Author's note: I also posted another Metroid story tonight, just a short little thing I did for a Metroid writing and art swap. It about little Samus living with the Chozo.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing. I know I say it a lot, but those comments really do mean the world to me and brighten up my whole day. So thank you! Truly!

Chapter 34: You Better Run

"Run!" Samus called out to Chance and Ruth as the dragon recovered and lunged at her, snapping its jaws a bit too close for comfort. "I'll hold it off while you get out of here!"

Ruth stared up as the bounty hunter continued to fight the xeno-dragon. She had never seen anything like it in her short life. The winged beast was massive and grotesque, but Samus was like a small army all by herself with an impressive display of weaponry. Ruth wanted to get closer and watch as the battle unfolded, but she was quickly snapped out of her daze as Chance grabbed her hand and began to pull her toward the door.

Ruth barely had time to catch her breath as they ran into the next room. The metal ground was cold on her bare feet, which were now stained with blood from walking through the slaughter of the previous corridors. The stench of death was in the air, something she had never smelled before, and she could not even process what was happening as she ran after Chance. He seemed intent on getting them as far from the battle as possible, and he didn't slow down until they were several rooms away from where Samus was fighting the dragon.

"H-hey," the lemur creature panted as he turned to look back at Ruth. "Are you all right?"

However, Ruth just stared back at him, still confused by his large golden eyes and pointed ears. And his tail. His tail was particularly disconcerting to the human woman.

"Ruth?" he asked, a look of concern coming over his face.

"You opposed her," the woman said at last, "to save me. You wouldn't let her kill me. You opposed her even though you are nothing compared to her power."

Chance looked confused for a moment as the two of them stood in the dark metallic corridor. Dried human blood caked their feet as they stared at one another.

"I just didn't want her to hurt you," Chance replied with an uncharacteristic caution in his tone. "Samus isn't a bad person. She'd never want to hurt an innocent, no matter what species they are. She's just scared I guess."

"Scared?"

The lemur nodded as he felt the hair on his tail slowly rising up. Something in him sensed danger, and he knew it wasn't coming from the dragon. "Yeah… she wasn't expecting to come here and find out that she was the Zero Host, and she's had a lot of problems with clones in the past. They tend to try to kill her."

Ruth raised an eyebrow as she stared at Chance. "You're… actually kind of nice. You deserve better than to be pushed around by someone like her."

"Pushed around?" Chance asked with a laugh. "Oh no, you've got it all wrong. I—"

He never got to finish his sentence as Ruth's eyes began to glow a brighter blue and he felt himself being lifted off the ground. He gasped as he stared at Ruth in shock.

"You don't deserve to die," Ruth said. "Get out of here, Chance. Nothing good will be happening from here on out."

"RUTH?" he yelled as he felt himself being lifted higher by her telekinetic hold. He tried to struggle against it, but it was all in vain as he began flying through the air and straight out through one of the doors on the far end of the room.

As soon as he was out of sight, Ruth relaxed and took a deep breath before once again activating her power. With a wave of her hand, she concentrated her energy on the heavy steal doors between herself and Chance, slamming and sealing them together so there was no way for the lemur to get back in.

Now her objective was clear.

She had meant it when she said she did not want to hurt Chance. He was a strange creature, one she had never seen before, but the lab had always been home to various strange creatures. He closely resembled a human but not quite. Humans, in her experience, were neither quite so kind nor quite so stupid as to put themselves between her and a bona fide killing machine like Samus Aran. She didn't understand his loyalty to her.

Ruth could feel her hands trembling as she turned and walked back to where they had left Samus fighting the xeno-dragon. The XR-13 species was one she had never met up close and personal, but she remembered the scientists on the Arcadia talking about it at length. They had been so proud of what they had created.

And now as Ruth walked back through the desolate halls, those same scientists lay dead at her feet.

The closest thing she had ever had to a family was gone, and their beloved creation was under attack. Ruth didn't know where the sudden surge of confidence had come from, but she knew she had to do something to protect the xeno-dragon, lest it meet the same fate as the humans onboard this craft.

Recalling a lesson from her favorite human, the one who she thought of as "Mama", Ruth stopped in one of the rooms between her and Samus. There was a cabinet in one of the corners, and it was as unremarkable as it was useful. Sliding open one of the drawers, Ruth revealed a palm scanner and pressed her right hand up to its surface. Mama had told her once that if there was ever an emergency or she ever ran across the Zero Host, then contents of this cabinet would help her deal with the problem.

As the palm scanner glowed green and beeped its confirmation, the top drawer closed, and the bottom drawer slowly opened. Hands still shaking with adrenaline and anxiety, Ruth reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out a long silver pistol. She knew exactly what to do with this, having seen it simulated several times in her training.

