Thirty Third Personal Star Nexus, Teleportarium, Arganti, 5th of August 10,013

Arne's laughter was something he hadn't gotten much use out of throughout his life. He hadn't heard that many jokes, nevermind practised them. But the story being shared with him was enough to light up his day. It almost distracted him from the room he was now inside. A great network of gateways through spacetime that connected to many places. This facility had once been of great importance to the Sophont Commonwealth in the ancient past. Differing architectural styles such as the stony, chiselled and impressionistic works of the Chozo; the curving, organic, functional and insectile designs of the Alimbics; the angular, metallic, brutalist and geometric constructs of the N'kren; the illuminated coils and gentle flowing stylisation of the Ylla; the rocky and crystalline, almost natural looking Earthworks of the Diamonts; the riotous colours and bubbly schematas of the Faeran and more that Arne was less familiar with; were all gathered together in harmony, each distinct but all fitting together.

Samus though, who gave an aside glance when not busy sharing her humour with Arne instead took a moment to absorb how it all came into one holistic work of art. A symbol of unity between countless cultures that had thrived for tens of millions of years in harmony. From the beauty and contributions of each came together a picture of a glorious whole. It was a testament to the achievements that those without the drive to dominate one another could accomplish. Finally, it was also a celebration of the unique traits of each contributor rather than subsumption into a single grey mass. And Samus was filled with aching longing to have only had a chance to see it when it was bustling with activity from across the known universe. What a sight that must have been she thought in the nanosecond she gave the musing before turning back to her partner.

"So I'm just wondering; why do adult skrees explode? Just how did that evolve? Just think of all the dead ends that blew up on accident! It gets spooked and boom!" She said, spreading her hands out to make the gesture indicating an explosion, her wide blue eyes looking slightly upwards while she made the sound with her mouth. But she wasn't done.

"It gets poked too hard, kaboom!" She said, getting a laugh out of him as she went a bit harder with the beatboxed explosion sound.

"At least only the adults explode...Gods of my ancestors, imagine how few there would be left if the babies could go off too. She would lay the eggs and then when she helps them hatch, she gets a faceful of bombs instead of kisses. Every nest would be a cluster bomb!" He said, pondering it briefly before shaking his head and snorting while Samus sniggered a bit.

"The Skrees survive because few dare approach them. For every few that die to sacrifice themselves, hundreds more will never be bothered by prey." Grey Voice said as humourlessly as ever, looming over the two and tilting his head.

"Oh come now, there's been more than a few accidents. I remember when you saw your first one; I don't think I've ever seen you go shieldless to Brinstar after the coat of paint you go from that." Old Bird said wryly, the two humans looking to one another and covering their mouths to hide their laughter while Grey Voice clenched his beak a little tighter beneath his helmet to avoid giving away his sense of annoyance. Doing so would just encourage them to make more attempts at comedy.

"Hardly the first time he's had a coating of goo on his beak either. Just usually not that colour." August Wings said with a deadpan voice while Samus outright cackled and Arne doubled over. Grey Voice spared a moment to pinch his brows and whistled through the nostril holes in his beak, a prolonged tweet of resignation emerging from the ancient avian. Why he let his distant sight down to be surprised by that joke would be a question he'd ask himself for the rest of his life.

"-It's always inspiring to see how little lowbrow humour changes over the milennia.-" Elmorni said wryly, clearly amused but not allowing herself more than a few scarce chuckles.

"-Personally I'm just sad I never got a chance to see that in person.-" Ygrak said, wistfully and with a bit of dramatic flair added to emphasise the ache of missing out on what must have been an incredible sight.

"-As much mirth as this begets, I would like to suggest steering our course back towards the reason why we've brought our charges here.-" Mortirk said, looking down towards Arne and Samus and then back to the others gathered.

"-So it would appear that you are not entirely without your sense of duty, Mortirk.-" Zurvduat said coldly.

"-It is to my knowledge that the two of you are approaching a special day. Your thirteenth birthdays, by your reckoning of time. An important transitory phase between infancy and maturity. Thus you two are to be made ready to integrate into your birth societies. But there is one more test before such can occur.-" Zurvduat said, seemingly relishing in the annoyance felt by the Chozo that he had decided to take the opportunity to speak without giving anyone else any time to get a word in.

"-You two will be accompanied by Spire and Armaud; or Svihaly as you often call her. Under their supervision, you will delve into a place to challenge your skills and abilities. If you are able to uncover the true objective of the place we are sending you to, vanquish its challenges, and claim the prize; then you have demonstrated the full basic mastery of combat and exploration and are ready to begin the next phase.-" He explained, conjuring images of the place they were to explore with a minor expression of psychic power. Photons were excited into forming images, air was vibrated into sound, and all at once the visage unfolded.

They were treated to the sight of a facility, a map and a virtual tour at the same time. They could see how it seemed to coil in a sort of maze-like form, how it was vertically layered and pockmarked with all types of teleportation points and regions that would have to be accessed by delving into extraversal realms. The overall impression of it though was that it was arrayed like a spirograph, albeit one that began to form links towards a central point as they got closer and closer to the core of the curving hallways and rooms. Samus guessed that the facility would in total be large enough to take a full day to properly explore. Arne for his part estimated that should the map be accurate, they'd be best off memorising the optimal points for ship landing to ensure that their craft were always close at hand.

But they knew better than to expect that this facility would have been completely mapped out to the last detail by Zurvduat. Samus instinctively figured that the map had flaws to force them to think around them, Arne deduced that part of the challenge would be in overcoming incomplete intelligence; and these points when synthesised came into a new thesis. The great challenge would be to prove that they were worthy explorers and adventurers like the sort of far rangers that once wore armour like theirs. But they were confident that they were up to such a challenge, they had prepared for it for years.

"Trust in Svihaly and Spire, they are your chaperones. But do not expect them to complete the trials for you. They are there for your safety, young ones; and you may entrust them with your lives. But this trial is for you to complete." Grey Voice said.

"-Presuming, of course, you complete this trial, you will be granted the appropriate honours and be ready to reintegrate with your people to hone your social graces before we, at last, begin your psychic and mystic enlightenment. Of course, if you do not succeed, we will have to try again until satisfactory results are achieved. Is that not right, Primoris?-" Zurvduat added, turning his baleful gaze towards Arne in particular, a nod coming from him in response.

"-If desuited and unable to recover within three hours, you will be considered to have failed the challenge. Your armour is your life, it is your greatest weapon, and inside of it, you are your greatest selves. Suit and warrior are one and the same. Without the warrior, the armour is lifeless. Without the armour, the warrior is hobbled. There is to be no time for armourless leisure, either. Am I understood?-" Mother Brain cut in, her Spherical drones observing every angle of the action.

Samus frowned almost immediately. Who was Mother Brain to say what a warrior was at the end of the day? She hadn't fought on her own since she was created. She had her turrets and her endless armies of drones and long-distance psionics, yes, but she quite literally could not move from the spot she was built in.

"What equipment will we be able to find once we're there?" Arne asked. The question refused to leave his mind, and he would be damned if he wasn't going to have it be heard by Mother Brain. And at once he felt the A.I's probings and analysis. He kept his mental guard up and rebuffed her intrusions, her authority was not something he was obliged to follow. And so he rejected it. A cold sensation crawled across his skin, letting him know that Mother Brain was less than pleased by this, but he held firm.

"-Informing you of that would give you an unnecessary informational advantage. You two have shown sufficiently advanced cognitive functions that I do not believe it is necessary to give you more hints than what you will already be provided by your equipment. You are intelligent, use that to your advantage and work with the evidence you can gather. All that will be necessary to complete the task will be discoverable at the site. It is up to you to decipher what is extraneous and what is necessary.-" Mother Brain responded, coldly as ever.

"And I'm guessing that Spire and Armaud can't give us hints either?" Samus asked.

"-Obviously not. Why you felt the need to inquire at all escapes me.-" Zurvduat said, folding his arms.

"-Of course, if you are ever in life-threatening danger, we shall withdraw you from possible harm. This will be counted as a failure of course, but you need not fear for your lives.-" Mortirk said with a small nod.

"You will take your basic loadouts with you to start with. Enough to cover all initial challenges, but further equipment will need to be located to ensure that you are ready for the challenges further within. We will give you a fair chance of success, but not an easily attained one. Such is the best way to prepare you for your duties to come." August Wings said, giving a small bow of acknowledgement to the two children.

"-Try your best to not rely on Spire and Armaud too often, this test is about your skills; not theirs. But I know you can accomplish this, you have given us every reason to believe in your success.-" Elmorni said, folding her hands over her chest and dipping her floating, teardrop shaped neckless head at Arne before repeating the gesture towards Samus, albeit more formally.

Samus smiled and gave Elmorni a thumbs up in response to the gesture while Arne gave a thankful nod and straightened out his stance, approaching Elmorni to receive a head pat from her while Zurvduat looked on with concealed scorn at the display of affection before she let the hand rest on his neck. Her hand was warm to the touch on his skin, and he gave her a soft smile as she looked into his eyes until it was time for her to give him his space. He looked at Zurvduat's faction and flinched away at the baleful gazes he received in return, gulping slightly.

"And while you're still with us, whatever Mother Brain says; there is yet more to the power invested in the both of you than just your bodies, intellects, and arsenals. You will see what I mean soon." Old Bird added at last, laying a hand on Samus' shoulder and resting his beak atop her head briefly, sharing a hug with her. She embraced him warmly, their armours warm against each other and tactile systems approximating all the gentleness that a hug should have as if they weren't armour-clad or shielded at all.

Once he had broken from the gesture, he nodded and gave a slight bow to Arne, who smiled nervously at the Chozo. He didn't mind the show of kindness at all, but he was confused as to why he was giving him such a gesture of affection and respect when he wasn't his child. Still, it wasn't prudent for him to reject it, and he did his best to show his appreciation for it.

"-The gate is ready for you. Once you are on the other side, locate Spire and Armaud Svihaly. From there, I'm sure the two of you can figure it out.-" Agrama said, the black armoured Alimbic letting the warmth of her psychic emanations encourage them while the technosorcery of the gates began to spool up. Runes started to glow, and a powerful combination of the powers of science, psionics, and mysticism came together to not only open a gate across the universe but make the transition from one point to another virtually seamless.

