Author's Note: Well, I decided to get this done before any reviews were out, so consider yourselves privileged :P
Anyway, as before, I own this story (and the Stomper you will see in this chapter, that was my own idea too), but everything else belongs to the Nintendo men. Reviews are appreciated, as always.
Here goes…
Chapter 2 – Planetside
Samus jerked awake as she felt the familiar pull of natural gravity take hold.
She had been asleep for most of the trip, in an attempt to regain her full strength. She felt rested, but still uneasy about the mission ahead. There was still too much she didn't know about the situation.
With her worries in mind, she climbed into her gravity suit. She felt the familiar welcoming tingle of the upgraded power suit starting up, fusing to her body and integrating with her nervous system.
"Equipment check … Plasma … OK, Ice … OK, Wide … OK, Wave … OK, Charge …OK, Phazon Beam … Damaged, Gravity Suit … OK, Varia Suit… OK, Phazon Suit … Damaged Missiles…" read the suits' visor display.
The phazon components that had been damaged by Samus' near death experience with Metroid Prime, followed by the X parasites were lost forever it seemed, as there was no obvious way to repair them, considering she had only acquired them through a freak accident. She sighed… why was it she could never hang on to her most valuable suit components? First she had lost mother brain's hyper beam, and then the phazon beam and suit. Her current setup was hardly equivalent to what she had wielded in the past.
She HAD tried to repair the suit components herself using a small quantity of phazon from Tallon IV, but gave up after nearly shattering her arm when she accidentally modified the morph ball system. She had enough to worry about in her life without tempting fate by tampering with the only thing that kept her alive on the majority of her missions.
The light which had bathed the interior of the craft changed from a harsh yellow to a gentle grey… The ship had obviously entered the planet's atmosphere.
A tiny patter began to echo throughout the ship, rapid yet quiet. Samus groaned slightly. Why was it always raining when she first visited a new planet?
The ship settled down in a clearing in an area of dense vegetation, appearing like some absurd kind of giant blue fruit amongst the towering trees. Samus stood on the pressure plate that activated the exit teleporter on the craft, and immediately she knew she was in trouble.
One foot was on a patch of waterlogged ground, the other up to the knee in a dull green slime, reeking with foetor and decay. Adam had landed the ship in the middle of a swamp!
With a huge effort, Samus pulled her sunken leg free and placed it on the small patch of soggy turf on which her other leg already rested. She paused for a moment, before a thought hit her like a punch to the chest. Samus looked up, only to confirm the fears that had shook her seconds before. The ship was sinking!
Reacting quick and thinking quicker, Samus sprinted along the length of the landmass before hurling herself forwards onto the bank of the swamp, before turning and watching in horror and dismay as the ship sank below the surface of the swamp.
"Damnit! So I'm stuck on a miserable planet under attack by god knows what, and no escape route in case things get too much to handle… things just keep getting better and better…" Samus said to herself.
Right, first things first. Samus bent her knees as much as she could, and then jumped upwards with all her might, taking advantage of the space jump feature that she had acquired aboard B.S.L to get herself above the trees. During her time in the air, she rotated around for a good look of the surrounding area. Sure enough, several grey shapes loomed in the distance, many with plumes of dark smoke rising from them, and a dull shine reflecting off the buildings from what little sunlight could get through the clouds and smoke. The suit informed her that the buildings she had seen lie to the West, so she immediately set off in that direction at a brisk walking pace.
It had been a fairly uneventful trek, the fairly flat landscape proving little effort to navigate through. She stopped by a small river to catch her breath. Taking the risk of removing her helmet, she plunged her head into the murky waters, and drew it out again just as quickly, her hair whipping back and showering the area with tiny droplets. It was then that she felt it.
A tremor shook the ground, causing Samus to stumble off balance and nearly plunge face first into the river. Samus sprinted the short distance to where her helmet lay, and jammed it onto her head with a force that nearly crushed her neck. She looked around frantically, trying to discern from where the tremor had originated from. That's when she saw it.
