Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of Brinstar Depths, Chapter #10: Rationalization. I realize that it's been near a thousand years since I last updated this story, but I got extremely busy due to having Syrenet overtake all my writing time, plus school, with AP exams, plays, graduating (I graduated guys!) and now I have a new computer that I'm getting accustomed to with the new keyboard that I am not used to, as the keys are smaller than my old one. Last chapter involved Will and Samus discussing the fate of Shulk who is in the infirmary, and the fact that Samus has a new battling partner, Lucario, since she is not allowed to use her Power Suit right now in combat. I want to say thank you to Metroid-Killer for reviewing. Enjoy Chapter #10: Rationalization.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." ~ Carl Sagan
"Are you sure about this?" Lucario asks, eyeing Mario with a particular edge of competence.
"I'm sure," the plumber nods.
Samus watches the minimal exchange between the two Smashers, frowning slightly. It is odd to be roused up in the middle of the night - well, hardly the middle of the night since it is only nearing around 10 P.M, but it is late by the bounty hunter's standards, and she's not too quite fond of it to be honest. Besides her, the conjoined group of Will, Sonic, Lucina, and Wanda are behind her all in various sorts of undress into sleeping clothes. Lucina yawns, brushing hair out of her face, dressed neatly in a nightgown that goes down to her ankles. Wanda and Will are both dressed in working out gear, having been in the gym doing one of their 'late night-runs' as Wanda calls them. Samus thinks both Forrest siblings are downright insane to be doing hefty squats and lifts at nearly eleven. How are they not exhausted?
Her arms are lined up with bruises from the earlier training session with Lucario, having gone back after an early dinner to get some more practice in. The thwacks of the wooden sword against her bare skin slash and dice up the dainty flesh with crimson markings, but all it does is give Samus a reason to fight back, a reason to grit her teeth and try again at getting better at sword fighting. A beam sword isn't so difficult to use in a match, a wooden piece of weaponry should be child's play. That, however is not the case, when she's greeted with the terrace concrete over and over again by Lucina's trained hand or Lucario's perfectly timed strikes and swings. Shulk is still lying in his coma with Dr. Mario's incessant care in keeping his vitals flowing, but Samus is still worried, biting her fingernails down to the nub, and then chewing on the skin that comes afterward. If Peach is to see her nails...
It is Wanda and her abnormally irritable attitude that gets the show on the road. "Are we going to stand around here all night or are you going to tell us what's going on?"
"I agree..." Lucina adds, yawning once more.
Samus keeps her opinions to herself. Vocalization nowadays seems to add only irritability to everyone else around you, and it is not her prerogative to have this be the case, even though everyone and their mother does seem irritated with Samus Aran. She wants to go back to sleep, truth be told, and have all this madness be kept behind her, but that's never going to happen. She likes to imagine that if she wakes up from whatever eternal nightmare she has been caught in, she'll be transported to a place of happiness and beauty, where Shulk never is concussed, and that there is no amaranthine blob of god knows what terrorizing her every movement.
Lucario clears his throat at Wanda's probing, closing his eyes. A strange sense of coldness washes over Samus's exposed arms, and she shivers, hugging herself tight. Will sees her shiver, absentmindedly moving over more to be near her. The group is amassed in the library, over in the corner of the same bookshelf Lucario had noticed when notifying Mario of his discovery. It would be awkward for him if the rest of the gathered Smashers thought he to be a fraud. His eyes open once more, the bright blue a more subdued teal, like ocean waves enshrouding a piece of coral and darkening the depths below. "I wanted to make sure it was still there."
"Make sure what was still where?" Sonic frowns. He's the only one not dressed out of those roused to the library, barefoot now - as if the hedgehog is going to sleep in a bed with his sneakers on, Samus finds even the notion absurd - and it is odd not seeing the navy blur of fur not dressed up with any sort of human clothing.