A spherical window to the other side all the way in the Styrmok Galaxy; once called Messier 89; gave the two youths a look at their destination. They were greeted to an expansive vista with a shielded hangar bay door. With a great deal of open space to all sides of the Hangar, there wasn't too much to look at save for the rather unique architecture that mixed its metallic hues with glowing lights from a combination of glyphs, runes, technological systems, and the occasional bioluminescent plant added for a bit of variety wherever it was safe to do so and unlikely to clutter, so primarily near the entrance. Telling how big something really was was a bit difficult when the ancients were fond of manipulating space to fit things that shouldn't fit into spaces that ought to not be able to hold them, but they figured it was at least a three-kilometre wide hangar by five hundred meters tall and one and a half deep. Something they could easily traverse once they had seen everything they needed.

Already their ships, the Sleipnir and the Dormach; were waiting for them. The Sleipnir was largely blue, with its forward-swept wings and angled tailfins locked into a more compact position, the canards attached to its conical nose similarly folded away, giving the whole craft a considerably more tubular appearance than when in flight while its thrusters remained cool and unfired. And next to it was the Dormach, with a smooth, shallow wedge-shaped body with rear-facing horseshoe-like "wings" that fitted extra engines onto them for increased speed. Almost entirely red save for a few green highlights and its cockpit window, the Dormach's gave an impression that it could get you just about anywhere in the universe you wanted to go.

Meanwhile, Spire's Cragimoch and Armaud's Hreldim also lay quite near indeed. The rocky, heavyset craft's landing struts extended like pillars, brownish and greyish rock with vein-like lava coloured patterns interspersed with glowing orange crystals while the Diamont craft's wings were folded up and then bent back for storage. And next to it the Hreldim; which looked like nothing less than a flying crescent with a triangular rear section, an insectoid cockpit section with little cameras and sensors arranged a little like a set of compound eyes. Offering armament was the prominent guns protruding out just below the cockpit and from the extremities of the crescent wings and were all shaded an imposing purple; had insectoid legs emerging from it to grasp at the ground below.

Everything was already ready for them, they need only start the adventure by taking the first steps.

"Your ships are fully ready and available for use, should you find a reason to make use of them." Grey Voice advised as Samus and Arne let their armour's layers engulf their faces. The zero suit hoods, the Techno-organic film, the black soft armour, and finally the plating. Blue-Cyan and Orange-Yellow light engulfed their faces as the now mundane process of actualising pieces of their armoursuits into reality happened once again. An incredible sequence far beyond mere teleportation or energy to matter conversion, but literally invoking a part of their being into reality and mingling it with their energies to create something that was as much a work of psychic imaging and sorcerous conjuration as it was a technological manifestation. There was no sense of something lost returning nor a dulling of their senses or anything of the sort. It wasn't even as intrusive as putting on clothing. It was more like their bodies and minds seamlessly assuming another state. And it always gave them a feeling of safety.

All their HUD data read as good to go, giving visual backup to the usual psychofeedback that the armours could give even when fully deactivated. Everything was, just as it was a few moments ago; ready for the journey ahead. Samus gave an enthused nod while Arne stood more patiently and waited for the green light to be given to get a move on. Samus was eager, her energy needed release, and her curiosity needed satiation. Arne was interested, he wanted to know and learn, but he was worried about how little he knew of what they were going to go through. Especially as both were such novices with their prescient distant sight and as such, were not able to get more than bare ideas of what was coming. But they could both sense the words they were waiting for were just moments away.

"Good hunting, younglings." War Hawk said, giving the final bow as the two sprinted off to see what was on the other side. The games had indeed begun.

Sysathi Hangar, Uratu, Ishant Continent, Planet Zoran, Theg System, Telemor Cluster, Styrmok Galaxy (Messier 89), 5th of August 10,013

There was a certain eeriness to being in what was supposed to be a bustling hangar with nothing but the hustle of drones undergoing their last orders given ten thousand years ago. A place that should have been full that was instead devoid of people. Leaving it cold and unfriendly, with their senses on high alert for any possible disruption to the promise of an empty room. Yet there was ever the sense of dread behind a hangar with space for thousands of craft having but four amidst enough empty space to let an army camp out here with all of its vehicles and field barracks, even for those who could deadlift a warship if they had the right leverage.

But it was alleviated by the familiar presence of the caretaker machines. They regarded the two human hybrids for the briefest moment, scanning them to confirm that they were supposed to be here and then carrying on their business. They had a job to do, and the passage of years wouldn't dissuade them from it simply because they had not been given new directives in all that time. Ten thousand years wasn't that long by the reckoning of the ancients, perhaps one day they would have directives again.

To Samus however, it was kind of sad. The machines had the minds to do anything they wanted, to build of their own accord or work to their own agenda. Yet they were so committed to their orders that they had restricted themselves to this narrow prescription for their duty in existence. Here they had been, repeating the same routine endlessly since the time of the Romans. What was the purpose of leading such a life? What fulfilment could there possibly be in such a life? She couldn't understand it, and she felt that this would be something that would bother her for years to come.

If only she could set them, free somehow...she thought before she assessed all the possible entrances and exits into the room. She took note of each one, including the teleport pads that helped make this place more navigable. She forwarded her findings to Arne who seemed briefly lost in thought, getting the boy to snap out of his musing about what it might be like to be those machines trapped in an endless loop. He studied the data briefly, and she could feel his mind turning its gears as he gave the problem set before him a bit of thought.

"-Seems like the teleporters are mostly keyed to linked devices in the terminal rooms around the hangar. We'd need higher-level access to use the pads to jump around the facility though. Based on my analysis, though, access to that clearance is probably going to be split amongst several terminals. Just based on the way the data is flowing into them.-" Arne said, lapsing quickly into his analytical mindset as he studied the scans and then compared them to what his armour and his mind could decipher. Based on the data he was given, he could even calculate where the terminals would most likely be. He used that information to sketch out a guessed at map of the facility, but he'd need more information to solidify the fuzzier edges of his constructed roadmap.

"-Well, we're not going to fill in the blanks on the map standing here are we? There should be a map station nearby to make sense of the data. I'm thinking it'd be close to the entrances, but we probably can't download without getting closer. Want to come with, or do you think we'll get the answers by thinking hard enough about it?" Samus said after she gave it a bit of thought. She had a point, for someone who preferred to fight from close up Arne was rather hesitant to rush in. Patience was a virtue, but so was knowing when to seize the initiative. And she already prompted a response from him by starting to walk before he could formulate his reply. He stammered for a moment but shook his head and made up his mind.

Discarding his hesitation, he picked up after her. His stride was a bit longer than hers, and he caught up to her side soon enough. Cyan, Blue, and Red against Red, Yellow and Cyan. The floor was surprisingly quiet against their boots, special structures absorbing the sound to reduce the overall noise pollution of the facility. It was an uneventful walk to the door, and their voices went unused in the leisurely stroll. They could have crossed to the door in an eyeblink if they wanted, but they felt it would be unwise to just barrel in without any reservations. Both were keeping a continual watch with their augmented senses, arm cannons at the ready.

Arne shot the door to make its blue energy field fade and give the signal to the circular door's sections to dilate open. Basic security technology really, more a means to confirm beyond all doubt that the person using the door was either armed or had access to open it automatically. He didn't want to be entirely passive next to Samus even if he often defaulted to her initiative. Yes the details of the plans the two cooked up together were often more his work than hers. But bones of those schemes were born of her mind. Samus gave a small approving nod to him, and the two stepped through the now open entry.

Through the other side was a hallway wide enough for a trio of main battle tanks to drive down in parade formation, stretching into the distance and studded with many sub halls and doors into other rooms. Down the line was a fountain at the centre of an exotic garden where a colourful array of flora was cultivated, the soil enchanted so that plants with entirely different needs could thrive indefinitely without supervision. The botanist in both of them appreciated the sight of such a riot of colour from the leaves, ferns, branches, flowers, and fruit; all illuminated by an orb of glowing light; a spell to beseech everlasting lifegiving radiance from a sphere to banish sickness and encourage faster recovery and an eternal bloom. It was lovely, and Arne briefly hitched his breath while Samus just smiled at the sight.

"I wish we had something to take a few with us." Samus said, eyeing a brilliant blue coloured flower with an intriguing nine layered array of petals that went from tight and rose like to open and sunflowery. She imagined it sitting in a window sill and felt a bit of warmth in her bosom. Something nice and pretty to return to would make all the roughness of the work she was to devote her life to so much more bearable.

"Maybe we can ask when we're done?" Arne posited, raising a brow and turning his head towards her. She was right, he thought; they'd need something gentle to come back to if they were to spend their lives fighting monstrosity and abomination all across the universe. And flowers would...well flowers would go well with their pets, wouldn't they?

"I think I'd like that." Samus said as she took a look around for anything else of interest in the centrepiece of the halls as the two stood amidst the manor sized gardens. Arne let his fingers caress one of the silk-like flower petals before looking back at her as she eyed a tree in full bloom and tilted her head while giving a whistle. She turned her attention back to him and gave him a small thumbs up that he returned. But as nice as this was, the both of them knew they were here for a mission, not sightseeing.

"We should meet up with Spire and Armaud as soon as we can. We'd probably be scored poorly if we lost track of them anyway. Are you with me?" Arne said, confident that the two were waiting for them not too far from the entrances. They'd hardly be proper chaperones if they couldn't be found after all.

"Yeah, it's a bit curious that they weren't at the entryway, but I'm guessing that they want us to find them as one of the early objectives. See if we can link up with allies and all that." She said with a confident smile beneath her helmet.

"Yeah, agreed. We shouldn't have to look too far past one of the map stations. Or we could try to broadcast to them. Buuut I'm guessing that they'll have left some kind of trap for that. Signals can always be cracked if they can be heard after all." He nodded both to Samus and to himself, satisfied that he had figured out a likely trap laid out in this training mission.

"Definitely. They'd have contacted us already if it were only going to be that easy. But right now; I think we should also be ready for trouble. There's going to be resistance soon, I just know it." She said, turning her head towards a place she had her suspicions that trouble would emerge from, a hole large enough for something at least as big as a person to traverse through in the ceiling. Large enough for both of them in fact.

Arne had his own hunch and shot one of the doors, threading the shot through the thicket of branches and leaves to make sure none of the plants was in the least bit harmed. The door some fifty meters away opened up, and he vaulted over the leaves with grace before making a signal to her to come to him as he felt a surge of satisfaction at the sight of a map station vindicating his suspicions. The holographic map of the surrounding area stood there waiting for either one of them to just go forth and claim it, and Samus offered her hand to him as soon as she landed next to him.