A gigantic bipedal behemoth lumbered through the clearing, felling trees as it came. It was around 25 foot tall, and a grey organic sheen covered its skin. It's head seemed oddly large for its body. The arms of the beast were long and thick, apparently for grabbing prey. The creature's legs bulged with muscle, and Samus thought the creature could probably reach a quite considerable speed when it wanted to. Strangely, it was apparently devoid of weaponry except for two needle-like claws on the end of each of the largest appendages of its 3-fingered hands. The claws would be useless for slashing, and appeared much to thin to inflict any serious piercing damage. Samus guessed they were for injecting some kind of poison, which was unusual, as creatures of such a size usually used brute force to rend apart their prey.
Its breath caused moisture clouds to form in the chilly air which Samus had previously been unaware of due to the suit's heating systems. The six eyes of the creature were not focused on Samus, but instead were scanning the trees immediately to it's left and right.
The creature apparently spotted something, as it tensed for a moment, before forcing a tree aside with a swipe of its powerful arms, and seizing a much smaller, wolf-like creature that screeched and struggled madly in the vice-like grip of it's attacker. It was not long however, before the behemoth drove it's needle claws into the flesh of the prey, causing it to go limp within seconds, its eyes wildly rotating and flinching, as if the eyeballs themselves were trying to break free of their sockets and flee. Samus' suit revealed that there were still strong vital signs emanating from the wolf-like creature, indicating that it was not dead, but apparently paralysed. The larger creature opened its mouth, revealing… square, rounded teeth? The creature was obviously a predator, so why were it's teeth like that of a herbivore? Samus soon discovered why. The large creature grasped the smaller prey with it's teeth, with a firm yet surprisingly delicate hold. The creature then threw it's head back, swallowing the unfortunate prey whole. The creature stood still for a moment, before settling down into an apparent sleep.
Samus took this opportunity to scan the beast. The suit gave out information in the form of diagrams and a dialog towards the bottom of her visor.
"Stomper – Predatory creature of considerable size, common throughout MU725 and its neighbouring planets. The Stomper is heavily armoured, and capable of deflecting most forms of attack with no noticeable ill effects. The Stomper hunts by chasing down it's prey with considerable speed, before injecting a potent neurotoxin using it's needle-like claws. The neurotoxin causes permanent paralysis in all but the most resilient creatures, but the prey remains conscious. The Stomper then swallows it's prey whole using it's gigantic mouth and throat, and takes the prey into it's bizarre digestive system. Instead of digesting the biological material of the prey using digestive juices, the prey is allowed to lie untouched in the Stomper's stomach. The walls of the Stomper's stomach contain a unique cell culture that can create energy using the brainwaves of distressed creatures within the stomach. The Stomper generates nutrition using the conscious and distressed prey, and once the prey dies it is promptly ejected from the body. The digestion process is amazingly efficient, meaning that a Stomper can survive for weeks on around 20Kg of prey. All in all, a unique and powerful predator, certainly not to be taken lightly."
Samus frowned upon reading this. She was in more trouble than she thought. Taking care to tread quietly, she tried to walk silently past the sleeping Stomper. Samus was a relative stranger to stealth, having only had to use it on her first excursion to Zebes, and more recently, in the proximity of the SA-X.
She was almost past the sleeping beast when she caught a foot on a root protruding from the soil, and stumbled to the ground.
Samus turned quickly, just in time to see the monstrous eyes of the Stomper snap open as the living tank scrambled to it's feet. Samus didn't think, she just acted. Rolling backwards moments before a huge arm swiped through the space where she had just lay. Samus got to her feet and fired a few beam shots at the creature's face, which bounced off in a strange fashion, bringing down trees and setting bushes alight around them. Samus let off a super missile in it's direction, which exploded against it's hide, but without causing any wounds. Samus cursed and jumped backwards just as an arm lunged for where she was.