Mario steps back from Lucario's side to stand next to Lucina, as the vulpine shifts into the center, his paws glowing a more subdued cerulean, a fire-like substance springing from both spikes in the center of his paws. "Two days ago, Lucina and I had one of our usual chess matches-"
"When I lost," the swordswoman cuts in abruptly, actually causing the aura master to glare at her for her rudeness. "I lost, as usual."
"Yes, while her and I were playing chess," Lucario keeps his composure up, swallowing heavily. Samus can see his body visibly shaking, more than likely out of Lucina's ignorant interruption, but even then the shake is minimal and only noticed by her trained eye. "After she left, I went to meditate in the corner closest to Sonic," and to prove his point, Lucario juts to the corner closest to Sonic with his paw. The group turns with him, and the corner is nothing out of the ordinary. Just another section in the library. "I always meditate after a game. It is a habit, which I understand humans are prone to. As my aura readings were coming through to me from all over the room, I noticed an anomaly." He turns to the bookcase behind him.
"An anomaly?" Will whispers to where Samus can hear him. "Isn't aura only readable in good and bad, like blue and red only?"
"I guess you haven't known Lucario for very long then," she smirks back at him.
"Most of the room had been shrouded in a bluish glow like the color coming from my paw," Lucario continues explaining, head slightly turned to the left so he can look back at the group. "Except this section of the bookcase here. It was gray. Usually that means it is lifeless, that it is decaying, but a bookshelf is an inanimate object that does not breathe nor live. How could it have an aura other than positive, due to knowledge? When I went to touch it, this happened-"
Samus's eyes go as wide as saucers when Lucario's paw pushes slightly up against one of the books lined on the shelf, a book with an olive green colored spine, before the fur, the aura glow, and spike all mesh into the wooden object. Everyone besides Mario, including Samus herself, gasp, taking a slight step back. The area around Lucario's arm currently stuck in who knows what starts to darken, turning over slightly with each passing second into a vicious purple, shadow lines starting to form along the rippling edges which encircle the lupine's arm. Samus's hair on her arms stand straight up. She knows exactly what that color represents.
Lucario pulls the rest of his arm back out into the library, and the portal his arm created bounces and fluctuates before it returns to normal. The aura from his paw distinguishes, and the cool feeling Samus felt on her arms dissipates back to the chilled air from the ceiling fan above. Lucario turns back to the joined group, who, for once, the entire section is at a loss for words.
Wanda stabs at it first. "So... there's a portal in one of the library's bookshelves..." she presses the bridge of her nose. "This day is just getting better and better, I swear." she mumbles under her breath.
"Where does it lead?" Sonic questions.
"That's what Mario and I cannot configure for the life of us," Lucario gives a slight dismal shake of his head, and Samus can sense the sadness. Though Lucario is not a Psychic-type Pokémon from the world he comes from, it has been a trait that he is associated with knowledge. I've been trying to determine it by spending most of my time down here, but my searching and questioning have led to nothing other than disappointment and more questions."
"What do you think is it's purpose?" Will asks.
"We do not know that either," Mario admits. "We don't know much, except that it practically exists.
Samus looks up, having been staring at the floor, walking up the bookcase. She presses an ear up to it, wondering if she could hear anything on the other side. All she gets is nothingness, as the bookcase is not a living organism and not a piece of machinery. Silence, wooden silence that is doused in a subzero case that cannot be broken. She goes to prod at it, but Lucario grips her hand and pulls it away fast away from it.
"The portal was purple..." she whispers, then back at Will and Sonic. "A purple portal, Will. Does that- does that mean..."
His eyebrows lift up with shock as his mind pieces the puzzle together, with Sonic's eyes bugging straight out of his skull. Will raises a hand to his mouth. "I didn't even notice that..."
"I'm sorry?" Lucario furrows his eyebrows together, at the prospect there is something that he does not know.
"Shulk and I have been experiencing these sort of terrors that have been following the two of us around. In particular, Shulk has heard one say to take me to a place called 'The Depths' though we are unsure of what exactly that message means. Amorphous blobs that we randomly see. They're what I suspect to be the cause of what happened to Shulk this afternoon, that one of these monsters stalking us had cut away one of the stadium window panes which had been intended on crushing him..."