The two clasped each other's hands and pulled each other into an affectionate headbutt before moving to the station together to simply touch the hologram and let the information flow in streams of colour into their armour. The first layer of the spiralling maze was now revealed to them, at least in part. Enough for them to have a firm idea of what to expect, which, when paired with their extrasensory perception, would be more than enough for the two to explore more efficiently.

"Well...let's get moving then." Arne said with a soft but pleased expression as he turned around.

The room had not visibly shifted as the pair headed back out of it, but there was a sense of something being amiss. Brief flashes of vision seen only in a sight beyond sight that offered a window into possible danger. Enough to make Samus pause as she narrowed her eyes. She brought a hand in front of Arne and looked at him, tilting her head to the side and gesturing slightly to the right. He immediately understood the meaning of this and tensed himself. He felt it too, an unpleasant and heavy sensation of something about to go wrong. It was like a vice around their minds and a provocation of those finely honed instincts of theirs. A flash of foresight was all they needed to push themselves into action as they acted on the information they got.

Arne ducked himself into the Psycho-Morph, contorting his body into the somewhat torso like floating alternate mode while Samus kickflipped out of the way with the whipcrack of the sound barrier's protests loud and clear. A winged shape spread itself farther and then veered upwards before turning around. Hawklike with a strange head that hinged in a way that it opened upwards rather than downwards like a pair of axes and beady eyes. Claws emerged from its feet as long as fingers and sharp as monomolecular swords. Agility beyond anything that had evolved on earth was on clear display as the man-sized creature gracefully spun around as its tan and blue plumage ruffled with the movement of the air. Their scan visors named it a Frike, and warned them of its tendency to hunt in packs and their biological ability to produce shielding that gave them incredible durability.

The second Frike dived for Arne as he sprung his Psycho-Morph upwards and unfurled, his cannon already at the ready. He didn't bother with the standard power beam and instead escalated straight to the Volt Driver. The air crackled with pulsating, extremely fast moving bolts of hundreds of terajoules of electrical energy, a thunderstorm in every shot all released at one target. The first shot struck with deafening thunder as the electric yellow light tried to expand outwards only to be rebounded by the energy fields of the weapon to focus entirely on the point of impact. The creature's shields held against a few shots, but the fifth broke through, with two more reducing the animal to vapour. Meanwhile, he landed to the side of another swooping feathered fiend and grabbed at its leg. He yanked it to the ground and stomped on its head, crushing through its shield and skull instantly, swift clean and efficient.

Samus yanked at the one that overshot her with her grapple beam fired from her left hand, pulling the thing towards her. She caught with her distant sight the sensation of another arriving and swung the one she had entangled into its counterpart, the two crashing with a thunderclap that left the two open to a quick burst from her ice beam. The anti-energy of the weapon quickly sapped at their fields, converting them into ice as the temperatures around them plummetted to let her finish them off with a quick missile. The warhead materialised into being from her willpower and rocketed off at hypersonic speeds to crash into them before they could respond; a reverberating detonation rewarding her with a brief red blossom of light and shattered frozen dust as she scanned for other threats. Not precisely standard tactics, but it worked, didn't it?

"Predators usually aren't this hostile to anything close to them in size," Arne said as he sidestepped another swoop, the extended claws of the fiendish flier almost sounding like they were cutting the very air itself as it tried to turn around to bite him with a murderous clack of its jaws. "So something's clearly up." He shoved his light hand's wrist blade into their mouth and then swiped to the right to cut its head apart, grunting when he felt the resistance of the bioshield and its energy reinforcement that tried to resist the power fields of his blade before overpowering the obstacle.

"They're not hungry, they're being enraged by an outside force." She said, her keen eyes picking up on their expressions even as they danced around each other at paces to put fighter jets to shame. She felt terrible, they were just animals and meant her no real malice. They were still threats that had forced a life or death confrontation, with her distant sight informing her that trying to freeze them or paralyse them with her stun weapons would only be a temporary solution; but the slaughter of wildlife just didn't sit well with her. It felt so...profane.

"Any ideas?" Arne said as Samus looked at him and pulled him in with her arm cannon's grapple beam, getting a brief yelp out of him as he was moved out of the way of an unusually large Frike that made a shockwave upon impacting the ground where he had been a nanosecond before. He muttered his thanks to her as she quickly fired the ice beam as rapidly as she could. The temperature in the room plummeted each time the ice beam's frozen packets found their mark, transforming energy into thick layers of frigid, solidified water to prevent movement. A quick firewall solution for the dozen or so enemies the duo faced. It was only a temporary solution, but she'd rather use it to buy time than continue the butchery. He figured out her plan quickly and shot at the door behind them as the two backpedalled through before she let him go and gave him a nod.

"Okay...now that we're here, I think it's probably some sort of psionic agitation. It must be something we're not familiar with though, I can't feel it myself." She said. She took a look around the room, just a linear hallway with some murals on either side though she could see there was a fork in the pathway at the end. The map in her memory told her that the way to her left would take her to a large rectangular room, while the room to the right would lead them to a gently descending place of somewhat smaller size but greater length. Her distant sight gave her the gut feeling of needing to go left first, and with that, she turned her mind back to the more immediate mystery of the strange hostility of the animals after murmuring her apologies once again for having to take their lives in self-defence.

"It might not be audible to us? Like a dog whistle. If it's meant to work on nonsophonts, then there's no need to make the signal audible by tool using sophonts." He agreed with her conclusion but just felt the need to chip in with his own comment.

"Yeah, that would make sense. It can't be part of the test though, papa wouldn't let animals get hurt in trials like this." She said with obvious concern written all over her face that he could just about picture through her helmet as she set her blue visor to a more transparent state to let him see her eyes, a gesture he responded to in kind.

"So...any ideas on what's causing it then?" Arne asked, leaning on a wall in the hall and taking a moment to let the gears of his brain turn. Trying to compare the evidence he had gathered against what facts he had on his hands. Several ideas came up, most were discarded by the unlikeliness that any of them would ever manage to breach this facility. That frustrated him, he didn't like the thought of not being able to unpack something in front of him. The feeling of intellectual impotence annoyed him, and Samus could feel it radiate from him.

But for her part? She was also stumped. Her brain was a vast library of knowledge augmented by some of the most sophisticated computers any human had ever had the good fortune of interfacing with. Yet nothing fit the parameters she was given. The Space Pirates wouldn't even know how to get to this planet, the mysterious agents who attacked Cylosis would have to roam awfully far from their last known location to go all the way here, and no other power she knew of had the means or the motive to do something like this...

"Maybe we're overthinking it? It might just be those animals?" He said before he froze and stood straighter, turning his head rightwards towards the fork in the room. Something did not rest easy in the pit of his stomach. Sensation like slithering serpents coiled around in his body and his muscles began to tense beneath his armour. Something was off, and all signs were telling him to investigate.

"You feel that, right?" He asked, waiting for her affirmation.

"Definitely, probably another creature. You go first, you're the short-range guy. I'll cover you. That sound good?" She said, smiling with validation when he gave her a nod to acknowledge.

"I was thinking that too. It's probably in ambush position, so I'll draw it out." He said, with her giving him a thumbs-up gesture that he enthusiastically returned with a small smirk beneath his helmet. Already starting to walk again, moving at a quick jogging pace with her in brisk pursuit, he had already taken stock of the room. There was something waiting for them at the midway point of the fork. He could sense it just before the little sill of plant life that sat in front of a pleasing set of hieroglyphs that he parsed as a parable meant to encourage the welcoming of travellers and the virtues of hospitality. A moment passed, the whole of the story was read, internalised, analysed, and critiqued in the space of time for it to get himself into position.

He counted the fractions of a second for it all to fall into place as he scooped up and tossed a rock to create the impression of movement before diving to the side to get himself into position. His arm cannon clicked, and its highlights switched to deep indigo as he set his cannon to yet another weapon, feeling that it would come in handy shortly. Something flashed in his mind, and he stopped his dive and used a single arm to throw him into a punch flip as another creature descended from an opening to the areas above, having seen through his ruse and adjusted its movements to try and catch him as he moved.

The sight of a ruddy coloured tendril lashing forward to occupy the area he did in the space of time it took for dust disturbed by his movement to detach from the wall was all he needed to get his scan visor working. "Regordim", a large ambush predator that relied largely on its lengthy tentacles to overwhelm foes with reach to keep its more vulnerable organs out of harm's way. Unfortunately for it, the Blizzard Subweapon was well suited for something like this. The beam let out howling streams of bitter anti-energy that annihilated the very heat and movement of the air and encased it in snow and ice, a continual stream not too different from the shock coil that let him ice over one of its tendrils while Samus froze two more coming his way just as he ducked down to let them hit the surfaces where he had been.

Another click, his arm cannon had changed to blue highlights as it readied the shock coil; hers turned purple and expanded horizontally with the electrowave beam. From her came seeking tripartite reddish-purple orbs of powerful electromagnetic fields, from him came unrelenting voltage like a lightning storm every passing moment. The creature howled as its body convulsed from the powerful surge of voltage that had pulsed through its form, and both youths latched onto it with a grapple beam to yank the bulbous, spider-like body from its roost; the beast's legs going slack and thus avoiding snapping beneath force to move warships. A central body the size of a triceratops slumped onto the ground in a pathetic heap and writhed with leftover electrical aftershocks.

Arne offered words of calming to soothe the beast's pain, and his gauntlet extended a syringe from the wrist to inject some of the biological repair attomachines that the armour used to keep him healthy. He waited a moment, and the creature's movements began to still as the little machines fabricated and released sedatives to calm it while they ran a diagnostic of what might be altered within the beast. Though his view of nature was not quite so reverential as his partner's, avoiding unnecessary slaughter of wildlife was still important to him. All organic thinking beings are the descendants of or at least the products of what they would consider wild creatures, after all.

"Thanks for the assist." He said to Samus.

"What? Nah, you had that under control. It's just nice to do stuff together with you." She said playfully.

"Oh? Well...it seemed like I had the last room under control too." He said with a snort.

"Well maybe but my way was better, no?" The cheek in her words was positively tangible.

"Well I guess it worked, but could you say it was better?" He said, quirking a brow.

