Chapter 4: "Matrix Dragons"

It was pretty weird to Samus, Houston's idea being that he wanted to act as

"Uncle" from that Jackie Chan cartoon that Ezzie liked to watch. He wanted

Samus to join in, wearing that fruit lady dress and hat, but she obstinately

refused. His outfit for the act was simple enough, but looked somehow too...

tight. He WAS quite a lot bigger than Uncle, but he didn't care.

"So, you don't want to do anything to help, huh?" Samus grins.

"I'll criticize for you." Houston facefalls. That wasn't what he had meant.

He knew that his plan would more than likely Power Bomb, but it was the best

shot he had, and a good lot more original than everything else. The money

for their deal was riding on his success. "Seriously, why do a comedy

routine? Why not perform somewhere else? You could probably ace the karaoke.

I know your Ozzy Ozbourne singing is killer. Or why not we do a mission-in-

mission?" Houston sighs.

"You're an apprentice hunter, you can't legally accept double commissions.

I...uh...well..." Samus shakes her head and walks to the internet terminal.

"You're an apprentice still, too? What rating level?" Houston looks down

at the floor.

"No, I'm not an apprentice, but my rating is still shameful." Samus looks at

Houston while turning in the chair to face him.

"What is it?"

"...Rating level 2." Samus pauses a moment. She laughs to herself inside of

her head. 2?! He should have had higher if he was in the Guild for so long.

"Oh...right. You didn't get very many commissions. It's not laughable. Not

laughable at all."

"Liar. I know 70 people who have laughed about it. They were all targets on

a hit list that I was given one mission. What's amazing is that I wasn't even

able to attack a single one of them. I felt like some all-powerful force was

watching 'em." Samus shrugs.

"So you turned down that mission, eh? Why did you take it in the first

place?" Houston sighs.

"They're called the 'Matrix Dragon Gang'. A secret gamers ring. They have

skills...and if they don't win, they cheat, they hack, they do anything.

But no matter what, they win. And they can all fight, too. Especially the

gang boss. No one knows who he is, but I have my suspicions." Samus lists

a search on the Matrix Dragons. Houston walks over to the door. "Well, I'm

going."

"Good luck, 'Uncle'. May The Chi Be With You." Samus looked at the search

list. Nothing as far as a direct website was concerned. She saw several

message board links, but no direct websites until-

She saw a website for an online RPG owned by the Matrix Dragons. She clicked

on the link and looked at every part of the index page. The title of the

webpage and game was 'METROID: THE RPG'. This amused Samus when she looked

at the character list.

"Hm. Now why would they have a game with me in it? And Houston?

And Hardy? And...well...everyone?" (clueless about the Author Dragon's

near-extensive knowledge of the Metroid universe, it's past is shady, but

we all know about what happened during and after the first game! ^_^)

^

O_O --------------| "I am obviously paying attention to that." (Whoops.

Anyway, back to the fanfic.)

"Let's see here." She looks through all of the fine-print details and the

contract, obviously centering around some guy called Katri Mattrix. "Maybe

I should try a little game of mine that I like to call 'Server Access'."

Samus opens up one of Houston's cracker programs and deftly types in the

data needed to open up the highest level access. Usually, systems like this

had the highest security to prevent hacking characters or other stuff, even

higher security than banks.

'That says a lot about the talent that these geeks have. They can hack

anything if they can hack a game server. Houston was so very right about

them having skills. But...why leave your doors wide open?' It became

obvious to her exactly why they left their server accesses so easy to pry.

She felt a tremoring buzz inside of her left hand. They hacked her chip.

They knew who was peeping. They knew who she was. Everything.

She bangs her hand on the kitchen table, trying to make the vibrating stop,

swearing with every loud BANG noise.

"DAA-MIT!!! DAMMIT! They don't need anything more than tracer programs!!

I forgot about that!! Looks like I'll need to do a little change of location.

Right." Samus gets up, stopped by two scrawny guys dressed in casual black

clothing and regular-looking glasses (no, not sun-glasses, but coke-bottles).

They looked like the most identical twins that identical twins could be.