Quickly, Ruth turned and ran as fast as her thin legs would carry her toward where Samus would be.

She walked in to see an encouraging sight: the xeno-dragon seemed to have gained the upper hand and was crushing the armored intruder against a wall before flinging her away. As Samus's body crashed to the ground, Ruth could see the bounty hunter's pained struggle as she tried to get to her feet.

She thought for a second that maybe the dragon would finish her off, but before she could even take a breath, Samus had managed to shoot a charged blast of plasma into the dragon's face. As the great beast reared back in pain, Ruth knew what she had to do and mustered up all of her will to hold the gun steady and point it at the hunter's chest.

She could see Samus was already charging another plasma beam shot as she leapt up into the air to charge at the dragon. The bounty hunter was about to fire her plasma blast, but Ruth shot first, aiming straight for Samus's heart.

A blast of green and blue energy exploded from Ruth's pistol, striking Samus dead in the chest. Her armor began to falter and seemed to dissipate into nothing as Samus's unprotected body flew through the air and struck the far wall with a sickening crack. The bounty hunter's body tumbled to the ground where she lay broken and bleeding at the mercy of the xeno-dragon.

Ruth gasped as she heard the xeno-dragon laughing overhead. It stared down at Samus with a voracious hunger in its eyes, and Ruth looked to where the bounty hunter lay so still that Ruth wondered if she were still alive. Before she could get close enough to check, a powerful blast of flame erupted from the dragon's mouth. The flames seemed to explode as they crashed into Samus's crumpled form, and Ruth held her hands up to her face in a useless attempt to shield herself from the searing heat that radiated from the attack.

As the last of the fiery wisps died out, Ruth lowered her hands and looked to where the attack had hit. Slowly, she began walking toward where Samus had been. The xeno-dragon looked like it was ready to gobble up its defeated prey, but Ruth held a hand up to tell it to stop and the dragon froze.

Samus's body lay in a bloody mess on the floor, battered and burned. Ruth was certain the bounty hunter was dead until she saw her chest move ever so slightly and heard her shallow breathing.

"You're alive?" Ruth asked, not expecting a response. She knelt down next to the unconscious mercenary and grabbed her wrist to check her pulse. She pulled her hand back immediately, though, as a few drops of Samus's blood burned her fingers. "How could you still be alive after that?"

A sudden burst of rage filling her, Ruth stood up and kicked Samus in the chest as hard as she could. The acidic blood burned her bare foot, but she ignored it and kicked her limp form several more times.

"I'm not scared of you!" she yelled at the unconscious bounty hunter. "I beat you and you can't kill me now!"

It was a hollow victory. Samus had already been so weak and exhausted by the time Ruth had shot her that it was only too easy to take her down. The xeno-dragon had done most of the work.

Ruth looked up to the xeno-dragon, which was now sitting on its hind legs and staring at her expectantly. "You're the one who really beat her."

There was a low rumble from the dragon's throat, and it sounded almost like a purr. Ruth smiled. Then she looked back down at Samus and frowned again.

She was still alive, though just barely. As much as Ruth hated to admit it, she was impressed by the hunter's tenacity and the way she clung to life. She was ghostly pale from blood loss and one of her legs was twisted at an impossible angle as though it was broken, but still, the mercenary continued to breathe. It gave Ruth the chills.

"Are you all right?" she asked the dragon, forcing herself to look away from Samus.

The dragon made another noise, and Ruth smiled as it stretched out its wings to show its injuries were minimal.

"I'm glad for that," she continued, taking a few steps closer to the dragon. "I think it's just you and me now. I'm sorry I wasn't here for your hatching, and I'm sorry you never got to see this place before…" She shuddered, thinking of the bodies they had stepped over to get here. "Before that woman came here and ruined everything."

The dragon hissed with displeasure at the reference to Samus, but it displayed no aggression toward Ruth as she walked up to it and leaned against its foreleg.

"We're going to be okay," she said as she pet the dragon and looked at the burns on its face. "We're together, and she can't hurt us any—"

But Ruth never finished the sentence as blood sprayed out from her chest and her eyes grew wide. Suddenly, her body began to fall, first to her knees and then completely to the ground as blood gushed out from the entry and exit wounds. She didn't even have time to realize she had been shot before she lay dead, her blue eyes still open and staring up at the ceiling.

Only a few meters away, Samus looked up, pistol still in her hand as she watched to make sure she had killed her clone.

The sour, metallic taste of blood filled her mouth as she looked up at the dragon. She could barely see as darkness closed in around her vision, and she expected to fall unconscious for real at any moment.

To her surprise, the dragon didn't attack her again. Instead, it just stood beside Ruth's corpse, watching Samus as though it were waiting for something. She couldn't make any sense of it. Then again, she couldn't figure out why it hadn't attacked Ruth either.