"Arne, it saved us some time and some of the wildlife their lives. Of course, it worked out better." She said, resting a hand on his shoulder after stepping up to him and pulling him into an elbow bump before turning to the Regordim and having her own overview of it. For his part though, Arne wondered if Samus would always be able to find ways to live up to her aspirations of minimising harm to even nonsapient obstacles in her way. It was a noble idea, and he'd like to live up to it but maybe...he'd think about that later, Samus was about to give her opinion.

"It seems pretty normal to me now that it's in a medically induced sleep...but if I'm getting the readings right, the tranquilisers made by your attomachines would suppress dreaming yeah?" She said, an idea forming in her head as she kneeled down and pet the tick like head of the Redorgim, finding a sort of rugged beauty even to the arachnid esque mouthparts and compound eyes of the carapaced creature as she prayed for its health and well being.

"So it might affect the parts of the brain responsible for dreaming then? That might explain why they don't seem to care about injury. They're basically sleepwalking with their eyes open. That'd be an awful way to die though...blessed gods now I feel kind of bad for killing some of them." Arne said, a theory now taking root in his head even as his voice grew small.

Samus cringed at the thought. To be lost in the haze of a dream but still be acting in the real world would be a terrifying loss of control, one that rankled at both her free spirit and her beliefs in the sanctity of dreaming. She'd put an end to this, whatever was causing it. Nobody could be allowed to do something like this without being made to account for it.

She pulled away from the creature and gave him a signal that she was ready to get going, walking at a close enough distance that they could support each other in melee, but far apart enough that they wouldn't get in each other's way. About a meter and a half apart. A distance that felt far greater to the two's hearts, but the necessities of combat mandated they be able to swing their wrist blades at a standard extension without bumping into one another even if their weapons were tuned to do no harm to each other; the simple disruption of having to dodge possible impact could throw them off. But they moved with purpose, ignoring the skittering, six-limbed cat-sized and rodent-like "Skriltas" which despite their scan visors saying would attack if directly impeded; were easy enough to avoid as they clung to the walls to scavenge for food. The door to the left was just ahead, and they need only go through.

The turrets that emerged from the next room were immediately shot at when they descended to open fire on those going through the now available door. Long and triangular and attached through deceptively simple-looking struts, they never got the chance to hum with power before Samus hit the first with a super missile and Arne latched onto the second with a fatal shock coil burst. Those at least were supposed to be obstacles there; that they knew. And they needed only the briefest moment for their minds to analyse the room. Rectangular as they expected, separated into three terraced levels with the topmost level leading to a door with an already breached missile lock.

Easy enough, even the circling, trapezoid winged wasp-like drones that emerged from the sides were of little concern. Quick bursts of power beam fire were all they needed to quickly work their way through their defences, a thicket of thirty of the torso sized things reduced to scrap before the debris of the first could hit the ground as Samus sprinted, curled into her spherical form and charged up a boost to smash through one of the manufacturing hives for the wasp drones, crushing the trailer sized machinery into pieces. Bursting out of the ruins of her hypersonic impact, she ducked beneath a three-shot missile barrage from Arne as he targeted some of the larger drones who had tried to vertically flank her. The glare of the blossoming explosions filtered out by her helmet as she immediately struck the next hive with her ice beam just before Arne smashed it with a casual swipe of his hand, letting the shockwave of the passage of his appendage do the work of rupturing the cold embrittled device.

Arne nodded at her as Samus quickly glanced in her direction. With a flick of his wrist, he projected a grapple beam at her to yank her towards him. Before she could collide with him he swung her around to let her use her arm blade to cut an incoming wave of drones to pieces. With that threat passed, he tossed her at the door with a release of his grip. She was sent flying at tremendous speed augmented by her own push, hurtling through the air like a comet until she approached her destination, where she turned herself around to let her legs extend and then smashed open the missile lock with a room-shaking dropkick. She gracefully fired off the jump systems in her boots to kick-off as the armoured locks broke apart to land back on her feet. She nodded, satisfied with herself while Arne shredded through a dozen remaining machines in his way before vaulting onto the largest one he found, shoving his blade into its head and then flipping off as the machine dropped downwards.

"You could have done that faster if you used more firepower. They were pretty clumped up, you could have used some missiles." Samus said as he stood himself up.

"But what if I needed those missiles later? Zurvduat would throw a fit if I went with overkill straight away." He said while the door ahead of them retracted open to let the two youths through.

"It's easy to get more missiles, it's just...We can convert quintessence into ammo, there are ammo stations, we can even concentrate on conjuring fresh missiles. So what's the point of all these ways to resupply ammo on the field if we don't use them? " She said as the two took one last look around. Other doors on the flanks of the terraces remained unopened as the two youngsters' armoursuits designated this area a safe return point for their emergency teleport systems. But her foresight told her that the way to go was forward, so she urged him to follow.

The next room was a series of moving platforms with obstacles placed in the way, the faint signature of the energies used to warp space to teleport this obstacle course in place of the lounge room that this was supposed to lead to still heavy in the air with a faint trace of ozone stench. Turrets, energy lashes, swarms of psycho-bits hovering around looking for targets and a large sheer drop down several hundred meters onto a floor arcing with tremendous jolts of electricity and glowing with heat. The fall itself would be harmless to them of course, but the floor itself was humming with an electric current potent enough to damage their shielding while the bolts of electricity that occasionally erupted forth had the power of the thunderstorms in gas giants roiling through them. Survivable but certainly unpleasant. The obstacle course was about a kilometer across, and the obstacles were moving swift enough for their helmets to have to scan and translate the air vibrations into sound for them to properly "hear" their movement without the issues of sonic lag.

Easy enough.

The portals for the Psycho-Bits to receive reinforcements from were quickly neutralised from a distance with careful Imperialist fire from both of their arm cannons, ruby red laser pulses striking across the distance with little delay and silencing the translucent conical vortices from which the machines drew more of their kind from. Arne then continued to pick off the Psycho-Bits. At the same time, Samus decided to just dash through the course as fast as she could, charging up a beam shot to let the beam's energies wreathe around her suit as she somersaulted, using her thrusters on her boots and back to add extra jumps and aerial dashes in tandem with grapple swings as needed to dodge around obstacles before landing again to allow for Arne to catch up once he had cleared the farther ahead hurdles.

For his part, he not only cleared many of the obstacles, but he shot at them to disable them. A few bursts from his cryogenic weapons being released to seal up the emitters in some ice to prevent them from working any time soon while his form hurtled, spun, and dodged around all manner of intervening threats. With a final clink of his armour as he landed against the wall and then propelled himself off of it followed by a surprisingly quiet thud as he landed on his feet and pushed himself up, he stood up to his feet and urged his compatriot onwards. With the preparatory work already done by Arne, the rest of the trip was mostly uneventful, and the two crossed through the next door shortly after; brimming with confidence now that things had seemed to settle back down to normal.

A sensation went down the two's spines as soon as they crossed through the short connecting hall; read through the logs in the wall terminals; and stepped into the next room. Something was just a bit off. Things had been moved to where they shouldn't be, and there was debris from some sort of fight within the cylindrical room concentrated around the floating circular platform above the two. The alcoves of the chamber built into the wall lead to yet further doors in the different levels, making it clear that this was a hub of sorts. But as she studied the twelve entries in the room, Samus briefly felt the sensation of being watched and turned her head upwards to catch a glimpse of something. At first, she thought it was a set of curved spines before she realised it was the horns of something grey and yellow coloured with metallic textures and an almost chiselled and geometric sort of appearance vaguely evocative of more simplified statues. But she barely got more than a glimpse of them, and they were gone before she could be sure of what she was seeing.

"Arne?" She asked.

"Yeah I saw it too." He said, flooding her with a quick sensation of relief that it was probably not just her imagination.

She felt a renewed sense of worry at the thought that it was probably real, and her distant sight gave her an unsettling sensation in the pit of her stomach. Was this part of the mission? It certainly didn't seem like it, she thought as the debris in the room started to dematerialise as reclamation transmatters in the facility digitised them and broke them down into energy to be converted into other forms of matter later. Neither Armaud nor Spire, of whom there was still no sign of either, wore horns of any sort on their helmet and they indeed weren't grey and white. She briefly remembered some of the stories she was told by the Chozo to help her sleep...monsters vanquished in a long distant era who had often worn horns on their helmet and were clad in metal hewn like a rock. But could that have truly been one of the old monsters under the bed?

"Are you alright?" Arne asked.

"I'm f-.." Samus stopped herself from lying. "No...what I saw reminded me of some of the storybook monsters." She said, looking at him with a frown on her lips.

"But that can't be right...can it?" She said, looking at him and tilting her head. "They're all supposed to be gone in the stories." Whatever truth there was to the bedtime stories, they were all supposed to have been banished to the realm of dusty tomes and ancient datalogs in time immemorial. Long before humans had ever conceived that the stars in the night sky were nuclear furnaces and not the manifestation of gods or the spirits of the dead.

"In a place beyond distance." Arne completed for her. "I...I'm not sure what it is honestly, but if it's not supposed to be here, I think we should check with Armaud and Spire first. We shouldn't go after it alone." He said, clearly sharing some of his own worries. Worry enough to step closer as if to shield Samus from whatever was spying on her and seek security with proximity. She could sense his disquiet and felt his need to latch on to something for protection, and she found her hand briefly interlacing with his. Reassurance for both of them.

"Agreed." She said, raising their interlocked hands up to chest level and letting their thumbs rub against each other's hands. It felt almost as though they had nothing to separate their skin from one another, and they let that moment linger for a few seconds more before breaking it up.

Arne stopped them before they could start walking again as he looked at the centre of the room and pointed to an indent. The intent behind it was apparent, and she was quick to roll into her spherical form and move atop the indent to drop a single bomb to burst the covers of what was quickly found to be a switch that only needed her to drop a second bomb to trigger it. Something that immediately filled her with anticipation as Arne backed away, and the platform began to open up.

A Chozo statue fell from within the platform, like a hatchling emerging from its egg. Falling into the midst of the room as Samus sprung out of the switch to let the covers of the switch rematerialize, the two felt a bit of ease as the Chozo statue, rested in a pretzel legged position and coloured a rich orange primarily, split its cupped hands holding a sphere into two outstretched sets of talons, each now holding a separate orb.