Samus matches Will's gaze after saying this and she's shocked to see that his gaze is not soft and understanding like she expects it to be, but rather pointed, a glare with furrowed together eyebrows and a steeliness that is unexpected, as if his eyes are saying, "Nice job Samus, for letting that one out of the bag. Only you, Sonic, Shulk, and I were supposed to know about this. Now, you've gotten my sister involved. You've gotten Lucina, Lucario, and Mario involved too."
"And what do these creatures look like, Samus?" Mario asks.
It is Will that answers for her, as Samus starts to shudder, closing her eyes. She can picture Shulk's burns all along his arms, with charred bits of flesh hanging off like the chewed bits of paper from a dog eating homework, to the copper droplets following all the burnt off skin before the blonde swordsman collapses to the sidewalk, knocked unconscious due to the pain. His blonde hair blowing in the breeze, covering his blood-laced face, and her tears burn her skin, as she cries, as she gasps, as she yells that she's sorry, but apologies will get her nowhere, apologies are useless. "Usually amorphous and very large. Sometimes they take the shape of a human figure, since Shulk says he's seen one and interacted with one that took the place of Samus. We've only seen them for a few seconds at a time if we ever do see one."
"I think they and the portal are connected, primarily due to their colors," Samus adds, pressing down her fingertips onto her eyes as if she is warding off a bright light that she wishes to hide from. Her eyes open, and she's staring down at the floor again. "Usually purple. Sometimes black and red mixed in, and the color is always moving, always devouring one another. Always shifting... it reminds me-" and she breaks away again.
"Reminds you of what, Samus?" Lucario questions gently, pressing a paw on her shoulder.
She does not even have to say it. For the four Smashers in the library that have been through it all, it is a word unspoken on the wind. A word that'll bring lightning to crash down from the heavens and scorch the Earth ablaze if it dared mentioned, she knows this. It brings her to memories of the world spinning away, at a gravitational force unlike any other pulling at her back as she runs, as she runs and never gets anywhere. Dark clouds of shadow filling her vision, suffocating her, drowning her in a sea of black. A monster with wings, flaxen like teeth that are razor sharp screeching in the air... amber eyes, beady amber eyes peering behind a mask of green staring at her everywhere. Above it all, orchestrating it, a god-like being with stain-glass windowed wings, a seraph that widens out his wings and Samus's world turns a cascade of crimson red before life ceases to exist and all the breath inside her is knocked out in one fell swoop.
"Subspace..." she whispers, her voice impossibly soft.
It is enough to cause Lucario to stagger back, and she's never seen the Smasher lose any of his bearings before in such a shocking way. His fur goes a paler shade of blue, and his eyes widen in fear. The aura dims immediately from the rest of his body. Mario's change is more subtle, a shifting of his feet, and a gloved hand brought up to his chin. Sonic shuffles awkwardly, hands pulling at each other. Saying the very word is hard enough for Samus as is, as if each syllable is molten hot lava being poured down her throat, clogging the airway, where hands erupt from the ground and pull at her, dragging her into the cloud of purple and black shadow, hands that turn into tendrils of smoke and sulfur which burn her skin as they grapple for her.
"You don't think-" Lucario cannot even finish his statement.
"That a remnant survived and is haunting us?" Samus does not blink as she says this. "Yes, I- I do."
"We must tell Master Hand this!"
"Don't act too hasty, Lucario," Mario advises him, stopping him gently. "We don't know this to be to true."
"Yes we do," the vulpine argues back. "I've felt it."
"Sonic and I have been-" Samus adds, suddenly stopping. A light snaps on far away in the shambles of her mind, the dust being blown off. She looks back at Sonic, who is having the same reaction. Wanda watches this with a frightened glance.
"What? What now?"