She stared at the pistol in her hand until she couldn't keep her head up anymore. It wouldn't put a dent in the dragon's hide, and she could barely even see to aim it at this point. The blackness continued to consume her vision until it was gone entirely and she fell unconscious.

Chance pounded frantically at the sealed metal doors through which Ruth had just thrown him. His heart was pounding wildly, and his breathing came too fast as he tried desperately to make it past the barrier. But it was useless. He was no match for the sealed metal.

Exhaustion catching up with him, he slumped to the ground. Defeated. He could only hope that Samus was doing better on her end and could kill the dragon and subdue Ruth, who apparently had latent psychic powers. It was too much to take in. Between Samus being the Zero Host, Samus trying to kill Ruth, Ruth attacking him, and a giant acid-bleeding dragon, the semi-human couldn't keep up. It made his head spin just trying to think about it.

He pulled an earpiece from the pocket of his jump suit and put it on before tapping his watch a few times.

"Adam?" he said, hoping for a response.

"Chance," the AI's voice replied. "What's your status? Have you found Samus?"

"Um… kind of. We were together, but I lost her again. We were attacked."

"By one of the bioforms on the Arcadia? Have you discovered anything about the Host?"

"Oh boy…" Chance sighed. "Where do I even begin? Everyone on this ship is dead except some weird dragon things and a freaky clone of Samus."

"Do you mean…" Adam paused. "Were they actually able to capture one of the SA-X?"

"What?" Chance asked before shaking his head and deciding he was too tired to ask about what an SA-X was. "Not that I know of. This clone… she was completely human. Well, mostly anyway. She's human, but she's psychic!"

"How odd. Is she related to the Zero Host in any way?"

"Heh," Chance laughed uncomfortably as he stood up and looked around the room. "Oh yeah. We know what the Zero Host is now, and I don't really get it, but apparently it's been Samus this whole time. She thinks this place is a trap."

"…Chance, listen to me." Adam spoke in an authoritative tone uncharacteristic of an artificial intelligence. "You need to return to the ship. Now. There are Federation ships quickly approaching, and this is not going to end well."

"But what about Samus?" Chance looked frantically to the sealed doors, realizing once again that he had no way of getting to the bounty hunter.

"I've been trying Samus's comm unit, but she isn't responding. This doesn't bode well for us. I need you to return immediately. If Samus really is the Zero Host and this is some kind of trap, then the Federation ships coming in will likely have elite troops on them. Without Samus, our chance of surviving an attack is non-existent."

Chance hesitated. "And if I stay here?"

"You're not going to rescue Samus, if that's what you're thinking. You're more useful alive than dead, and if you stay there, you will die. I advise against it."

Looking back at the sealed doors one more time, Chance reluctantly turned away and began walking back toward the ship. "Okay. I'm on my way back."

"Hurry. The Federation ships are approaching fast."

Taking a deep breath, Chance broke into a run as best as he could. Exhaustion threatened to stop him, but he pushed past it. He was red and panting by the time he got back to where the ship was docked, and as soon as he was back on board, he felt it detach from the Arcadia and make a quick jump into hyperspace.

His legs wobbled beneath him as he tried to walk. It was as though now that he had reached his destination, all of the fight had gone out of him and he was ready to collapse. He was lucky he made it to the medical bay before his strength finally gave out, but luckily there was someone there to catch him as he fell.

"Chance?" Elisa asked as she caught the semi-human in her arms. "What happened to you? Where's Samus?"

Slowly, she helped him up onto the exam table and got him to lay down so she could begin running tests and checking his vitals.

"I'm okay," he said as he held out his arm for her to check his blood pressure. "Really. I'm just tired. I met up with Samus and let her feed off of my energy for a bit, but we got separated."

Elisa suddenly looked like a deer in headlights, and Chance felt guilty about causing her distress.

"I think she'll be all right," he added quickly. "She was fighting a thing and we just got separated by some door that locked… but she had already beaten a bunch of other things like the thing she was fighting so I think she'll be fine. This is Samus we're talking about."

Elisa nodded, but her face let Chance know she didn't actually believe him. As she checked him over, she moved with a sense of urgency. She didn't speak a word until she was finished and he sat up. Chance was just about to thank her for checking him out when Elisa turned to him with a frighteningly determined look in her eyes.

"You know we have to go back there," she said. "Adam may be the one steering this ship, but I'll be damned before I let a machine force me away from her. I lost her once, Chance. That's not happening again."

The lemur just stared at her. He knew he wasn't going to be able to talk her down, not with her resolve as strong as it obviously was.

"Okay," he said. "Rescue mission. So what's the plan?"