Metroid: The Fanfiction
by jammin-2099
AKA
Zero the Dimensional Traveler
Well, here we go, another chapter of Metroid. For all you Die-hard Dimensional Travels fans out there, I am working on getting the next chapter out. However please be patient as my inspiration for that story has fled for the moment. It is NOT dead. Not by a long shot.
As before, All flames will be handled by X and Zero. Would ya like to learn about using a Sabre like Zero? Then Flame me and Find out. The HARD way...
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Chapter Two:
On Station
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I was only a few light years away from the station when I received the Distress call.
The Station was under attack!
I immediately reversed course and headed back to the station with as much speed as my tiny ship could handle.
Think "you" are a good pilot? Try dodging orbiting asteroids while moving at about three quarters lightspeed. I was flying like a pilot possessed. My only thought being that I was the only one in range that would receive the distress call for at least the next two days, and then it would be too late.
I arrived only a few moments after, coming into range of the conventional communications array. It was strange as I approached, because I was hailing the station, and it's beacon was responding, but I wasn't able to contact the research team. It was then I noticed the running lights that normally ring the station weren't operational.
That was my first warning.
I took my ship in and docked it manually, then stood from my crash chair and stepped over to my gravi-lift. Taking a moment to ensure that my helmet was on and sealed properly, I hit the activation control, and straightened as the artificial gravity in the lift began to lower me through the docking tube and into the first airlock.
As I descended into the darkened station I ran a scan of the station interior. As I had thought from the lights being down, and several cracked window panels I had seen on my approach, the station had blown its main air supply, and was almost airless. I continued checking the other systems through my ships connection to the main computers, discovering that gravity was offline as well.
I was about halfway down the tube when something flew past the outer glass of the airlock tube. I got a glimpse of a slightly barbed tail before it vanished again. My cannon arm came up reflexively, but I pushed it back down.
Not a good idea to try to fire through the tube that is taking you the station, especially with me only halfway through it.
I reached the station safely, and confirmed that the gravity was indeed offline, as I began to float upward again as soon as the Gravi-lift shut down. I activated the magnetic clamps on my boots and listened as my boots made a soft 'Ka-thunk Ka-thunk' as they snapped down to the floor. After a moments disorientation, I found my balance and started my slow trek across the airlock towards the inner door.
As I reached the door, I noticed a panel nearby marked Gravity Control. I reached forward to hit the switch, but something made me stop. I twisted my self around as best I could and raised my cannon to the darkness, listening for the stray sound that had alerted me. The docking bay was as silent as death as I watched carefully for a threat.
After a moment, I slowly turned back to the control panel, and pressed in the activator for the gravity control. A slow hum broke out from deep within the station, and a moment later, I felt my weight slowly return to me. Soon, I had the inner door open, and I proceeded into the main corridor of the station.
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The hall was deathly quiet as I slowly made my way towards the control center of the station. Practically every computer station I saw along the way had some kind of damage to it, and long claw marks were gouged in the walls in several staggered places down the hallway. When I reached the security door to the main lab, I confirmed my suspicions about the claw marks. Something large had come through here, and it had ripped the titanium-reinforced door to shreds.
As my danger senses began screaming at me that something was seriously wrong, I stepped through the doorway, into the main laboratory. It was dark in the room, the power to the lights either shut off or cut. Reaching over to the wall with my "good" arm, I found a light switch, and flipped it. Nope, power to the labs had been cut, that was a sign I didn't need right then. Switching to infrared, I began looking over the lab. Everything in this room was damaged, and there were those familiar claw marks everywhere. I was examining a rather large claw mark and trying to figure out why it was so familiar, when something wet squelched under my foot.
My first thought as I lit a flare to see what I had stepped on was, 'These labs are cleansuit only, why would there be something...like...this...' My thoughts slowly faded out as I got my first look at what it was.
It was a human arm.
I quickly located the rest of the scientist a few metres away, lying in a pool of his own blood. The other scientists were scattered about the room, each one having been torn to bloody pieces by their unknown aggressor. As I took all this in, I noticed something else, the experiment tube where the metroid capsule had been stored had been shattered, the light of my flare playing off the glittering shards scattered across the floor, and the metroid capsule itself was missing completely.
This was not good.
I left the fallen scientists where they lay, saying a solemn Chozo prayer to the deceased as I left them behind. The cleanup team from the USMC Emergency Services would be there as soon as they received the distress call. I had bigger problems to deal with.
Switching back to normal scan mode, I left from the other side of the Lab, heading into the hallway to the main control room for the Station. The doors on this side were torn open just as the other set had been, but the gouges in the walls showed bloodstains on them now as they crawled in twisted patterns down the hallway. As I came to the large security door at the end I noticed immediately that it was strangely unharmed, with only a small trail of the spilled blood stains going under it.
My danger sense peaked as I approached the door, something was not right. I reached forward and hit the activation control, ignoring my mental warnings for the moment, and watched as the door opened. There in the center of the room, highlighted by a spotlight from above, sat the metroid hatchling in it's containment unit. It squealed pitifully as it saw me enter the room, knowing that I had come looking for it. After taking a few steps towards the small creature, I stopped as I heard the sound of a heavy claw landing on the deck of the station. The floor rumbled as I heard more of the large footsteps, and then I caught sight of what it was.
I could only watch in shocked surprise as a draconic form stomped forth out of the shadows. He screeched at me in a shrill, ear-splitting scream, as he reached down and lifted the metroid in it's container.
"Ridley..." I growled out as he hefted the container, and stared down his blackened beak at me.
"Ah, hello there 'Hunter'..." Ridley's gravelly voice rumbled out. "It's beennn such a lonnng time sinsssss we last tannngled..." He continued, his reptile nature slurring his words.