There was only one thing for it – it was time to run.
Samus turned and sprinted as fast as she could, occasionally looking behind to see how far the Stomper was behind her. Progress through the thick vegetation was troublesome for her, while the Stomper pushed aside trees and bushes with the greatest of ease. No matter how hard she tried, every time she looked back the Stomper was a little closer to her. She threw herself to the floor just as a claw tore through the air above her, making a noise like tearing paper. The Stomper stopped and rounded on her surprisingly quickly, and brought it's foot down with crushing force on her before she could react.
Ah, so THIS was why they called it the Stomper. Samus grunted with pain as the foot slammed into her at great speed. She was glad that the suit was designed to resist such punishment, or else every bone in her body would surely be shattered by now. But, sure enough, her visor display noted a sizeable amount of energy was depleted from the suit.
The creature bent down towards Samus, bringing it's deadly claws ever closer to her. Samus could see that the razor sharp tips would easily penetrate even the strong plating of the Power Suit and find her flesh beneath.
So, this was how she would die… deep in the stomach of a giant beast, completely unable to move, while the creature drew energy out of her last thoughts… waiting in agony until her suit finally gave up and let her die… No! She wouldn't let it end like this! She struggled as hard as she could, but could not move for the Stomper's incredible weight and strength. But then, an idea struck her.
Taking full advantage of the arch in the creature's foot, she curled herself into morph ball mode. Sure enough, the creature lifted it's foot in surprise, wondering where it's quarry had gone. Samus used the opportunity to it's full extent. She rolled out and unfurled straight into a dead sprint, running for a gap in the trees, running faster and faster and faster until the thing she had prayed for happened. The suit's speed boosters kicked in, accelerating her to amazing speeds, sending her smashing straight through everything in her way. She didn't stop running until she was at the towering gates to the colony she had spied earlier. She had no intention of ever meeting a Stomper again.
Author's Note: Whew! Certainly the most fun I've had writing to date :) Got plenty of free time at the moment, so if I am so motivated, chapter 3 may not be long away. Depends on whether I get any praise for my work.
Here goes…
Chapter 2 – Planetside
Samus jerked awake as she felt the familiar pull of natural gravity take hold.
She had been asleep for most of the trip, in an attempt to regain her full strength. She felt rested, but still uneasy about the mission ahead. There was still too much she didn't know about the situation.
With her worries in mind, she climbed into her gravity suit. She felt the familiar welcoming tingle of the upgraded power suit starting up, fusing to her body and integrating with her nervous system.
"Equipment check … Plasma … OK, Ice … OK, Wide … OK, Wave … OK, Charge …OK, Phazon Beam … Damaged, Gravity Suit … OK, Varia Suit… OK, Phazon Suit … Damaged Missiles…" read the suits' visor display.
The phazon components that had been damaged by Samus' near death experience with Metroid Prime, followed by the X parasites were lost forever it seemed, as there was no obvious way to repair them, considering she had only acquired them through a freak accident. She sighed… why was it she could never hang on to her most valuable suit components? First she had lost mother brain's hyper beam, and then the phazon beam and suit. Her current setup was hardly equivalent to what she had wielded in the past.
She HAD tried to repair the suit components herself using a small quantity of phazon from Tallon IV, but gave up after nearly shattering her arm when she accidentally modified the morph ball system. She had enough to worry about in her life without tempting fate by tampering with the only thing that kept her alive on the majority of her missions.
The light which had bathed the interior of the craft changed from a harsh yellow to a gentle grey… The ship had obviously entered the planet's atmosphere.
A tiny patter began to echo throughout the ship, rapid yet quiet. Samus groaned slightly. Why was it always raining when she first visited a new planet?
The ship settled down in a clearing in an area of dense vegetation, appearing like some absurd kind of giant blue fruit amongst the towering trees. Samus stood on the pressure plate that activated the exit teleporter on the craft, and immediately she knew she was in trouble.
