Then without another word said they ran to the door on the second bridge that would allow them to continue to trace their steps backwards. They went through rooms filled with Flood, Metroid, Covenant, and Pirates alike. After killing each singular enemy so that they wouldn't have to worry about being attacked from behind, they went into the next area, ignoring the arrows on the ground that were pointing in the opposite direction that they were going in.

They took a lift down, proceeded forwards, and found themselves back in the open. It was a large snowy plain. While they had been on the bridges above the ground, they hadn't noticed the battle raging on below them but now they saw the vast amounts aliens that were fighting amongst each other. After waiting for several minutes, Samus and John ran into the battle and took down everything. There were Wraith tanks waiting for them, blocking the path they needed to use to continue to the second pulse generator. After Samus took them out with two Super missiles, they were able to continue forwards. The area they entered was the first area they had gotten two with alien activity when they had first come to the snowy canyons and where Samus had gotten her sword upgrade. After running for some time, they came to a group of rocks with Covenant Elites. The six-foot tall alien warriors yelled and took cover behind the rocks while firing that the two. It took a minute, but soon they were killed. There were two Banshees nearby, and taking the hint, they piled in and flew both of the Banshees up towards where John's NAVpoint directed them. Coming up from both sides, they destroyed the Covenant and Pirates on the platform.

They landed after it was clear and ran through the door that would lead them to the second generator. In the room were sentinels fighting Flood and Metroid. The sentinels lost the battle and Samus and John were left to clean up the remaining Flood and Metroids. After those were dead, John walked into the second pulse generator and immediately took cover behind Samus while his eyes and shields recovered. When he ducked out of Samus's meager cover, he noticed that the area was filled with Flood and Metroids. He helped her to take care of them, while dodged the lunging Metroids. After the coast was clear they ran back to the platforms and took the Banshees back down to the ground. Adam and Cortana directed them towards the tunnels that they had ignored before. Not wanting to loose speed, they took the Banshees into the tunnel and strafed everything with the machine's plasma blasts.

When the Banshees had taken a lot of damage, they got out, let the crafts fall to the ground and exploded on groupings of Flood. Samus had to get out first as she had a harder time piloting the Banshee with one available arm. Then they ran through the underground area, careening down the rocky slope. When they got to a locked door and tried to open it, the door was broken and only opened wide enough for one of them to slip through at a time. Samus went first, followed closely by the Master Chief. They entered a large room with a bridge to the right. They ran through the area, firing at any aliens they came across and killing them for the most part. However, they had to leave a few alive for the sake of speed. As they ran along the bridge, Grunts fired at them with a stationary gun on the far side of the room to their left. Samus hit it with a long-range missile and they were able to continue to the opposite side of the bridge with little opposition and when they got to a locked door block their path, the Master Chief triggered it open. They ran through the door at the same time once it had opened just wide enough for the both of them to pass through at the same time.

They continued through the underground area, the hallways that they ran through were large enough for one of the drop ships of the Migration. There were several locked doors that needed to be opened, but after a few minutes of running with little resistance, they got back outside. It was a large area with another battle between the Pirates, Covenant, Metroid, and Flood. There were some Flood infected Metroids that attacked everything that wasn't Flood, but otherwise the Metroid had no alliances that John and Samus could see. After lying in wait for several minutes, they helped themselves to the remaining survivors of the battle. They ran through the area, according to the two AIs the generator was in the area, but they needed to find a Banshee or two first. At firs the distance under the NAVpoint in John's helmet dropped, but then it spiked as they ran to the other side of the canyon. They found a grouping of three Banshees. They took two, destroyed the third, so that none of the aliens could follow them, and flew up towards the generator. Halfway in their trip across the canyon, there was a large roar that cut through the air like a crack of thunder.

Samus spoke to the Master Chief through a comm. line. "Chief, deactivate that last generator. I'll distract Ridley so you can get to it safely. I'll meet you up there."

He glanced backwards at the area where the roar had come from and saw the large metallic dragon flying at them.

"All right. Be careful." He warned and continued flying, taking evasive actions to avoid Ridley's blasts.

Samus turned her Banshee around and fired at Ridley. The plasma blasts did nothing to his armor, but it allowed him to see which one of the crafts contained Samus. He left the Master Chief alone and fired at Samus. She flew in a random pattern towards the ground after hitting Ridley with one of the secondary blasts of the Banshee.

"Samus, I'm on the platform," John told her, "You can come up."

"No, it's alright. I'll finish the guy off. You'll be able to take care of yourself with Adam's help."

"You sure?"

"Yes." Samus jumped out of the Banshee as it came within a meter of the ground. The craft exploded as Ridley hit the vehicle with an energy beam. She rolled to the side, turned on her scanner and cursed once it had finished its analysis.

On the platform, which he had made sure was cleared before landing, John turned off his comm. device and sighed. He went the door after giving once last glance towards the area where Samus was fighting Ridley.

"Hey, Adam, I've got a question about Samus."

"Alright."

"What is she?"

"A Space Hunter, the most elite of the Government's forces. She's a strong but caring warrior."