"Too late to move away...and you can't hide, either. Our boss can find you,

no matter what or where." Samus walks up to the two of them.

"Out of my way. I've got other things to do." The two of them both shove

Samus back, sending her two feet into the air and slamming into the couch,

knocking it over again.

"You boss us without being the boss? That warrants a little brawl to put

you in place! Ready, Arian?" The other nods.

"I'm ready Ayeera!" The two both charge at Samus at the same time. Samus

barely has time to shake her head when she flips off of the couch, just as

the twins come down with a chop that cuts the couch into three parts. Samus

kicks the middle piece up and bashes Arian with it.

"Oh, it's on, brother boys. How about we do this WWE style?"

--------------------------------

"Boss, you see the news?! There was Marduk Agents there! What if Sumisu

saw ya?" A squat, fat guy wearing normal clothes colored black looks up at

a humanoid figure. His aqua-green skin was scaled at all parts of his body

except his face, which looked human enough...if it weren't for the bizarre

color. He wore black, too, but the finest reptilian leather, pants adorned

with deep zippered pockets and a small plain jacket of the same color. His

chest clearly showed, a golden yellow chest and abdomen, as though he was

some kind of cross-bred lizard-man and human. At his left hip, hanging on a

metal hook, a silver tube with a small dish at one end and a small button

near the bottom stayed. His hair was the same color as his pants, and his

eyes were a puzzling olive green. He almost always either looked embarassed

or uninterested about something. He looked uninterested now, though.

"Like you need to worry about me? You forget three major things: One, I

cannot be found unless I want to be found. Two, I can deal with anyone from

Marduk Cult, even that scowling bastige Sumisu. Three...you seriously, uber-

seriously...underestimate dragons. Especially me." The fat guy nods.

"Ye-yes. The grace of Anu is with you, Boss, but...shouldn't you take less

risk?" The humanoid dragon shakes his head.

"No. There will be nothing more risky than my next move, Plamer." The fat

guy looks up at his leader.

"Wh-what move is that? Can the Author Dragon tell me?" He nods and turns

on an internet terminal. The softwares that were used for server defense

did nothing to the hacker, but did trace the chip signal back to the user of

the terminal. She was a small blonde girl barely in her teens.

"To recruit...Samus Aran." Plamer gasped.

"M-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-Master Katri! Please don't chase after her!" Katri flips

a lock of his hair away from his eyes. He smiles at Plamer

"I've already decided. Besides, Ridley survived her. What should mean that

I can't?"

"...Alright, s-sir. But you'd better hurry, Gemini is attacking her now."

"WHAT?!" Katri disappears in a phase-out. He reappears at Houston's apart-

ment, watching as Arian and Ayeera fly into the hallway to the sides of him.

Arian growls. "What! You dare to stand between us like that?!" Ayeera gets

up, too. Arian lunges at Katri with his fist enclosed.

"Yeah!! You pick a fight with Gemini?! Huh...wait! Arian, that's the boss!"

Arian stops himself in mid-punch. "Sorry about that. We only saw someone

standing in between us." Katri grins sheepishly.

"You...just leave Aran to me." The twins nod and bow. Katri watches Samus

fuss about the broken couch. She quite obviously is only paying attention

to the mess that she made.

"How am I gonna explain this to Houston? 'Uh, yeah, a couple of geeks karate

chopped your couch into three pieces'...like that'll really fly with him."

Katri clears his throat. Samus looks up at him.

"How about you just let me say that a couple of my...over-impulsive fighters

got to you." The twins bow again from outside the doorway.

"Sorry, boss." Katri waves his hand. Samus throws down the couch piece that

she was holding earlier and straightens the remaining seats.

"Whatever. Anyway, who are you?" Katri glances at Samus with his head cocked

oddly to the side, as though he was a pet lizard looking at her with just one

eye.

"I got several names to be called by. Boss, Katri Mattrix, Author Dragon-"

Samus cuts him off.

"You...are Author Dragon?" Katri nods.