Samus was immediately interested and cracked open the sphere around the power-ups. She saw a sigil of a stylised figure fading, with a more apparent figure above them. Curious, she looked to Arne who decided he may as well try to reach for it first. But not to be outdone, she had grabbed onto at the same time. Their armours glowed with light briefly as their suits analysed and absorbed the technology, letting it break into energy that coalesced into a ball that then flowed into their chests.

Their armours shifted slightly, glowing strips now attaching to the sides of abdominal plating in hand-sized pieces of metal the same colour as their arm cannons, running from beneath their chest plates to above their hip guards. Fitted with highlights the same colour as their visors, the two were given a suit update informing them that they had just installed "Blink Packs" into their armours, giving them the ability to refine the teleportation systems built into their suits to move to places they had either line of sight to or at least enough data on to move into. Their armours informed them that in the event of accidental teleportation into inanimate objects, they'd be shunted the shortest distance out, as would be the case for living beings, though sufficiently weakened enemies or objects could be teleported into to finish them off.

And as if to provide them with a test, the room itself seemed to transform as space was warped with the grace of a master violinist. In a moment it had expanded into an array of shifting platforms that soon settled into a more static position save for a handful of still moving ones. More pertinent to them, however, was the switch to deactivate the barriers that had shuttered over the doors, shielded by a translucent screen of energy.

But something else bothered them, something that both felt in the pit of their stomachs and the corner of their minds. Something was coming, even without their prescience that much was blindingly obvious. The two pulled away from the statue as it shifted itself out of sync with the rest of reality to avoid becoming party to what was to come; a shimmering ghost image marking where it would return once the threat had passed.

Then came the challenge, a pair of shapes fizzled into being with a swarm of yellow-white light particles that clung onto one another and then coalesced into what were clearly taloned legs. The soft porcelain whites, golds, and cyan highlights of the figures and their seemingly gracile construction made it clear that they were the work of the Ylla; Syndrans. Spindly taloned arms emerged from narrow inverted trapezoid like torsos attached to inverted triangle like waists. Mighty hands with seven fingers appeared at the end of long and metallic armatures that connected into flared shoulders that jutted upwards in an askew manner somewhat akin to half of a pelvis. In between their shoulders lay slender and elegant heads shaped something like a smoothed humanoid cranium with a pair of backwards swept fins like those of a whale emerging from the temples and a trio of cyan optics staring out from the centre, golden embroidery almost appearing to hold the porcelain-like plating together.

Digitigrade legs stepped forward with alarming speed and the reticulated spinal column of the machines flexed to let them rear up higher as they made their judgements of the two intruders who had deigned to make use of the technology they guarded. They were worthy of taking it with them, but not without a fight. Their thin rail limbs thickened with an incantation as they disregarded the laws of conservation as casually as one might jaywalk across a street to prepare themselves for battle. Additional plates of armour and artificial muscle mass manifested around them with every step while the two kids backed away slightly, anticipating the fight to come. Technosorcerous energies hung heavy in the air as these marvellous works of mysticism and technology strode forwards, runic inscriptions on their plating glowing with higher intensity.

Arne steeled himself as the one closest to him reached its hand out and let a platinum, gold and cyan basket-hilted sword manifest in its hand in a fizzle of white light, somewhat narrow and claymore like and glowing with a cyan highlight running down its middle as the blade began to glow with energy. Its other hand soon repeated the gesture, and with a single easy twirl, it skidded its sword tips against the floor. The second transformed its hands into a pair of arm cannons, proportioned like the barrels of tripod-mounted machine guns before thickening and then splitting into six distinct barrels on each arm; arrayed in a rotary pattern. The barrels were allowed to spin, whirring to life as the machine bulked itself up to proportions better suited for heavy-duty endurance combat than trying to compete with the nimbleness of the two youths, it's now almost heroic seeming figure adding an extra intimidation factor to the guardian.

The two's visors offered them the sage advice that they should be aware that Syndrans can rapidly adjust their bodies and weapons to better suit changing battlefield conditions or switch up strategies. However, damage to their bodies would force them to divert from adaptation and towards repair, naturally forcing it to split its attention between both by constantly varying attack patterns and damage types would offer the best results. The two's newly acquired blink packs would be useful in getting around them to spread out the damaged areas and deny them the ability to focus their adaptations and reparative efforts in any one place. But this also meant that they couldn't rely on any singular weapon or technique to deal with these foes.

A worthy fight then.

Samus moved; first, she willed the blink packs to activate and designated a position behind the Syndran at one of the alcoves while her arm cannon clicked to ready the super missiles. She felt space warp around her body, her soul allowing and preparing for this sort of transition with her mind aflame with thoughts of her destination and her plan for action. She twisted herself just the moment before the teleportation happened, and existence stretched briefly into infinity. Working on the fly, she just thought of what seemed like it'd work and decided to carry through with it. She'd be able to adjust the plan if needed if something came up after all.

Already pushing herself into a spin, once she had teleported the momentum carried her into the proper position to fire at her enemy as the universe seemed to snap back into place like a rubber band. Her cannon rotated and clicked, expanding its outer fringes and widening itself a bit to accept the bore of the super missiles she planned to fire. And with a brief shivering sensation she released a gift of armageddon just as she caught sight of Arne launching himself into his altmode to bank out of the way of a diagonal slash and the crescent of cyan energy it released. This should help keep some pressure off him, she thought.

Green tipped warheads materialised and raced out of her cannon at incredible speeds with white contrails hurriedly following behind them. One, two, three impacts before the gunner shifted its body to face her. Even with the force shaping systems of the missiles, the detonations still made the room shake as if an earthquake had rattled it. Even with three of those seismically significant impacts, her enemy seemed none the worse for wear and her eyes caught the spooling up of the barrels as they started to rotate, light beginning to reach her eyes and her brain already reacting to psychic impulses telling her where the shots would be going. But she wasn't planning to stand still.

She flipped herself and let out two further super missiles into the head of the Syndran while she charged up the blade that emerged from her left gauntlet. Coruscating white anti-energy tuned to not interfere with her shielding or armour and frost quickly built up around the wrist sword with plummeting temperatures. She didn't need to have her face exposed to know the sensation of the arctic chill emanating from it, but she did get the proper feedback from stabbing the sword into the shield. Energy shielding would have failed quickly against this sort of weapon as ice exploded outwards from it. Still, the fractaline shielding was made of sterner stuff, and only pulsed as runes on the Syndran glowed, and the machine's optics started to intensify their luminosity.

Time to go. She thought as she flipped off of it and let her electrowave beam cut loose with a fully charged purple orb of ball lightning. The static burst of sound erupting from her cannon while her foe's guns were spitting out a frenzy of cyan light that she found herself forced to dodge around.

Not too far away, Arne considered his options quickly. His foe was able to transform themselves into ranged or melee forms, so it didn't matter what range he sought to engage them from, but they were much taller than he was and would necessarily need more room to move their limbs into position. Thus he settled on the course of attacking head-on, dodging around a diagonal and a low horizontal sweep and jumping over a stomp produced shockwave just in time to grab at its wrists and flip himself around, vaulting off of it and letting his shock coil scream to life. Clearing his mind, he looked behind the machine and imagined himself behind the thing while mentally commanding his suit to engage the teleport. He blinked, he fired off thrusters to rotate himself and bring his blade to bear; crackling with unfathomable electrical power output and stabbing downwards.

The machine jolted briefly, and its runes started to shimmer as he jetted himself over another attempted swing and swung his leg around fast enough to outpace its sound many times over. The kick made a deafening shockwave as it staggered the machine, the lad using the momentum of the kick's recoil and his thrusters to push himself back towards the ground where he caught himself with one hand. Not letting his enemy recover, he staccoed out a triple burst of charged missiles. Just as he had been taught, he had to prevent his foe from recovering their battle flow and deny them focus. Similarly, he was drilled with the knowledge that he needed to switch up his methods against an adaptive enemy. His opponent pushed themselves off of a column after stagging into it and he once again teleported.

This time he was at its chest, his arm cannon's highlights glowing a hot orange as it widened itself and clicked into star beam position. Pulsing globules of thermonuclear fury erupted against the machine, making it almost seem like it was groaning before he felt a sudden sense of alarm. Using his thrusters to push himself to the side, he just about avoided being clotheslined by the Syndran as it developed a set of thrusters and raced forwards in an attempted tackle to crush him. He huffed with relief, but the machine arrested its momentum and stabbed its sword towards him, forcing him back and upwards, jetting himself backwards and curling into his alt mode to duck beneath the other blade.

"Switch up!" He said to Samus who nodded as she grabbed at him with a grapple tether and swung him towards her foe, blinking out of the way of a missile barrage before it could make an impact to bring herself face to face with the melee Syndran.

She fired off the ice beam at its feet, letting the anti-energy impact of the ice beam's projectiles explode into bursts of frost that enveloped most of its legs from a few quick shots, preventing it from moving properly for a few moments. Of course, even all this ice could not stop it from breaking free by expanding its barrier and shifting its legs, rupturing the obstruction and allowing it to move freely once again. She leapt over the next stomp's shockwave, rolled under a crescent slash and seemed to be in the clear as she tried to focus on where to teleport. Before her mind could reach out to engage the blink system, she was struck by a chopping motion from the sword now that her avenues of movement were boxed in. She felt a rattle through her body from her suit's feedback systems as the blow forced her to the ground with a heavy thud and a significant loss of shielding.

She didn't allow herself the luxury of being disoriented for too long however and rolled into the morph ball with a swing of her legs to evade the machine's optical beams, boosting between its legs and rolling away with a thundercrack. She rolled up a curved section of wall and then rocketed right back into the machine's back to knock it forward, dropping a burst of bombs to further overwhelm it. Immediately, she uncurled out of the morph ball and switched up her arm cannon once again, allowing the Imperialist to split the air with a laser shot directly into the head of the Syndran. This was the extra push needed to make it fall on its face in the space of time a bullet could be primed. She hit the ground and cheered herself a little, but let out a yelp as she had to hop and then dash out of the way of a horizontal sweep slash and a follow up vertical slice from the foe as its runes lit up and its body shifted around to return itself to its feet.

