Super-Cooled

It has been drawn to my attention that I may have made the chief a bit to OOC, and you're EXACTLY RIGHT.

I should have done it better, I know I could have. Oh well, I'll try to correct it if possible.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. I live in a paper bag in the middle of the road.

Ha! Luxury!

Thoughts: 'Thoughts

Speech: "Speech"

John dived behind the remains of a stone wall. Leaning against the tan bricks he readied the pistol in his left hand.

'Three… two… one...'

He threw himself away from his cover, rolling into the thick yellow grass, and sighted down the barrel of his oversized, matt-black handgun. The gun was simple; it had a handgrip, followed by a short shaft, which ended with a vertical rectangle with two barrels imbedded in it. It looked like a large H with the tops cut off.

The Chief sat in silence. Despite the disadvantage of having a black pistol in bright cover, the deep shade granted by the enormous trees that dotted the area concealed him completely.

'At least I hope.'

He was wearing a light combat suit, coloured yellow and white in a fairly decent attempt at camouflage. The suit looked uncomfortably like the old Helljumper uniform from back home, the only exception was that the helmet was missing and was replaced by a high collar which reached his nose.

He kept his eyes trained on the ruined building ahead, looking for any signs of red. She'd be there, she wasn't one to hide. The area consisted of a single ancient building, now little more than ancient rubble, which sat in the heart of a bowl which was dotted by the huge, aged trees, carpeted in the yellow grass.

'THERE!'

Spotting her dodge into the centre of the demolished complex, John prepared to fire.

'Three…' His finger tightened on the trigger.

'Two…' He closed his right eye.

'One…' He jammed down the trigger.

Both barrels fired in sequence, filling the space between himself and his target with power beams.

'Got you… wait, no…'

The second before the barrage hit, the target flipped to the side, twisted in the air and fired its own barrage of energy back.

Throwing himself out of the way, he slid down the slope, keeping up a constant barrage in an effort to keep from being picked off. When he hit the flat ground at the bottom of the incline he rolled onto one knee, and scanned the area wildly.

'Shit, gone…' He brought his right hand down and grabbed the second pistol from his holster. 'More firepower is the best option here.'

Blowing a lock of his platinum hair from his eyes, John dived behind a pockmarked pillar and considered his options, letting his military mind whirr.

'Advantages: Speed, stealth, augmentations, superior eyesight, reflexes, two hands.' He looked at his right hand. 'Kind of.'

'Disadvantages: No powered suit, low firepower, low ability with slow projectile energy weapons, no scanners.'

Click

John once again rolled out of cover, as said cover exploded into red hot chunks of shrapnel. Unfortunately, the small energy tank attached to his armour was not designed to absorb the small, glowing hot pellets, although his armour could.

'No rockets either.'

Pushed by the force the explosion, John slid to the base of the wall until his back thumped against it.

'Shit.'

He had been backed into a corner. Rolling back onto his feet, again, he ran towards the nearest cover, again. He threw himself down behind it, just as it was sliced in half. The piece of wall tilted and began to fall, onto him.

'Damn.'

He hurled his right arm up, shattering the chunk that was about to land on him.

This also shattered his arm.

Before any comment could be made a yellow foot dropped out of the sky and buried itself in his chest, driving him several centimetres in to the worn paving.

The owner of that foot simply aimed her weapon of choice at John's head and fired a continuous beam of plasma energy into the stunned soldier. His tank drained within a few milliseconds.

GAME OVER

……….

With a sigh John removed the helmet from his head, stood and stretched his limbs.

"You win, again." He looked at the woman, who approached him, holding a data pad.

"That's right." She chuckled, "You didn't get a single hit, again."

Consulting the pad, she read, "Reaction time is up, muscle strain was minimal, aim is good, eye sight is better, but you wrecked your prosthetics for the thirteenth time!" She looked up, "You need to remember that they can only handle eighty kilos of pressure."

"Well, it's not like they were really damaged, it was only a simulation."

"If it was in real life you'd have been screwed, you should have just used your left hand."

"That would have hurt a lot. I also needed my left hand for my Gibreel; prosthetics are no good at fine aiming." He pointed to his right arm, which looked relatively natural except for a raised ring where the sensors met the nerve endings.

"True, not that it made a difference." She said this with a completely straight face. John's eyebrow twitched.

"Sam, you have a suit, whereas I have standard bounty hunter gear. So it's a bit to imbalanced to call it a win, right?" John caught the pad out of the air as it spiralled towards his head.

"Violence doesn't solve everything." He dictated with closed eyes, one finger raised to accentuate the point.

"That's rich, coming from a professional soldier."

The Spartan crossed his arms over his chest. "It was the job I was born and raised for; can you judge me for that?"

She snorted. "Don't sound so offended, you know you love it."

John didn't respond, he only shrugged and tapped his ear.

Samus glared. "Don't pretend it's broken, I now its not." Referring to the ear piece he wore, which was a much smaller version of the original translator. Instead of making noise, it created vibrations, which meant that you could hear what was going on and yet still hear the surrounding sounds. Some nano-specialist had rigged them up for them to use.

With a swish, the door to the cavernous room opened and C'Laar entered, holding her own pad and nano-translator. She clipped it to the feathers near her ear and brought the pad to her face.

"The Mind-Body-Core works well." She said referring to the machine sitting in the middle of the room.

One of O'Hala's greatest creations, the MBC was a recuperation machine, which also doubled as a combat simulator, not that it was used in that form in the relatively untroubled society the Dark Chozo resided in. An enormous, towering mechanism, the MBC used up a lot of the space the room provided. Using an array of high powered sensors, the machine could perfectly simulate the maximum stress a body could take. In order to do this it, through the use of a helmet, disengaged the brain and central nervous system from the rest of the body, while the rest was kept alive through bioelectrical shots. The conscious and subconscious was then thrown into the preprepared virtual world where what ever happened happened.

John had stiffened and stepped away from the Chozo slightly. He was still sensitive around the giant avians, for two main reasons. His natural aversion to xenos bred through years of warfare, and the fact that one of them always seemed to drop a sedative into his foot, shoot a dart into his leg or stab him in the arm with a syringe, just to find out what made him tick. They did it to him as soon as he had finished his first chat with Sam.

He rubbed his eyes, 'My god I was such… such a civilian.'

John brought himself back from his thoughts to notice that two certain females were staring at him with odd expressions o their faces. Although C'laar's was more passive than Samus', who had a raised eyebrow, he could tell they wanted something from him.

"What?"

Samus tossed him a cranial chip.

"Another one?" He looked critically at the transparent card held between his index and fore fingers.

After many, many years of misuse, his brain had been unable to cope with the rush of knowledge that accompanied a fully filled chip. And so he had all the relevant contained in the chips broken down onto different topics. He then had them slowly added together until he could contain them all.

"That's the last one. The rest of it's all in your head." C'Laar consulted her pad again. "I think that one's called..." She frowned. "Flood-Web? What's that?"

"Huh?" John had just taken his hand away from his head after inserting the chip in the second slot.

He then stiffened up. He then collapsed, no sissy crumpling or falling to his knees, just going from straight standing up to straight lying down.

Samus smacked her forehead.

"This keeps happening with monotonous regularity."

C'Laar nodded.

Sorry about it taking so long.

I got lazy.

Again.

Plus I'm kind of making this up as I go along.

Not the best strategy.

Yeah I suck.

Onward!!!