"Yah. Schneider thought that he could make Sumisu's job easier, but he was

only pulling the Cult's strings so he could get some extra cash. They had

originally intended to kill me, but as you can see, even a sleazy lunkhead

like him saves a life or two on accident, and Sumisu doesn't trust him at

all anymore. All the ME that he's hunting for are missing. Guess who has

'em now?" Samus shrugs as though she could care less. "We do. Snatched

the most important ones, so that Sumisu can't get them. We're his enemy.

And our motives aren't for conquest, either." Katri claps twice, and the

broken couch turns into two fancy leather seats and a whole new couch.

"I can only guess what you want to do." Katri makes a gesture.

"Guess away." Samus looks over at the TV, off, but still alluring to look

at.

"You're all gamers. You don't want Sumisu to take that away from you all,

because it's your purpose in life to just have fun, and make things fun for

others...sometimes. But anyway-" Katri holds his left hand up.

"Hup. You already hit the nail on the head. Yes, we're all gamers, most of

us are hackers, too. We're all trained in any different kind of martial arts,

too. Capoeira(is this spelled right?), Dji-da-pa-do-ko-ryu(I'll give a little

background to this one later), and sumo." Samus stifles a laugh.

"S...sumo?!" Katri lets out a sharp breath. His expression changes to

one of irritation.

"What, you think that all gamers are scrawny geeks? Only the ones with a

blast-furnace metabolism. Most of who we have are fat-asses that just eat,

hack, code, and play on the internet. I make 'em do sumo because it teaches

them a couple things." Samus still fights off laughing.

"Like...how to pull around their own weight?"

"No. I won't divulge any details. Anyway, what I came here for is to ask

you something." Samus looks at the wet-bar.

"What?" Katri walks over to her and kneels to be eye-level with her.

"I want you to join us. You already fight against Sumisu. I can give you

the ME that you need. I even have it on me right now." They both hear a

clapping noise. Looking up at the doorway, they both see a middle-aged man

wearing a tuxedo, clapping.

"Well, well, well...it's Miss Aran-derson again...along with the fool who

gets--in--my--way. Now, you're going to be in need of a lesson, little girl.

No one who wants to live, refuses Mr. Sumisu and escapes from him like you did

a few days ago. And siding with these...low-class social retards, isn't the

best thing that you want on your record, now is it? I could get you expelled

from the Guild on a baseless charge of something that is beyond your

probation. And that fat moron Hardy, his hands are tied. He can do nothing

without causing the complete and total collapse of the Federation." Sumisu

draws a weird pistol.

"I wouldn't try anything funny, either. Either of you is exactly as

vulnerable as the other against this gun. It's a special gun. It's got a

poison inside it's bullets that can kill anything in seconds...even dragons."

Samus lunges at Sumisu and bowls him over, grabbing his gun arm by the wrist.

"Dammit, you had better not have done anything to Ridley!"

"Hm? Oh, that one red dragon. We can't kill him. He's being protected by

some giant brain, light-years across the galaxy. He's not anywhere near here

right now though, so...you don't have to worry. He's not dead." Samus shakes

her head.

"And neither will be me or Katri." Samus punches Sumisu with her free arm

and knocks him out cold. "C'mon, let's go."

Houston walks down the hallway to his apartment and sees Samus rushing toward

him.

"Uh, Samus, where are you going?" Samus grabs his sleeve and tries to pull

him.

"We got no time! You might want to look into following me until things cool

off around your place." Houston just goes 'wha' as Katri drags him and Samus

away from the apartments to Houston's black T-Bird car. A click and whine

noise behind them said only one thing. Schneider.

"Hello, Samus. Thanks for luring out the Author Dragon for me."

-----------------------------------

(So awesome. Now it's to the next part of this story, the main piece that

pulls both Samus and Houston together in one fan-fic, as their mission to

stop Sumisu from finding Nibiru continues, and Samus nearly finds out the

little thing about Houston being her brother.

While on the note of mentioning the final piece to this now three-part

fan-fic, I'd like to say that Schneider is more the center of the next

one. Instead of covering more of Samus or Houston, I'm going to cover

more of him, and watch as his inner villian plays out.)