Only meters away, Arne swung his blade to deflect a storm of incoming shots from the rotary guns, twitching his arms around as necessary as he sent each energy projectile careening away from him with carefully timed sweeps. To most, the rotary guns created a solid beam of bolts with a continual droning whine of firing, but his reflexes were literally lightning-fast, and his warning sense allowed him to find the best angles to set up his defence. With the other gun aiming towards him, however, he had to act fast and made a careful sweep and duck to both move out of the line of fire and redirect the light energy back to the sender, causing the machine to stagger before he teleported away. The machine had predicted his likely course and spat out a burst of warheads in his direction, his distant sight alarming him as soon as he arrived. Despite his reflexes and precognition, this storm was not possible to avoid by any means short of time travel or a teleport system that wasn't ready yet. More than a few detonations clipped him by fencing him in with intelligently placed airbursts, setting him up for one to throw him back into the wall.

Breathing hard, he looked at a large missile heading his way and grabbed at it with his grapple beam before tossing it back at the gunner Syndran, bowling the machine over with a massive crash and giving him just a bit of space to operate. But already, it was picking itself up, damage dealt already repairing itself. He tried to pull the thing towards him with a pair of grapple beams, one from his left arm and one from his arm cannon and grunted as he entered into a tug of war with enough force to pull a ship in twain. He succeeded in overcoming his foe's strength and threw it to the ground once more, but as he pulled it towards him, the Syndran used its proximity to grab him and toss him aside, hitting the floor with a hard roll and further lost shielding and a jolt of unpleasant feedback.

Samus spent a moment to concentrate, clenching her fist to reinvigorate her shielding as she tried to collect herself. She caught a vision of danger approaching her in the immediate future and went into motion; kick flipping out of the path of hip launched plasma grenades that exploded in brilliant green flashes of energy. She was not entirely safe yet and ignited her thrusters to backflip while still in the air when she sensed that the grenades had secondary munitions before teleporting away from the next volley. Stellar heat and a roaring detonation raced through the room, but she was safely out of harm's way while she let her power beam strike home repeatedly at the gunner before landing near Arne. Now repositioned, she fired off a pair of charged ice beam shots at the gunner's guns top cap things off while the boy siphoned off fresh energy with his shock coil. The screaming tether of electricity leeched power from its foe while she charged and released a quick trio of shots, each one resounding through the room with noise and intent.

"We need to focus on one of them at a time, they're adapting too quickly to fight separately," Samus said, getting a nod of affirmation from Arne. The two separated briefly, Arne dodging around a missile barrage but taking a clawed foot to the chest from the swordsman machine, hitting the wall and grunting before peeling off. He looked up and gasped in quick alarm before bringing up his arm blade against the downward swing of the foe. The ground cracked beneath his boots while he strained against astronomical pressure, groaning in discomfort. Still, he managed to push up slightly and escape the blade lock with the aid of an Imperialist strike from Samus. Such a shot had been made mid-air as she dodged around the cluster bombs of her opponent, teleporting to the side to elude damage only to be caught out by the eye beams and hurtled backwards, righting herself to land near Arne again.

"Right...the sword-swinging one's the more dangerous of the two in this kind of environment. Maybe we could try some Thermal shock?" He proposed.

"...I like that idea." She said with a feral grin beneath her helmet.

"Head or limbs?" He asked.

"Limbs, it'll have back up sensors for the head, but taking out an arm might do it." She said as the two flipped out of the way of a sword swing and dodged a sweep of weapons fire while he struck out with the shock coil and she bombarded her foe with missile fire. The blade's cyan arc made an audible buzz as it went through the air, an incoming thrust fitting neatly between them as the dashed in separate directions before boosting up when the blade was rotated and fired off cutting waves to either side.

"Okay, I can handle that." Arne said, more to himself than anyone else. The gunner had by now freed its weapons of its icy prisons and transformed its weapons to arcing mortars, forcing them to concede ground to the carpet of crimson detonations that was sent their way so that they could reconvene. Some projectiles were shot out of the air to leave globules of energy and regents their suits could use to convert into missile and universal ammo, but they were forced to back away to cover.

"First we need to hit that shielding as hard as we can. You go high, I'll go low; focus on the melee one." Arne said while the two grabbed onto the rapidly firing gunner with their grapple beams and pulled it into the path of the other, letting its weapons unload into its ally until it managed to stop its fire. While these weapons were keyed to do no harm to its comrade, the interruption of firing lanes and the need to reorient had caused the disruption they needed. Samus rushed in on instinct to exploit with a quick teleport, getting in a long hacking strike with the arm blade to make the swordsman's shielding spark up, leaving them open for Arne to sprint at them until his form was enveloped in cyan energies. With a jump, he rammed into them at speeds sufficient to carry him out of the atmosphere if his momentum were not arrested by the collision; the shielding of the machine finally bursting from the impact.

The melee machine groaned and reconfigured its left arm to bear a scutum like shield to offer it greater protection while the two youths raced around it firing what they could. The other machine was not idle however and released a spray of submunition missiles overhead that hovered in the air momentarily. This quiet lasted only a tiny fraction of a second before it was interrupted as the missiles split into smaller warheads that streamed directly downwards, hemming in avenues of escape to make the job of the warheads meant to seek them out easier to throw them to the ground. But before they could recover, the melee Syndran made its own move to exploit, scraping its shield against the floor to throw them back before they could take a moment to get back on their feet and knocking them into the air. The incoming stomp and crescent slash caught them, pushing them back further and costing them some further energy.

They still had some energy tanks to spare, but they needed to turn the tide fast; Samus thought as she caught herself on her feet while Arne landed on his left hand and vaulted himself back into a standing position, the two engaging their teleports to regroup. Arne laid his hand on her shoulder and opened up with his shock coil, concentrating on transferring the energy he leeched from the gunner Syndran into her suit's shielding as was protocol. Help allies first before yourself. It wasn't too much before they had to get moving again, throwing themselves into their altmodes, but it was enough. They rocketed forwards as hot debris exploded outwards and spraying the area with hypervelocity fragments that pinged harmlessly off of their shielding before they rushed around the swordsman and unleashed their munitions upon it. The armour plating hissed and sparked at the impacts but held even when the two uncurled and readied themselves to fire off electric weapons; his Volt Driver and her Paralyctor surging power through the machine before it had adapted to the concussive bomb impacts.

Vaulting onto a higher level, Samus shot out some incoming missiles to free up energy and matter for conversion by their suits into supplies. Switching modes in her arm cannon she charged up her Ice Beam; vacuuming in some of those supplies to stock up once again, but simple resupply wasn't her objective. She aimed and fired her weapon to strike at the gunner Syndran and take it temporarily out of the occasion by freezing over its head.

At the same time, Arne let energy collect into his arm cannon to reap some of the spoils Samus had sown before it unleashed a torso sized sphere of molten starstuff. The ongoing reactions of the star beam's charge shot roiled before the orb latched onto the arm of the Syndran, burning away at temperatures higher than those found in virtually any star. Already the Syndran's armour was changing to adapt to the heat, shifting to retain structural viability before the star beam's charge blast went supernova and exploded in a contained blast. But these adaptations would be met with Samus firing another charged ice beam shot, directly at the afflicted limb. The anti-energy induced thermal shock rapidly cooled and fragmented the arm enough for a charged missile from Arne who had blinked sufficiently closed to prevent it from moving the limb out of the way to promptly blow it off entirely with a deafening shattering noise.

Samus audibly cheered at the glorious sight while Arne let out an exhilarated laugh. The machine tried to regather energy to account for the damaged limb, trying already to regrow it, but Samus was already on it, teleporting into the ideal path to start running. Now in a sprint, she let speed booster carry her forwards as a hypersonic comet, coruscating energy fields surrounding her to turn her into a frenzied buzzsaw of destruction as she slammed into the machine's head and burnt away at its faceplate. However, she had not merely tackled the machine but had pointed her arm blade forward to dig it into the machine's body, and once she felt that the sword was solidly inside, she fired off her shinespark and pushed herself downwards. The momentum carving the synthetic in half; their armours latching onto the freed up energies of the machine to recharge their shielding and resupply precious munitions. She hit the ground running, already releasing super missiles into her foe as fast as she was able.

Arne was not idle either, his own arm cannon expanding itself diagonally somewhat and taking on sickly green highlights while miasmic patterns danced in the diagonal ridges of his cannon before it stabbed outwards with head-sized comets of crackling noxious energies that made the sound of a small glass-breaking each time it fired. Doctrine dictated that he should use something that his foe hadn't seen before from him to overwhelm its adapting shielding, and he had yet to make use of the Decay Beam due to its general weakness against shielding. And indeed, the gunner, However, it would keep the foe distracted from Samus making use of the Electrowave beam's charged shots to present it with the difficult choice of which attack to adapt to; making sure to vary his patterns with periodic missile bursts to not make that choice too easy to make.

Making a split-second decision to dodge around a barrage of solar spheres that spat out cyan lances of energy towards them; the two disappeared once again. A flash of yellow and blue energy and the rubberbanding of spacetime heralded them appearing from behind with another burst of light. A pair of grapple beam tethers emerged from Arne to rip the Syndran off of its footing, straight into the path of Samus who launched herself into a side flip to add extra momentum to an arm cannon smash that pounded its head into the ground. The air split asunder with the shockwave of the blow and the room rumbled from the force as she once again regained her footing. Before the next fraction of a second had passed, her leg sailed in a horizontal arc faster than a coil gun's round for a cycle kick to toss the foe like a ragdoll.

Arne pulled the launched machine back towards him with his grapple beam to headbutt it back into the ground before it could recover its balance. Now with its shielding splintered, he fired off his decay beam at full blast, a noxious comet exploding with a pronounced shattering sound against the now exposed armour. Sensing weakness; he checked the incoming limb of the Syndran as it tried to grab him, pushing and twisting it aside in a tug of war and shoved his arm cannon into the struck area. His arm cannon expanded vertically much as Samus did when it shifted to ice beam mode. Blue-cyan energy coiled around as Cherenkov radiation built up within even as the machine tried to stand up again, Samus freezing a leg in place and grabbing at an arm and pulling back with incredible force. The Positron beam, a weapon he was usually expected to reserve for foes that required it for the sake of appropriate force for the appropriate situation. And if this wasn't an appropriate time what was?