One foot was on a patch of waterlogged ground, the other up to the knee in a dull green slime, reeking with foetor and decay. Adam had landed the ship in the middle of a swamp!
With a huge effort, Samus pulled her sunken leg free and placed it on the small patch of soggy turf on which her other leg already rested. She paused for a moment, before a thought hit her like a punch to the chest. Samus looked up, only to confirm the fears that had shook her seconds before. The ship was sinking!
Reacting quick and thinking quicker, Samus sprinted along the length of the landmass before hurling herself forwards onto the bank of the swamp, before turning and watching in horror and dismay as the ship sank below the surface of the swamp.
"Damnit! So I'm stuck on a miserable planet under attack by god knows what, and no escape route in case things get too much to handle… things just keep getting better and better…" Samus said to herself.
Right, first things first. Samus bent her knees as much as she could, and then jumped upwards with all her might, taking advantage of the space jump feature that she had acquired aboard B.S.L to get herself above the trees. During her time in the air, she rotated around for a good look of the surrounding area. Sure enough, several grey shapes loomed in the distance, many with plumes of dark smoke rising from them, and a dull shine reflecting off the buildings from what little sunlight could get through the clouds and smoke. The suit informed her that the buildings she had seen lie to the West, so she immediately set off in that direction at a brisk walking pace.
It had been a fairly uneventful trek, the fairly flat landscape proving little effort to navigate through. She stopped by a small river to catch her breath. Taking the risk of removing her helmet, she plunged her head into the murky waters, and drew it out again just as quickly, her hair whipping back and showering the area with tiny droplets. It was then that she felt it.
A tremor shook the ground, causing Samus to stumble off balance and nearly plunge face first into the river. Samus sprinted the short distance to where her helmet lay, and jammed it onto her head with a force that nearly crushed her neck. She looked around frantically, trying to discern from where the tremor had originated from. That's when she saw it.
A gigantic bipedal behemoth lumbered through the clearing, felling trees as it came. It was around 25 foot tall, and a grey organic sheen covered its skin. It's head seemed oddly large for its body. The arms of the beast were long and thick, apparently for grabbing prey. The creature's legs bulged with muscle, and Samus thought the creature could probably reach a quite considerable speed when it wanted to. Strangely, it was apparently devoid of weaponry except for two needle-like claws on the end of each of the largest appendages of its 3-fingered hands. The claws would be useless for slashing, and appeared much to thin to inflict any serious piercing damage. Samus guessed they were for injecting some kind of poison, which was unusual, as creatures of such a size usually used brute force to rend apart their prey.
Its breath caused moisture clouds to form in the chilly air which Samus had previously been unaware of due to the suit's heating systems. The six eyes of the creature were not focused on Samus, but instead were scanning the trees immediately to it's left and right.
The creature apparently spotted something, as it tensed for a moment, before forcing a tree aside with a swipe of its powerful arms, and seizing a much smaller, wolf-like creature that screeched and struggled madly in the vice-like grip of it's attacker. It was not long however, before the behemoth drove it's needle claws into the flesh of the prey, causing it to go limp within seconds, its eyes wildly rotating and flinching, as if the eyeballs themselves were trying to break free of their sockets and flee. Samus' suit revealed that there were still strong vital signs emanating from the wolf-like creature, indicating that it was not dead, but apparently paralysed. The larger creature opened its mouth, revealing… square, rounded teeth? The creature was obviously a predator, so why were it's teeth like that of a herbivore? Samus soon discovered why. The large creature grasped the smaller prey with it's teeth, with a firm yet surprisingly delicate hold. The creature then threw it's head back, swallowing the unfortunate prey whole. The creature stood still for a moment, before settling down into an apparent sleep.
Samus took this opportunity to scan the beast. The suit gave out information in the form of diagrams and a dialog towards the bottom of her visor.
