Next Mission
(The Orange World)
Part One

"Aran? Half the things I've heard about her would make a Zamog's blood freeze. Believe me; it may not look like it, but she is definitely not someone you'd wanna meet in a back alley."

—Chippery Joe, Bartender of The Sleazy Weasel, on Planet Kyrgystan

Bowser stomped out of the portal warily, wondering what lay in wait for him here. One thing was immediately certain; it was dark. Very dark.

Bowser smiled. He liked the dark. He liked it because he'd been gifted at birth with very acute night-vision, which meant he could see perfectly fine at times when his enemies might as well be blind.

He looked around. Metal walls, ceiling, and floor. How original, he thought sarcastically. Metal cables wrapped in rubber dully gleamed through the many cracks in these walls. The floor was torn up and uneven, with sharp pieces jutting out haphazardly. A row of computers stood silent at one side. At the other, was a door. An odd door. Bowser blinked at it. It was shaped like a half-circle force field, perfectly round on the side facing him. A control panel was set into the wall next to it.

A distant rumble vibrated the floor. Bowser gave a snort of smoke. What had that been? An explosion of some sort?

His answer walked through the forcefield a second later, and he froze in surprise.

Red armor, massive shoulders, two pipes leading up beneath an odd-shaped helmet. A glowing green visor, spikes on the knees, and the most distinctive feature of all, a left arm that had been replaced with some sort of gun. Someone within the unit seemed to sigh.

"God, not another one. How many of these things are around here, anyway?"

Bowser blinked. "Huh?"

The stranger pointed its gun-arm at him, and light began to build within it. Bowser mentally cursed and threw himself to the side as a missive energy ball blazed past his former position, charring the floor and walls.

The stranger growled. "Damn, it's fast…"

Bowser stood up and waved his claws in the air. "Hey, hey! What's the big idea?!" He threw a short wave of flame-breath at the armored person, meant to ward them off more than anything else. "Stop shooting at me, dammit!"

The person leaped backwards and spoke in surprise. "Whaaat? It talks?!"

"Well, of course I can talk! Who do you think I am?!"

"Another random monster come to make my life miserable."

"Well, you're wrong. I'm just lost, that's all. Where am I?" If Bowser looked hard enough, he could see through the helmet's green visor to find the human inside the suit blinking in confusion.

"This is extremely unusual," The stranger muttered. Something clicked in Bowser's mind, and it occurred to him that this person must be female, judging by her voice. She looked hard at him. "First I find a monster that looks like it came out of an M. C. Escher sketch, then I discover it talks, and now it wants to be all buddy-buddy with me."

Bowser shrugged. The armored human eyed him warily. "Are you a Space Pirate?"

Bowser cracked a grin, as if he'd just been told a humorous joke. Then he began to laugh. "Space Pirate? Sweet talking fungi, that is a REALLY corny name! What is it?"

"Guess not." The stranger murmured. She continued to watch him with suspicion. "You don't look very friendly, you know." She pointed out, indicating the many spike bracelets adorning him. The Koopa King snorted.

"Neither do you, with that gun of yours."

The human arched an eyebrow. "Touchè. All right, so how'd you get here then?"

"That's…a long story."

"And I don't have enough time to listen to long stories." The human agreed. Another slight vibration shook the area, and she cursed. "Dammit. Time to go!"

"Wha? Hey, wait a minute!" Bowser called out as the stranger raced past him to the other end of the room. "Where are you going?"

"Sorry, can't stick around to chat! I suggest you get moving too, though!" She called out before vanishing through another force-field door.

Another, more violent rumble caused pieces of loose metal paneling to fall from the ceiling. Bowser looked around nervously. Suddenly, he had to agree with the strange armored woman: strategic retreat DID seem like an awfully good idea.

He fled, hitting the force field the woman had gone through with a fist to open it. To his surprise, she was waiting for him on the other side.

"Huh." She remarked while arching both eyebrows, clearly impressed. "You show signs of self-preservation, too. Now I KNOW you're not like anything I've ever met." Somehow, despite the fact that her face was obstructed by the helmet, Bowser could tell she was grinning. "I know a bunch of guys that would just love to study you."

Bowser blinked, and the human elaborated. "By 'study', I of course mean 'put you on a lab table and poke and prod you with sharp pointy instruments until you reveal what, exactly, you are'."

Bowser looked apprehensive. "I think I'll pass, thanks."

"Yeah, my sentiments exactly. But they'd never forgive me if I just left you here alone to wander off and get killed. I'll need to radio them to make sure, but I'm pretty certain they'd want me to take you back to HQ after the mission."

The massive Koopa's curiosity sparked. "What mission?"

"Oh nothing big." The armored human replied while absently charging up her gun-arm. "Just the task of hunting down all the evil mutant monsters on this station and killing them off, that's all." She smiled at Bowser's gaping look. "My name's Samus Aran, by the way. I'd ask if you've heard of me, but you probably haven't."

"You're right about that. I am Bowser, also known as the King of the Koopa Clan."

Samus looked shocked. "Clan? There's MORE of you?"

"Well, not like me. I'm kinda, um, big for my species. But I have a family and many subordinates similar to me under my rule, yes."

