began to dash towards the passage they used to get into this room, Riku points out "Samus, how are we going to get off the planet in time?! We can't make it out to open land from here fast enough!"

Samus, with her quick wits and even quicker fingers, uses a set of command buttons on her arm cannon that connect her armor to her ship, and she calmly says to the boy "I have an idea…Follow my lead."

The two heroes turn into Morph Balls and roll through the passage, standing up on the platform that Riku made and the hunter proceeding to look towards the windows in this room where her ship can be seen descending from the thundering skies. Its actions are partially obscured by the rising Phazon mist in this room, but from what little Riku could see he watched as the ship fired two large missiles at the window to shatter it apart instantly. Rain falls inside of the Phazon Mines as the quakes increase in intensity and the ship aligns itself with the bottom of the shattered glass, giving the heroes the perfect height for them to leap off of the platform and land on the top of the ship itself right as the Phazon leaves the mines and causes the platform to crash against the scorched floor.

The ship's top hatch opens up, allowing the heroes to drop inside. Samus then gets into her seat and shuts the hatch, getting a hold of her controls to disable the autopilot and launch the ship right off of the planet, the thrusters roaring below to lift her away of the atmosphere just in the nick of time. Tallon IV survives the Phazon purge, and once again the hazy remnants that were pulled off the planet fly away towards their home in the farthest depths of space. Samus lets out a sigh of relief, hoping deep down that the Chozo are happy about the Phazon leaving their sacred lands once more.

Riku smiles behind his visor, but after a few seconds his body begins to feel the toil of corruption and he collapses with the sides of his lying flat against the ground while he leans himself against the back of the ship and takes in a few heavy breaths. His body begins to sweat, but the droplets are thick than the average sweat and contain traces of Phazon within them. Between drawing his blood, fighting Thardus and the Omega Pirate and furthering his corruption twice fold and using Hyper Mode once, the short trip onto Tallon IV really drained Riku's energy and made him feel as though he would go unconscious at any given second.

Samus hears the sound of Riku's collapse and immediately turns around in her seat, asking with a voice of stoic concern "What's going on Riku?"

The teenage Overlord smiles behind his visor, responding in a calm voice of his own "I just overworked my body right now…Don't worry about it Samus, I just need to rest up a bit before we head off to the next planet."

"…" Samus goes silent for a moment, not being fooled in the slightest by Riku's attempt to the hide the pain of the corruption growing in his body. But before she can say anything, the Aurora Unit pops up in holographic form behind her and addresses her to grab her attention, saying in a mechanical voice "Congratulations on freeing Tallon IV…But do not rest easy yet, a crisis has come to our attention. If you recall your previous travels to a planet called Aether, you'll remember that the presence of Phazon there split the planet in two and threatening to cause a temporal anomaly that would have more than likely spread to cover half of the known galaxy…Well thanks to your dark counterpart's efforts, that very same anomaly threatens to emerge again. That is why we ask that you quickly head to Aether and deal with the Phazon there and destroy any Ing that may have been reborn from the splitting of worlds…That is all, Samus."

The Aurora Unit signs off after expressing the urgency of heading to Samus' next destination, but before the hunter sets the coordinates for Aether she tilts her head to look at Riku and despite knowing all too well that she would need his help if any apparitions show up on the planet she says in an empathetic tone "Rest up as long as you need to Riku…You shouldn't have to succumb to Phazon corruption by overworking your body like this." The teenage Overlord is surprised by Samus' remark, and with a smile on his face he accepts the hunter's offer and gently closes his eyes to try and relax his body as the ship departs for the split planet of Aether…

Next Time: Second Coming