"Stomper – Predatory creature of considerable size, common throughout MU725 and its neighbouring planets. The Stomper is heavily armoured, and capable of deflecting most forms of attack with no noticeable ill effects. The Stomper hunts by chasing down it's prey with considerable speed, before injecting a potent neurotoxin using it's needle-like claws. The neurotoxin causes permanent paralysis in all but the most resilient creatures, but the prey remains conscious. The Stomper then swallows it's prey whole using it's gigantic mouth and throat, and takes the prey into it's bizarre digestive system. Instead of digesting the biological material of the prey using digestive juices, the prey is allowed to lie untouched in the Stomper's stomach. The walls of the Stomper's stomach contain a unique cell culture that can create energy using the brainwaves of distressed creatures within the stomach. The Stomper generates nutrition using the conscious and distressed prey, and once the prey dies it is promptly ejected from the body. The digestion process is amazingly efficient, meaning that a Stomper can survive for weeks on around 20Kg of prey. All in all, a unique and powerful predator, certainly not to be taken lightly."
Samus frowned upon reading this. She was in more trouble than she thought. Taking care to tread quietly, she tried to walk silently past the sleeping Stomper. Samus was a relative stranger to stealth, having only had to use it on her first excursion to Zebes, and more recently, in the proximity of the SA-X.
She was almost past the sleeping beast when she caught a foot on a root protruding from the soil, and stumbled to the ground.
Samus turned quickly, just in time to see the monstrous eyes of the Stomper snap open as the living tank scrambled to it's feet. Samus didn't think, she just acted. Rolling backwards moments before a huge arm swiped through the space where she had just lay. Samus got to her feet and fired a few beam shots at the creature's face, which bounced off in a strange fashion, bringing down trees and setting bushes alight around them. Samus let off a super missile in it's direction, which exploded against it's hide, but without causing any wounds. Samus cursed and jumped backwards just as an arm lunged for where she was.
There was only one thing for it – it was time to run.
Samus turned and sprinted as fast as she could, occasionally looking behind to see how far the Stomper was behind her. Progress through the thick vegetation was troublesome for her, while the Stomper pushed aside trees and bushes with the greatest of ease. No matter how hard she tried, every time she looked back the Stomper was a little closer to her. She threw herself to the floor just as a claw tore through the air above her, making a noise like tearing paper. The Stomper stopped and rounded on her surprisingly quickly, and brought it's foot down with crushing force on her before she could react.
Ah, so THIS was why they called it the Stomper. Samus grunted with pain as the foot slammed into her at great speed. She was glad that the suit was designed to resist such punishment, or else every bone in her body would surely be shattered by now. But, sure enough, her visor display noted a sizeable amount of energy was depleted from the suit.
The creature bent down towards Samus, bringing it's deadly claws ever closer to her. Samus could see that the razor sharp tips would easily penetrate even the strong plating of the Power Suit and find her flesh beneath.
So, this was how she would die… deep in the stomach of a giant beast, completely unable to move, while the creature drew energy out of her last thoughts… waiting in agony until her suit finally gave up and let her die… No! She wouldn't let it end like this! She struggled as hard as she could, but could not move for the Stomper's incredible weight and strength. But then, an idea struck her.
Taking full advantage of the arch in the creature's foot, she curled herself into morph ball mode. Sure enough, the creature lifted it's foot in surprise, wondering where it's quarry had gone. Samus used the opportunity to it's full extent. She rolled out and unfurled straight into a dead sprint, running for a gap in the trees, running faster and faster and faster until the thing she had prayed for happened. The suit's speed boosters kicked in, accelerating her to amazing speeds, sending her smashing straight through everything in her way. She didn't stop running until she was at the towering gates to the colony she had spied earlier. She had no intention of ever meeting a Stomper again.
Author's Note: Whew! Certainly the most fun I've had writing to date :) Got plenty of free time at the moment, so if I am so motivated, chapter 3 may not be long away. Depends on whether I get any praise for my work.