Samus tensed as another familiar tremor passed through the room. "Uh-oh." She hissed. "We've stayed here too long." She grabbed Bowser's arm with her non-gun left arm. "We need to get moving! Come on!"

Bowser blinked again. It seemed, he realized after a moment of reflection, that he'd been doing that a lot since he'd arrived at...wherever he was. This prompted another question from him as he followed Samus through several hallways and force-fields. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Ssh!" She hushed him, making frantic motions for him to lower his voice. He did so, and repeated his question.

"Where are we?"

Samus flattened herself against a wall, and ever-so-slowly peeked around a corner. After apparently making sure it was all clear, she sighed and answered quietly.

"An orbital space station around planet SRX-388. It's the third one that's been built, in fact."

Bowser was almost afraid to ask his next question: "What happened to the first two?"

Samus grimaced, but didn't reply. Motioning for him to follow, she rounded the bend and opened another force-field. This one led to a small room with a human-sized tubular device standing vertically in its middle. One half of the tube had been retracted, allowing someone to place themselves inside the half-pipe.

Samus seemed to brighten up upon seeing the device. They entered the room, and she quickly accessed the control panel on the room's inside wall next to the force-field they'd come through. As a pneumatic hiss indicated the field had sealed itself shut, she visibly relaxed. "Oh thank God." She breathed, pointing at the tubular device. "We've found a Recharge Pod."

"A what?" Bowser asked.

"Samus gestured at her suit. "Hey, this thing doesn't run on air, you know. It needs to be recharged every once in a while, like right now."

"So you're just gonna take it off and put it in that thing?"

Samus rolled her eyes at him. "Nah, Recharge Pods were designed to work with space suits while the human's still inside. It'll just recharge my own energy along with the suit. Won't take but a minute."

Bowser gave another classic Blink of Confusion. "Um…?"

"Here, I'll demonstrate." Samus walked up to the half-tube's opening, turned so her back was facing the curved inside of the tube, and stepped backwards inside it. She pressed a few buttons on her gun arm, leaned back, and after giving Bowser a quick wink, closed her eyes.

A deep humming filled the air as the lights of the Pod slowly came on one-by-one. Samus' suit glowed with a yellow, electric light as energy from the machine filled the red armor's batteries. Thirty seconds later, the light show stopped and Samus opened her eyes. She stepped out of the tube, looking more alert and energetic than before. "There." She muttered. "Ready to go. It beats sleeping for eight hours, let me tell you."

Bowser was awed. "I have got to get one of those."

Samus frowned. "Um, I don't think you're quite the size for it." Indeed, the Koopa King towered over her by nearly four feet and, she estimated, at least 300 pounds.

Bowser looked at the Pod, which was miniscule by comparison. He began to feel sheepish. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"We're safe here, for now." Samus commented, while checking something on her gun-arm. "It'll take those monsters a long time to find us here." She finished whatever it was she had been doing, and gave Bowser a pointed look. "So, would you mind explaining where you came from, how the hell you ended up here of all places, and why?"

"I'm telling you, it really is a long story." That statement was usually enough to get one of his Koopas to stop asking about the subject.

Unfortunately, Samus was a bit more insistent than he was used to. "And I'm telling you, I really don't care." She shot back, folding her arms and tapping one foot. "C'mon, spill."

"Fine. But you've been warned."

"Gah! Enough already! Have mercy!" Samus groaned nearly an hour later. "My brain's gonna explode if you say any more!"

"I did warn you."

"Oh, shut up." She snapped. A sudden beeping emerged from her helmet, startling them both. "What the—? An incoming transmission?" Samus blinked. "I thought we were the only sentient beings left on this station…"

"Someone's calling you?" Bowser guessed, his suspicions confirmed when she gave him a brief nod.

There was silence for several moments. Bowser squinted his eyes, trying to make out what Samus' face looked like behind her visor. If he looked hard enough, he could almost see—

"We have to get out of here. Now." Samus uttered, following up the declaration with a sudden oath. She ran over to the door and opened it, casting a hasty look outside before turning back to Bowser and beckoning him forward. "Come on!"

"What's the rush?" The Koopa King asked as they fled full-tilt through the dull metal hallways.

"That was HQ." Samus reported through clenched teeth. "Apparently they decided it wasn't worth it to keep this station intact after all. They're gonna blow it up, T-minus five minutes."

"WHAT?" Bowser gasped, stumbling and almost falling on his face before he recovered. "When did this happen?!"

"They decided to do it about ten minutes ago. Jerks never told me about the possibility that they'd do something like this, I hadn't counted on them being that stupid."

"What do you mean?" Bowser demanded. They paused to open another door, and Samus turned to look at him.

"The only weapons capable of doing effective damage to a station of this size are nuclear warheads." The door opened, and she continued talking as they dove through it, casting wary looks about themselves. "The effects of the blast will be dampened in outer space, but nonetheless we will need to be at least 7 miles away from ground zero when the bomb goes off in order to survive its accompanying radiation."

Bowser had no idea what a 'nuclear warhead' was, but he guessed it was not good. "Can we make it?"

"Maybe." They found an open elevator and entered it, Bowser silently grateful that it was large enough to fit his massive bulk. Samus hit the button to go down.

Nothing happened.

The red-armored bounty hunter frowned, pushing the button again. No response. "Dammit," She hissed. "Come on, we'll use the ladders."