Chapter 2

New Beginnings

The Knight Sabers stood in front of their respective lockers changing back into their casual clothes while Samus leaned against the wall still dressed in her armor. Mackey, Sylia's mechanically inclined younger brother, had retrieved Priss' damaged hard suit and disappeared to begin repairs to the suit.

Nene, the short younger pink haired Knight Saber, continued to take quick glances toward the armored being before finally speaking up, "You know…you look vaguely familiar", she said, cocking her head to one side.

"You've might have heard my name mentioned here and there", Samus responded flipping her hand in the air, "I'm the bounty hunter that destroyed Mother Brain's legion of Space Pirates and the Metroid threat."

"OOOOOHHHHH", Nene replied, "I remember now!" Priss and Sylia headed into an adjacent room and asked the rest to follow once they were changed. Samus followed the two and stood at the front of the conference type room, a long couch dominated a wall across from a map of Mega-Tokyo, green round-headed pins had been pushed into various locations where, Samus assumed, boomer attacks had taken place. The remaining two Knight Sabers entered the room and plopped down beside Priss on the couch. Sylia leaned against the wall beside the map and crossed her arms.

"I've been expecting you for some time now", Sylia said, a look of shock spread across the groups face.

"What?" They asked in unison.

"Ladies, the Knight Sabers next job is going to be legit and possibly permanent. The Galactic Federation Police have tracked us down and…"

"and what?" Priss asked, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. She had always been the rebellious type, suspicious of anything and everything that had to do with the Government. Her eyebrows furrowed under her long brown hair.

"Well, I had to make a deal. We are now contracted by the GFP. We work for them", Sylia said.

"Like HELL I WILL!" Priss angrily got up and stormed over to Sylia, "I work for you and no one else, not for no damn police or government agency. If I wanted to be run by a bunch of mindless political assholes, I would have joined the ADP! I'm blowing this stack," Priss said, turning to head toward the door.

"Yeah, I already belong to the ADP…" Nene started, only to be cut off by Sylia.

"LISTEN to me", Sylia blurted, "Let me explain before you all go get hot headed and run off." Priss sat back down reluctantly, sulking against the arm of the couch. Sylia explained that a government agency had hired the GFP to track down the Knight Sabers and hire them to help take out a new arising threat. The downside to the ploy was that if the Knight Sabers refused the offer, blackmail. Use everything that they had found about the KS to make the rest of their lives miserable. After much consideration, Sylia told them that she thought it best to go along with the offer instead of risking their lives or reputation. As she put it, "Going against the AD Police is one thing, going against the GFP is another."

Linna, seeming understanding the situation with Nene piped in, "So what all is going to be different? Do we have to move? Are we changing the rules?"

Samus who had been listening to the story Sylia presented got up and began talking to the group. "Nothing is really going to change besides the fact that you will have a new partner…me," she said. "When they first contracted me to do this, I was against gaining new partners, but with the pay they were offering me, I figured why not."

"What's your story anyway?" Priss asked leaning on one arm.

"To keep it short, I'm a bounty hunter contracted to the Galactic Federation Police. I was assigned to destroy Mother Brain and her henchmen of Space Pirates. Mother Brain was attempting to use a newly found life form called Metroid to create energy and bio weapons. These beings have the ability to latch onto its prey and drain them of their life force, leaving them as nothing but a pile of dust."

"Then that thing that attacked me was a Metroid?"

"Yes. At one point, Metroid's had become extinct, or so we had though. Not only that but I thought I had finally destroyed Mother Brain, but when I heard her story I realized my mistakes. Mother Brain is really a computer program called Sharon Apple. She's a bio-neural A.I. chip created by the Macross Consortium, originally for entertainment through virtual singers, but quickly adapted for weapons purposes. When I last destroyed Mother Brain, I thought I had destroyed her with a powerful nuclear type weapon, and that brings us to today. She seems to have barely escaped from the blast, being electronic, she merely backed herself up somewhere in case something like this happened again."

"You mentioned that the Metroids had been extinct at one time. How were they brought back?" Nene asked.

I was the one that destroyed the last Metroid, or so I would have been if Mother Brain hadn't beaten me to it. Back when I was sent to eradicate the Metroid's home world, I watched one of the eggs hatch. The Metroid thought I was its mother, and", Samus' turned from the group, "I couldn't bring myself to kill it. The pirates stole the Metroid and I went after it. During a battle with Mother Brain, the Metroid sacrificed itself to save me and in its dying moment, it transferred the rest of its energy into me, along with its DNA. I was later taken hostage by the Space Pirates, who drew blood from me and found the Metroid DNA present. They merely cloned them from my blood", Samus finished turning back to the group and clapping her armored hands together. "Well that's enough about my history. Our next lesson will be Metroid Anatomy 101, followed by the more interesting upgrade of weapons."

"In order for us to do battle with these new boomers and the Metroid life form, we will have to know about the Metroids and upgrade our suits to accommodate this new threat", Sylia stated, "Mackey is in the shop working on the suit upgrades as we speak." Sylia pulled down a white screen and turned on a projector protruding from the ceiling.

Samus moved out of the light and began unclasping her helmet, a hissing sound coming from the helmet as the pressure was released from inside, "I wear this suit so long, sometimes I forget I'm even wearing the thing", she said as she removed the helmet, her long green hair fell from the helmet in a messy ponytail down the back of the armor. Her slender face was slightly red from pulling the helmet off, which she set down on the table.

"Samus! Your pretty hot!" Linna burst out. The red on Samus' face turned a little brighter at the comment, the other girls burst into uncontrollable laughter.

"Thanks I guess", Samus replied, prompting more laughter from the girls, weary of whether she should take the rest of the armor off as she had planned and then decided against it.

"Linna, keep your lesbian fantasies to yourself for now okay?" Priss commented between her outbreaks of laughter.

"I like your hair. Is that your natural color?" Nene asked.

"Yes it is. I had it dyed a dirty blonde for a while, but it just wasn't my look and decided to go back. Besides, everyone has blonde, brown or red hair, I want to be different", she replied with a smile.

"I know what you mean, I've been thinking about bleaching my hair. I'm all up for something different but pink is just a little too lesbian for me", Nene chimed, giving the girls another chance to laugh it up.

"Let's get started shall we", Samus responded, slipping a disk from the interior of her armor into the computer's drive sitting next to the projector. The PC whirred to life and the projector showed a figure of a Metroid, "This is your basic Metroid, somewhat like a jellyfish, but instead of tentacles, it has fangs that are very strong, capable of penetrating most known metals. You can see that the creature's innards are visible to the outside world, they are composed of nothing but red-celled nuclei that the creature uses to transfer its victims life force to itself. The creatures are also covered in a slimy membrane, used to help protect itself against energy discharges from the multiple nuclei inside itself. There are a few ways to kill a Metroid. A strong enough electrical discharge can penetrate the slimy membrane and fry the creature. An explosive, such as missiles can injure the creature, depending on the firepower of the missile. The easiest way to destroy a Metroid is to freeze it. After the creature is frozen, you can simply blow it up with a small concussive missile, slice it, dice it, or throw it against a wall." Samus stepped back from the projector, allowing the slideshow to continue on its own.

Nene stood up and stretched, "Seems simple enough."

"One last thing you need to be all able to recognize its evolutions. We probably won't come across them, but they use to exist and may have been cloned or forced to evolve", Samus said as various Metroid evolutions crossed the projection screen.

"That does it for the Metroid anatomy, we should probably head over to see Mackey about those upgrades", Sylia remarked, turning the rooms lights back up.