"That's not what I meant," he replied dryly as he continued through the hallway.

"I'm not sure what you were asking then."

"Let's try this, then. I hate the Covenant, but I don't act as rashly as she does when it comes to Space Pirates or that Ridley. Do you know why that is?"

"Well, if you're so interested in her…" Adam said in a secretive tone.

The Master Chief stopped when he was about to enter the pulse generator. He was interested in Samus's past in an objective way, but Adam seemed to be suggesting something else. He took down the sentinels that were guarding the generator as he thought about that.

"Yes, I am. So will you answer my question," He said firmly. The AI started to laugh at his response. "What is it?"

"I don't think you understand what I meant, Chief. The Lady has entrusted a lot of information about herself to me, and when I'm asked about her I always say that to get people to stop asking, most people get flustered when I say that and stop asking."

"I'm interested in her so I can know how to rely on her in battle. How else would I be?" He asked, both puzzled and annoyed at Adam's behaviors. He turned away from the generator, so he could finish this conversation without being blinded.

"Nothing, Chief," Adam responded as he continued to laugh. "I think I'll answer your question, though." He said sobering up.

"The Lady was the sole survivor of a Space Pirate attack on a colony world K-2L, founded for an energy producing crystal, she watched as Ridley killed her mother right before. Ever since then she's had a deep hatred of the Space Pirates."

"But she said that the Chozo planet was her home world," John responded, highly confused.

"The Chozo found her after the Pirate attack and took her back with them. They raised her from the age of three."

"Oh. So what race is she?"

"Human." Adam said simply.

"But," He thought back to when they had been trying to get the index. What she had done to the Metroid, to him, and how she had looked. He also remembered her eyes sometimes flashing from blue to green. "How could she have-?" he was at a loss for words.

"She was infused with Chozo DNA so that she could survive on the world that they brought her too. It wasn't hospitable for humans. Not many people know this, so you'll have to keep it a secret." John nodded and turned back to the pulse generator. Something about what she had done to the Metroids still bothered him, but he remained quiet and walked into the pulse generator.

Nothing came to attack him when he destroyed its signal, so he was able to walk slowly back to the door to get on the Banshee and help Samus with Ridley while allowing his eyes to regain their vision. When he got back outside and was in the Banshee, he heard a loud crashing sound, but otherwise it was purely silent. He could hear a pin drop in a sandstorm, but he heard nothing aside from the whine of the Banshee's engines.

As he flew around a bend in the canyon, which was where the battle had been, he saw a large crater in the ground and a small black figure lying on the ground on the edge of the crater. He pushed the Banshee towards maximum acceleration and flew down towards the crater.

Moments earlier, a severely weakened Samus had been held in Ridley's grip. They were above the top of the canyons. She was barely able to bring her arm cannon up and charge her beam with black and white energy. Ridley had brought his head down to look at Samus with an eye. He had laughed and then opened his mouth, charging an energy beam to hit her with. She knew that she would be unable to handle the blast, so she fired the Annihilator beam's full charge and infused it with several missiles. The sonic wave that had hit the back of Ridley's throat was unable to kill him, but it shorted most of his electrical circuits in his mechanized body. This caused him to fall suddenly to the ground. He was also forced to let go of Samus, his body had gone limp and he was paralyzed from Samus's attack.

She pushed her self off weakly from his hand and fell to the ground. She landed in the snow back first. The only thing that allowed her to survive the fall was the three feet of snow. Ridley fell, and with several tons of weight, he broke through the ground and fell through to the bowels of the ring. She lay limp on the ground, head spinning and blood spilling from her mouth. Her shields were mostly intact; they had taken very little damage in the fight, though from everything from before, she was down to three tanks. The attacks Ridley had hit her with were mostly energy based and they had ripped through her shields without damaging them. It had damaged her body and caused her massive trauma. She heard the sound of a Banshee flying in and it landed on the ground nearby. She heard the pilot get out and assumed from the lack of fire that it was the Master Chief.

John walked over the Samus and knelt down next to her. "Samus? Are you alright?"

"Been better," she coughed out.

"Ridley's attacks were designed specifically as a bioweapon against her. They went straight through her shields," Cortana said.

"Great," John said. He bent down and leaned her against his knee. Flood forms were crawling out of the crater that Ridley had made. He fired at them with his plasma rifle. "Samus this is no time to take a nap."

"Right," Samus said. She lifted up her arm cannon and fired at the Infection forms with her plasma beam.

"We're too far to call for the drop ship," Adam said as they fought off the Flood.

"You have a better idea?" John asked.

"Yes," Cortana said. "While we were in the control room, we learned how to tap into Halo's teleportation grid, it's how the monitor gets around. Unfortunately, each jump requires a rather consequential expenditure of energy."

"I'm not gonna like this, am I?" Samus asked weakly.

"We're pretty sure that we can pull the energy from your suits without permanently damaging them. And we can get you near the Migration to get the drop ship so you can go to the point to plant the Oculus." Adam told them.

"All right."

John felt his body be surrounded by the golden circles and he went into the half existence while in the Halo transportation grid.