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" the bounty hunter steps forward, gripping Sonic by the arm.
He doesn't even have to say anything, already taking off up the library steps, one moment he's there and the next he is gone. Samus straightens her back, turning to everyone else. "Will, do you have an extra walkie-talkie in your room that Sonic and I can use?"
For some reason, the Forrest sibling is surprised to even being spoken to now, during all of this. "I do... why?"
"I'm going to need it. Sonic and I are going to go to the Brinstar stage. Give the walkie-talkie to Lucario, and the rest of you stay here! I'll explain it all in a minute..."
Samus then turns to race after Sonic, leaving the rest of the gang to twiddle with their thumbs as her blonde hair vanishes behind the staircase and into the rest of the mansion. She's got a hunch... oh she hopes, how she hopes. If she's right...
It's the break of luck Samus needs right about now.
"You don't think-" Sonic starts, shaking his walkie-talkie.
"That the portal in the library is the one here in the lava, and that the hand we saw was Lucario testing it out?" Samus finishes.
"Exactly..." the hedgehog trails off.
Samus sits back on her hands in the middle of one of the slabs on the Brinstar stage, the air hot as ever. She's only been inside the hub for barely a minute, beads of sweat starting to already spill down her head and sizzle onto the stage like drops of Tabasco sauce into a pan. She clutches one the other walkie-talkie next to her chest, fiddling with the antenna. The other is currently in Lucario's hand down in the library where the other four are also located, watching whatever experiment is about to take place.
A newfound hope is beginning to rise inside Samus's chest. The past week has consistently been a realm of upsets and tiredness, from snapping at Will, to having Shulk injured from some malfunction, to being stalked by extraterrestrial monsters that may or may or not be the Smashers' worst enemies reincarnated. This gem, it is a spark that shall ignite should she prove to be correct in the proceedings. Sometimes, just sometimes, she needs more questions than answers to feel like she's getting somewhere. A mystery that is never quite completed is not an OCD problem for Samus, except that she does not have all the facts she needs.
The walkie-talkie sparks to life, static jarring and distorting among the airwaves. Normally any communication done inside the Brinstar stage during a brawl or training session happens via an intercom and television screens projecting the match to the outside, since the hot air and lava of the stage has been known to mess with equipment. It is not a room built to be spent taking someone's time performing covert operations that involve long distance communication using primitive technology. Samus would use her ship as a way to talk to those in the library, but unfortunately it cannot fit through the front door, and that is a construction bill she does not want to give Master Hand the money for.
"Lucario? Can you hear me?" she asks into the radio.
Her voice echoes against the walls, the flesh, pink walls that shake at every vibration that comes their way. This place has always unsettled her, but she cannot tell if it is due to being creeped out or the fact that she is fascinated by its design which terrifies her even more. She questions most of the decisions that Master Hand makes concerning the efforts in which stages are picked and remodeled, but since she rather likes her position in the whole mansion shebang, she chooses to be quiet instead of being handed the pink slip.
The Pokémon's voice comes back with full strength. "Loud and clear, Samus. Loud and clear."
"Can you hear him Sonic?"
"Connection is good," the hedgehog replies.
Samus brings the radio closer to her mouth. "Lucario, can you enter that mode of yours whenever you see the aura of something?"
"Most certainly."
The same coolness that Samus felt all the way back in the library washes over her once more, a soothing pulse that starts at the base of her spine and washes over the rest of her body, down to her toes and to the edges of her fingertips, a feeling that stretches out the blood vessels under her skin in which it relaxes her, and she can tell that Lucario has ascended to somewhere else, a world not of her own or of a mortal, due to the quickening of his voice, and the reverb of it when he speaks. She wonders if her aura is entirely blue, meaning positivity, or a fueled charcoal red, embittered by the years of battle in space against things that are the worst of what she can imagine in the world. Samus partially views herself as a villain, but in the oddest of concepts. She's a vigilante to some circles, a terrorist to others... and she has to view the world in multiple angles lest she be no better than the foes she pursues and the foes she kills.