"I remember you Ridley, I left you burning alive in that Lava pit you call a home on Zebes, and the last time I saw you, you were a corpse hanging from a pirate research stations medical unit."
"Ah, yesss.....The piratesss were mossst helpful in ressstoring me. I feel better thannn ever, come to thinnnk of it. I mussst remember to thannnk them when I returnnn. I'll jussst be taking thisss wonderful little sssspessssimen here with me. I think it will do nicccely for an appropriate 'thank you' gift, don't you?
"Over my dead and rotting body, reptile..." I stated coldly as I raised my arm cannon.
"Oh, how I would love to ssstay and Have thisss chat with you Hunter," he said as he reached over to a panel in the wall, and tapped a quick sequence in on the keys there, "But I do have a sssschedule to keep you know." He hissed out as alarms began blaring throughout the station.
--Self Destruct Activated--
--Countdown at 3:00:00 and counting...--
"Casnimet!" I swore as Ridley leapt to the air and punched his way out through the bulkhead. Looking out the Hole he tore as the last remaining air escaped into space, I saw him leaving the asteroid field the station was hidden in. Taking a look over at the panel again, I swore again, Seeing the Timer was down half a minute already. I turned and dashed for the exit, hoping I could get back to my ship on time.
--Countdown at 2:15:23--
Dodging my way between the jets of superheated plasma leaking out of various ruptures in the deck, I raced for the exit, blasting the doors open as I ran for the docking bay.
--Countdown at 1:43:16--
As I approached the door to the hangar, I felt the stations gravity begin to fluctuate. Suddenly the door to the Hangar was the floor and I was falling towards it. 'Only one chance at this...' I thought as I leveled my cannon at the doors.
--Countdown at 0:36:52--
I allowed myself to fall farther towards the door, wincing a bit as a jet caught me in the shoulder and I felt the heat searing the outside of my suit. I held it a moment longer, then fired as I came within a few feet of the door. As I had guessed, the backblast of the explosion against the doors slowed my fall a bit, and as I fell past the Gravi-lift platform, I grabbed onto it with one hand. Pulling myself up against the gravity plate, I hit my ship control in my gauntlet for the gravi-lift, and soon I was pulled into my ship, with the airlock snapping shut behind me.
--Countdown at 0:15:00--
I was in my pilot seat in an instant.
--0:13:00--
I hit the controls for the plasma jets and blasted the docking bay hatch open.
--0:09:37--
My ship swung about and rocketed towards the opening in the doors, and I rerouted as much power as I could to the engines.
--5--
My lasers widened the hole slightly as I approached ever closer.
--4--
I pulled the ship vertical to slip through the opening more easily.
--3--
A piece of debris bounced off the hull plating as I shot like a missile through the bay.
--2--
I ignored it as I concentrated everything on getting out.
--1--
I just slipped through the opening barely, and I heard a clang and the sound of tearing metal as a long range communications array was shaved off by the side of the opening.
--0--
I hit my afterburners to outrun the shockwave as the research station behind my ship erupted in an explosive fury. A few moments later the shockwave faded out, and all that was left of the station was scattered bits of debris and hubris. Not even a single asteroid had been spared from the hellish inferno of the explosion.
I sat back in my chair for a moment, breathless. Once again, I had been caught mostly unaware. I couldn't let that happen again. Setting my sensors to lock on to him, I began to follow Ridley's trail, and it led me directly back to Zebes.
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I lost Ridley's signature somewhere over the mountains of Zebes as we entered the atmosphere. So, not having anywhere else to look, I decided to start my search at the ruins of the pirates old base Tourian.
I noticed as I set down that a ship had crash landed nearby, but without a proper place to land nearby it, and the terrain to difficult to traverse with my current equipment, I set my ship down where I had years ago, near the entrance to the Brinstar gravi-lift, and the emergency exit I had used all those years ago when the Tourian base self destructed.
As I stepped off my ship into the Zebesian air, I took in the sites of my landing zone. I had landed within a few metres of where I had been when I first left Zebes so long ago. I could see the corroding metal of the doorway to the Tourian escape tunnel I had used years ago when I first destroyed the Zebes pirate base. To my surprise, the door activated upon my approach, and opened when I hit the activator. I stepped inside the hallway, scanners on full spectrum as I moved down the silent corridor.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," I said as I came to the first vertical shaft. Hopping the railing of the blackened and damaged ramp, I began to leap down the shaft, jumping from rocky platform to platform. "This is insane, where is everything? I should have at least seen a Zoomer or a Ripper by now." As I reached the bottom of the chamber, I found an operational hatch set into the ground. I opened the hatch and looked down to find the escape shaft I had used after killing Mother Brain during my first visit.
"Well, nowhere to go but down..." I said to myself as I jumped through the hatch and leapt down the shaft. I approached the door into Mother Brain's chamber cautiously, reaching from the side to activate the door mechanism. When It had opened fully, I leapt around the frame, only to find...
"By the Maker..."
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End Chapter Two.
Okay, I know. Cliffhangers! Who needs 'em! But seriously, this chapter was getting too long. I needed to cut this chapter some where, and this seemed to be the best place to do it. Next chapter, Samus finds herself reliving old memories. The horrors of Mother Brain are remembered. BTW, I got the Chapter name from one of the better tracks on the Run like Hell soundtrack. Called unsurprisingly, On Station. It has the right feel for Samus exploring the shutdown research station.
Next Chapter:
--I found myself remembering my battles as I walked through the damaged and broken hallways of the old pirate base. I could see myself, running from elite pirate drones, and obliterating them with missiles as I trapped them in a corner and put them out of my misery.--