He sunk his fingers into the armour plating, feeling it shift around them and readied his positron beam. He charged and released the electric stream of anti-matter, a thick arcing bolt exploding into the construct and producing a deafening thunderclap that would in and of itself, be a deadly weapon able to rupture high-grade steel and concrete. With the armour weakened sufficiently, he tensed his fingers and braced his feet before kicking off with his thrusters, tearing a large chunk of alloy arrayed by the atom for durability free and landing on his feet. Shaking off the metal as Samus smacked the giant in the head with the arm she had pulled loose and knocking its head back with another super missile, Arne fired off the blink pack and dove into the machine itself. He had to test the new weapon, surely Zurvduat would penalise him if he didn't. He had seen its now exposed internals and displaced himself into them, with his presence inside of them and the machine's vitae no longer powerful enough to repel him combining to tear the Syndran apart in a spectacular shower of colours and noise.

He shook his head and looked around, huffing a bit. "Wow, that was...definitely intense." He said, not tired at all; more coming off of the high of adrenaline and battle focus he had been in up to this point. He mimed wiping his brow and let out a little laugh to Samus' snort and giggle.

"I'd love to do that again sometime. Think we'll have more fights like that while we're here?" She asked, rolling her shoulders and flexing her arms slightly. She felt good, almost invincible really even if there had been some close calls.

"Based on the layout of the maze? Probably a lot actually, very strong likelihood of that even. Might even call it a guarantee." He said, taking a moment to sit down on a crate and looking towards Samus.

"We'll be fine, we can handle it. We're pretty great after all." She beamed with sunny confidence as she sat down across from him and folded her legs into a pretzel stance. "We probably should find Spire and Armaud, though...I wonder where they could be?" She pondered, humming a bit.

"Well, I'm hoping they heard all that fighting at least." Arne said, looking up at her and giving her a gentle smile beneath his helmet.

"Maybe...I don't think it'd be a good idea to stay here for too long though. Especially when we're being scored for time. Too bad, I'd like to explore this place more." She said, looking around at the architecture and then back at him.

"Well, in the future I think we'll get to explore as much as we want and whenever we want...when we're ready." He said, relaxing a bit at the thought.

"Yeah, it's just a shame we need to wait...haven't we just proved we could handle a big fight?" She said.

"I mean, yes." He said, not quite sure of what response to make.

"We should definitely work out why the animals are so aggressive though. I'm not comfortable letting that not be answered." She said, her words firmer now as she looked towards the nearest door, still blockaded by the barriers.

"Agreed, I just hope that our families approve. It'd be a pretty risky detour to take." He said, turning his head to see where she was looking at before realising she wasn't really looking at anything in particular and turning back to her.

"I'm sure they'll understand. They have to." She said firmly as she stood up and offered a hand to him.

"Come on, Arne. We've got an exam to pass." She said cheerily as he clapped his hand over hers and yanked himself up.


Consolidated Logbook Entries

Individuals: Organic: Active: Civilian: Scientists: Chozo: Female: Isa-Hesh

Isa-Hesh, often known as August Wings; is a senior member of the Zebesian science colony's research team and an honoured elder among the Chozo. At more than one hundred and forty thousand years old, Isa-Hesh is a long time friend and companion of Re-Sekh and has nurtured many children alongside him. A specialist in the fields of sorcery and biology and how they intertwine, Isa-Hesh's long life has been spent in pursuit of understanding the very nature of life. She educated several senior officials sent to the SR-388 mission but declined to join the expedition out of a preference to finish her work on the planet of Zebes. A proponent of adopting Samus Aran and ensuring that she was raised to acclimate with humans as well as Chozo traditions; Isa-Hesh also finds a great deal of enjoyment in looking after Samus' pets.

Arne's Notes:

She reminds me of Elmorni in all the best ways. And they get along really well too...Samus likes her a lot, and if she trusts her, then so do I.

Samus' Notes:

Mama's always been really great with Pyonchi and Okmin, and she's always had the best stories to share. I hope we always stay in touch, even when I'm all grown up.

Individuals: Organic: Active: Civilian: Scientists: Alimbic: Male: Mortirk

One of the four civilian Tetrarchs attached to Zurvduat's command aboard the Caesarian Lance, Mortirk is known for having a somewhat jovial attitude towards his work. A noted expert in negotiations and diplomacy with some one hundred thousand years of experience, Mortirk serves as a civilian leader for the crew of the Caesarian Lance and later the other scattered populations of stasis preserved Alimbics awakened by the crew of the vessel. Mortirk is a fierce advocate of diplomatic approaches to the new situation facing the Alimbics and sees in Arne a chance to better understand one of the more widespread species in the present era as well as a way to show the goodwill of the New Order. Mortirk takes an active involvement in the raising and nurturing of Arne, and has sought to prepare him for eventual reintegration into societies where he won't be the only human.

Arne's Notes:

Mortirk's a pretty nice dad, and he's been really helpful in getting better at talking to people. But I wish he could do more to help me get Zurvduat to acknowledge me as his son.

Samus' Notes:

He's better than Zurvduat at least, but he still makes me feel like he sees Arne as more a means to an end than anything else.

Planets: Styrmak Galaxy: Telemor Cluster: Theg System: Human Habitable: Precursor Gathering Place: Visited: Zoran

The Planet of Zoran is an artificial world of roughly 1.7 times Earth diameter with a mostly even partition between its many biomes and a temperate climate. Zoran was created 230,000 years before the present to serve as a place for social gathering and recreational activities. Assembled shortly after the design was finalised and the Theg system was produced, the planet would then have a long history of shifting purposes throughout its active service. It would become a manufacturing site, then a research and testing facility, then a military mustering point, then finally a training site before eventually rotating back to once again being a place primarily for gatherings. Many warrior lodges that found themselves with considerably less purpose following the end of the Wars of Despair would come to make residency on Zoran; testing themselves against its trials to while away the hours in times of peace. As the Order and Milieu descended into a state of rivalry and cold war, however, the frequency of visits to Zoran would gradually decrease. Following the sudden end of the Tetrarch Order, Zoran would slowly but surely come to be almost entirely unused. Secluded from most of the present societies of the Universe, Zoran presently receives an average of five visitors per Earth year.

Arne's Notes:

It's fascinating that there was a time when planets and megastructures could just be built on demand for singular purposes. It feels somewhat excessive, though, and I don't think a lot of thought was given to what would come after.

Samus' Notes:

I'm not so sure on whether building an entire ecosystem on a whim is something that we should encourage. It feels like it trivialises life itself, and if done, it would be better to make it from scratch than to take it from elsewhere.

Starvessels: Chozo Make: Gunships: Custom Design: Samus Aran Owned: Dormach

The Dormach was designed by Samus Aran and assembled in a process she directed as part of a test of her engineering skills after successfully creating her "Metkhesh" power suit with the aid of the Chozo and Mother Brain. The Dormach is designed for versatility, high-grade avionics and service as a long-distance base of operations and as such is made to be a multirole craft with an eye for making aggressive landings in particular. While well-armed and durable, its most critical feature is its ability to elude most forms of targeting with the aid of multiple stealth and countermeasure systems. Its manoeuvre systems allow for excellent atmospheric and vacuum mobility and its multitype array faster than light transit system allows for convenient intergalactic travel. A "Varkasar" type reactor provides power to all systems with reserve reactors ready to take over in case of failure, while the ship boasts all-purpose fabrication systems that allow Samus to live from it indefinitely. The Khazses class A.I fitted to the vessel serves as the overall control system and personality of the Dormach.

Arne's Notes:

It's a really sleek ship, it's a little weird to call it a gunship when its weapons are all hidden, but it's a dream to fly from the times I've gotten to handle the controls.

Samus' Notes:

I'm still super proud of designing it, and I really can't wait to make more! It's just really relaxing to get to sit down and put something like a whole ship together.

Starvessels: Alimbic Make: Strike Fighters: Custom Design: Arne Skjǫldr Owned: Sleipnir

With oversight and guidance from the Crew of the Caesarian Lance and the Palatine Mind A.I; the Sleipnir was made to suit Arne's simulation tested personal flying style at the end of his engineering exams. A long-range strike fighter capable of serving as a mobile home and making landings even in the roughest of conditions, the Sleipnir is a marvel of engineering. The Sleipnir is made to be incredibly fast and manoeuvrable while still being highly durable, destructive, intelligent, and provide a wide range of utility. However, there can be little doubt that its primary mission is to win engagements and serve as a strike platform before allowing Arne to arrive where he needs to go. Stealth, countermeasure as well as active and passive defence systems combine with its incredible agility and early warning systems to allow Arne to slip past nearly any defensive screen. Its multitype faster than light array draws on the Sol core systems in the strike-fighter and its auxiliary reactors to allow for quick and straightforward intergalactic travel. All-purpose internal fabrication systems allow for indefinite mission durations while mission control is facilitated by the "Volva" A.I programmed into the ship's software.

Arne's Notes:

It's honestly my baby. A place I built for me, made just the way I wanted it to be. Machines are always really comforting to work with, and nothing else in existence flies quite like it.

Samus' Notes:

It's more specialised than I'd like my first craft to be, but I don't think I've ever seen anything that can go as fast as it does. It was really nice of Arne to let me fly it a few times, it's got an incredible feel to it.

Starvessels: Diamont Make: Deep Attacker: Custom Design: Spire Adamant Owned: Cragimoch

The favourite of Spire's many personal craft and perhaps his most iconic vessel, the Cragimoch is a heavyset, incredibly durable ultralong range that nevertheless has the performance to carry Spire through virtually any scenario. Originally constructed to serve Spire in his duties as a ranger, when Spire found himself to be the last of the Diamonts he had the ship heavily refitted and upgraded to the point of no longer resembling the original vessel. Raw firepower is the ultimate virtue of the Cragimoch, with a varied and incredibly powerful array of weapons that can allow the Cragimoch to bring the potency of a mass extinction event to bear on targets of Spire's choosing. Its targeting systems are intelligently guided by the Orok A.I fitted into the ship and can engage and track virtually unlimited numbers of targets which are kept in range by powerful thrust and manoeuvre systems fuelled by a "Stygos" multi-reactor system. Durability is also more than adequate thanks to multilayered active and passive defence systems and self-sustaining capabilities through self-repair and fabrication systems are similarly peerless compared to current generation craft of a similar size.

Arne's Notes:

It's unapologetically an attack craft for blowing up lots of big targets. The sheer firepower this thing has at its fingertips is almost kind of ridiculous. Seeing it do an all weapon strike is definitely something I'd recommend to most people. At least, not on the receiving end.

Samus' Notes:

It's not pretty, but I don't think there's anything else flying that can blow up as much stuff in one attack run as the Cragimoch. It's not really comfortable to be in, but I guess that's to be expected when it wasn't made for carbon-based passengers.

Starvessels: N'Kren Make: Fighter-Bomber: Custom Design: Armaud Svihaly Owned: Hreldim

Designed for and by Armaud Svihaly to service their role as the watcher of the N'Kren morphomundi, the Hreldim is the Freelancer's preferred craft. The Hreldim appears to be a unique vessel though due to Armaud's noted tendency towards secrecy, this cannot be confirmed for a fact. Endurance is the primary virtue of the Hreldim, with its shielding, armour and self-repair systems allowing for incredible passive defence while numerous more active systems further protect it from harm, with its hull able to repair the rare breaches made like quicksilver. Once through enemy defensive screens, the Cragimoch makes use of a blistering array of weapons aided by surprisingly capable manoeuvre systems to ensure enemies are unable to escape. Thanks to the mechanical nature of Armaud, where the Freelancer begins, and the ship's Aggadi A.I ends is often difficult to discern, but by all accounts, their working relationship is impeccable. The vessels' sustaining capabilities and flux reactor systems allow for indefinite operations and the Hreldim's faster than light systems allow for Armaud to trivially traverse the breadth of known space.

Arne's Notes:

It's a flying tank, and it never tries to be anything else besides that. But it's definitely a magnificent flying tank at that. It really makes me wish that I could have seen the Pentarchy's strike forces when they were around. They must have been amazing to watch.

Samus' Notes:

Armaud is tough, and it seems like she wanted to make sure her ship was just as durable as she was. I really want a chance to fly it around myself, but Svihaly hasn't let me just yet. I know she will eventually though, it's just that I can't wait.

Species: Fauna: Archosauroid: Dinosauroid: Aviform: Raptoroid: Non-Sapient: Predatory: Frike: Zorani Frike

Originally native to the Chozo settled planet of Kazamind, Frikes were imported to Zoran and carefully modified to suit the artificial biosphere created for the planet to fill a predatory niche and for the aesthetic enjoyment of the Chozo populace. Once on Zoran, they spread across with little difficulty. Like all Frikes, Zorani Frikes are psionically adept and can generate their own shielding in tandem with specialised organs that allow them to resist greater punishment. The agile Aviforms are also highly accomplished fliers and are easily able to dodge around incoming fire provided they are aware of it. An arsenal of razor-sharp talons and a powerful beak is augmented by powerful wingbeats and the ability to release stored energy in a shockwave. However, a missed dive blast requires a moment to recover should it make contact with the ground, allowing for a swift counterattack.

Arne's Notes:

They're beautiful birds, but there's something terribly off with the Frikes here. None of the data about them suggests that they're particularly aggressive towards Sophonts under typical conditions. I'd need more data to make a sound conclusion, though.

Samus' Notes:

It's absolutely awful that we had to fight some of them to death. When I find out what's driving them to this sort of behaviour I'm going to make sure they're very sorry they ever decided to mess with the animals here. That's a promise.

Species: Fauna: Arachnoid: Pseudo-Aranean: Korantil: Ilangdar: Non-Sapient: Predatory: Regordim: Zorani Regordim

Originally native to the Legomach homeworld of Milgedar, Regordim are another import to the planet of Zoran to fill an ambush predator niche. Extremely variable in size from their hatching as larva little more than three centimetres in length to an adulthood size of three meters with no known upper limit; Regordim can occupy many niches at the same time at various stages of their life. With tissue with higher tensile strength than Graphene, claw tips on their tentacles able to rupture nanomaterial, and explosive reflexes, Regordim are well adapted to quickly overwhelming most prey. Regordim, however, are not well suited to long struggles or pursuit and will lose interest in prey that slips out of reach or causes substantial harm to the central body. If removed from their nesting places, Regordim will seek to return with all haste.

Arne's Notes:

I'm glad that we could end our first encounter with one without having to kill them. But if we're going to save the lives of the wildlife here, we need to handle the problem at its root.

Samus' Notes:

The life of a predatory animal is one that always involves death, but nearly always only out of perceived need. To make a predator risk its life for food it cannot eat is obscene, and it will not continue.

Species: Fauna: Hexapod: Mammalimimic: Skregan: Skelik: Non-Sapient: Detritovore: Skriltas: Zorani Skriltas

Opportunistic consumers of virtually all forms of dead or wasted organic matter, skriltas present little danger to more massive life forms and are almost entirely non-aggressive unless forced into conflict. Originally native to the Alimbic settled world of Quaros, populations of adapted Skriltas would be imported to Zoran to occupy a vital ecological niche. Skriltas do not require any unique tactics to deal with and are vulnerable to all weapons fire. They often carry many forms of diseases harmful to those lacking in access to medication due to their tendency to consume waste, however.

Arne's Notes:

It's rather odd that they don't seem to have anywhere near the kind of aggression a lot of the other animals here do. Must not be seen as viable by this...force.

Samus' Notes:

My armour tells me that I could effortlessly and safely handle them with my physique and immune system. That makes me happy to know..if only we had the time.

Mechanoids: Menkoram: Training: Combat Capable: Mekwasps

Relatively simple creations of the Menkoram, Mekwasps replicate much of the standard features of War Wasps seen throughout the universe. With sharp and powerful clawed limbs, strong mandibles, and a high-frequency barb that comes to a mono-atomic point even in their base form, they are well-armed. Further augmenting their arsenal is that their systems are modular and thus allow them to be configured to match many different types of war-wasps seen across the universe. Finally, Mekwasps are assembled from energy to matter conversion systems within manufacturing hives that allow them to be replaced with little cost or time. Relatively fragile, rapid-fire, high speed, and/or seeking projectile weapons are usually ideal in dealing with them. Their hives will typically require explosive weapons to eliminate.

Arne's Notes:

They're really just robotic war wasps? What else is there to say? They're not really that different on any of the planets they show up on. So I guess they're good for training against that.

Samus' Notes:

It's fascinating that there are so many kinds of war wasps that they felt the need to make mechanical simulations to offer specialised training against them. Just how did they get that widespread?

Mechanoids: Ylla: Testing: Combat Capable: Syndran

Syndrans were built to be means of providing hard but fair challenges to those who seek to claim treasures seen to be of significant value by the Ylla that are still meant to be attainable by the worthy. Using their ability to shift into zero-point energy or draw forth this energy to form into matter as well as transform their structures; they can tailor themselves to provide the ideal challenge. When faced with repetitions of tactics and capabilities, they will transform themselves to counter. They will similarly adjust their offensive capabilities to deal with unusual defensive strategies and abilities. Overly favouring a single tactic or weapon is thus not recommended. Maintaining a varied array of tactics and making full use of your arsenal will lead to the best results.

Arne's Notes:

The most concerning thing is that they're only classified as testing machines. If the gods are gracious, I won't have to face a proper Ylla war machine this big until I'm ready for it. Having to switch up tactics and weapons to deal with the adaptation abilities does work to keep me on my toes at least, but I feel like I'd have a way harder challenge if I didn't already have so many weapons.

Samus' Notes:

Now, this is more of a proper fight! I love having to think on my feet constantly, and its morphing abilities force me to do just that. I hope I can practice against more of them soon, this is the kind of fight I could see myself really getting to enjoy. I feel like I need to expand my melee arsenal though, something to keep in mind for the future.

Esoterical Concepts: Omnipresent: Quintessence

Quintessence is a force present in most things but is unique to every individual object and person. In essence, it serves as a sort of cosmic identification marker. Quintessence is challenging to detect and measure and is distinct from the soul, it is, however, possible to extract this force for usable energy. Typically when an object or individual is destroyed, some quintessence will be liberated in a generic state which many forms of precursor technology can harvest to affect repairs, restore ammunition, or recharge shielding. When combined with matter and energy transmutation systems, this will allow for exceptionally high battlefield self-sustainment capabilities.

Arne's Notes:

I wonder what my quintessence is like if everyone's is unique? Which set of my parents is mine more like? Or does species not really affect the shape and essence of quintessence?

Samus' Notes:

I don't see how someone can be aware of quintessence and not be at least somewhat spiritual. Especially when it surrounds us to such a degree.

Esoterical Concepts: Living: Vitae

Vitae is a force that is present only within animate beings and remains distinct from the soul and quintessence. Whether it is the origin force for life or is simply a force that is attracted to it remains unknown. Vitae weakens as the health and integrity of entities declines and strengthens if they improve. If deprived of vitae, in virtually all cases most beings simply die or otherwise cease functioning. Similarly, adding or transferring vitae offers improvements to health and function. Vitae also can serve to shield entities from many cataclysmic effects such as an unprotected teleportation overlap. However, direct interaction with vitae without magic is nearly impossible.

Arne's Notes:

It's really mind-boggling to me that we used to only list four fundamental forces of the universe. Just how did people study life without knowing forces like vitae, psionics, and quintessence? Vitae in particular just seems so...vital to understanding living things. It's going to be so strange to talk to people who don't know it even exists.

Samus' Notes:

I'm proud of myself for doing as well as I did on the exam on vitae theory. Which I suppose means I know more about it than nearly any other human in existence. That's a weird thought, isn't it? I'm hoping I don't let it get to my head. I don't want to become an arrogant person.

Upgrades: Mobility: Spatio-Temporal: Teleportation: Multiple Makers: Blink Pack

The Blink Pack is useful for allowing the user to teleport to any place they can perceive or have sufficient data about to enable them to transit safely. The device works through warping the fabric of spacetime to eliminate all distance between two points and circumventing most forms of obstacles, with the transition being instantaneous. Momentum will still be carried through when teleportation commences and is finished. If teleportation is made into a solid object or a dangerous environment; the user will be shunted to the nearest safe distance. However, if the target lacks sufficient Vitae, they will instead be destroyed by the teleportation, allowing the Blink Pack to be used offensively to finish off weakened opponents.

Arne's Notes:

Teleporters like this are especially useful for preventing enemies from locking me down in one position and escaping suppressing fire. The Blink Pack should also be particularly handy at letting me get into Shock Coil or melee range without exposing myself to fire.

Samus' Notes:

The ability to teleport to places I can perceive should be hugely useful for navigating certain obstacles. Especially if there's security camera feeds I can slice into. See-through shields, in particular, are easy enough to bypass with this upgrade.