"Are you immersed?"
"Yes, Samus."
"Step closer to the bookshelf. Is it still showing you gray, Lucario?"
"Gray to the deepest shade it can go."
She looks over at Sonic timidly, the hedgehog sitting with his legs crossed. The two lock eyes, and their gaze is amicable. Samus takes a deep breath, the cool feeling still radiating around her. "I hope I'm right."
"I think you are Samus, don't worry," Sonic assures her. The two flip onto their stomachs, the feel of the stage strange against Samus's exposed skin, causing her to shiver, but she keeps her focus down on the lava below. It is still swirling, as even if the stage is turned off, the physical machinations and laws of nature do not stop simply because humanity does. Every so often she can see the amaranthine shadows swirling in between the folds and creases of the lava, a bat hiding underneath the cover of darkness, a magician's parley trick that fools and gibes whomever it can.
Samus brings the walkie-talkie back up, dragging it over to her. "Okay, Lucario, go to the bookcase and stick your paw through the portal. Let me know when you do this, please."
A few seconds pass, before his response floods back over the airways. She and Sonic grip the edge of Brinstar with bated breath, holding on so long that Samus forgets to breathe, the last one held up in her throat, oxygen banging on the walls of her neck to be let out, a painful scorch. She exhales, when, just barely... she sees nothing. He sees nothing too, Sonic, that is. She stares at the lava for a good minute, about to respond back saying that their experiment is a failure, when, then out of the corner of her eye...
Blue fur! It's Lucario's paw!
"Lucario!" she yells into the walkie-talkie, perhaps giving the vulpine a headache. "It's your paw! Poking through the lava on the Brinstar stage! The portal in the library connects to the stage here!"
"Lava?" Lucario yelps, and the paw vanishes back through the portal, the area below back to a swirling mass of lava and shadow.
Sonic whoops into the air, giving Samus the largest smile. "You were right Samus! You were right!" He collides into her, hugging her, dropping his walkie-talkie. She returns the embrace, tightening it even further, resting her head atop his curls. She smiles, and the coolness vanishes from her body, meaning Lucario had slipped out of the aura level of the world to mortality. In a brief moment of hilarity, Sonic tries spinning around the stage with her, before he realizes he's too weak to lift her, and both tumble down onto the stage, laughing.
Samus snatches the walkie-talkie back up. "Lucario, are you still there?"
"I'm still here, Samus."
"The portals are connected!"
"What do you think it means?"
"I- I don't know."
She lets go of the walkie-talkie, it clattering to the stage. Sonic backs up away from her, as Samus lays down on the stage on her back, gaze looking up towards the roof of Brinstar's cave, the walls vibrating from her clamorous laughter. The elixir of life floods into her veins, and for a moment, Samus is elevated to a place that is other worldly. One bit of confusion in this ragged mess tied together, which means it has now posed a thousand more questions.
In this game of give and take, Samus is willing to give a bit, to take a slight edge of rationalization out of this.
A rationalization that she can use to conquer this shadow after her.
Now it is the Depths to play their turn.
And play their turn they will.
And there we are ladies and gentlemen! That was Chapter #10: Rationalization, and man, we're only eight chapters away from the end of the story, gee it flies by. I would love to be able to have the rest of this piece published by July 4th, when I had began writing this, but only time will tell. I will definitely try my hardest to have another chapter written by sometime next week, as we're getting somewhere! Not only does the rest of the main characters now about the library portal, which means most of the characters minus Shulk are fully, fully brought up to speed, Samus and Sonic, and to an extent Will have made an advance in progress with the whole mystery at hand. However, as I love me my questions, what do you think this portal's purpose is, and is it tied to the events happening to Samus and Shulk? What is the Depths going to do in response, the so called 'turn' I've hinted at? Curious to find out what you all think. Please review, I'd love to know what you all thought! I love you all so much! I shall see you again with Chapter #11: Communication. You all are the best. Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm