Luckily for the bounty hunter and fox it seemed Scales didn't actually have any troops with him. This made their escape much easier and they reached the docking bay with little trouble. The General, himself, seemed too occupied making deals with the Pirates to even consider that his captives would have the means to slip out of his clutches. Fox clambered into his Arwing while Samus split from him to reach her own ship where she had hidden it.

Once they had both made it into space a good distance from the derelict space station, Fox was relieved to see Samus was attempting to open communication with him. He accepted the signal, determined to find out just what was going on.

"I would have thought you'd have bolted out of here by now," he joked somewhat, hinting at her speedy retreat. Through the communication window and with her visor in the way, Fox could no longer make out her face to see how she reacted.

"Just what business did you have with Scales before?" she asked immediately. Fox tilted his head at this.

"We never had any business. I was called in once to stop him from destroying an entire planet. Why?"

"He can destroy a planet?"

"By himself? No. He just made trouble for the citizens by removing these special stones that held their planet together so it started to bust apart. I had to restore the stones and stop him from terrorizing the planet. Now, really blondie, what's got your feathers ruffled?" he started in. There was no point in going on about how Andross was involved at this point. Hell, Andross was ALWAYS involved. Samus was quiet a moment, checking to see if Fox seemed to her the type who would understand and deserved the information.

"Scales was speaking with the Pirates."

"What? The Space Pirates?"

"Yes. And what's more is they were discussing Phazon."

"Wait, didn't you say that was that radioactive material you found on Tallon?"

"Yes." Fox scratched under his chin.

"So the Pirates have Phazon they're going to give to General Scales...?"

"As far as I can tell. In any perspective it's not good. If that substance comes into contact with anything it can either destroy or augment it to dangerously high levels," Samus said.

"Wait, wait. Augment? Like what kind of augmentations are we talking here?"

"Let's put it this way. Recall the little Metroid that latched onto your back for lunch?"

"Eh.. Yeah."

"Make that about thirty times bigger." Fox blinked and couldn't restrain himself from shuddering just a bit. "Got that? Now that's just making it bigger. Now take that Metroid and fuse all kinds of weapons into it... Make it increasingly intelligent....and make it hungry."

"Okay, okay, I get the point," Fox said, holding up a hand. "So Scales is going to get this Phazon and no doubt use it for some sort of increase in power. That's obviously bad. But what was he talking about when he said something about their 'boss'?" Samus visibly sighed with a light shrug of her shoulders.

"The Pirates have always been nasty pests on their own – but they don't work alone. Their leader is this striking fellow -- Ridley." A new window popped up on Fox's screen with a few stats and the image of a large prehistoric looking bird. He didn't look terribly friendly, either.

"For crying out loud I just can't escape these dinosaurs can I?" Fox leaned his head back against his seat and slapped a hand over his eyes.

"I've defeated Ridley numerous times...but they always find means of resurrecting him in some form or another. What I gather from the conversation I heard it seems the Pirates have lost Ridley somewhere, and hopefully he isn't off running amock somewhere on his own. Scales has agreed to help them find him in exchange for the Phazon."

"And you."

"And me. But since I'm gone that part of the bargain isn't going to go through. I think he'll have to renegotiate some terms because of that. So I think we have time to find the ship."

"Okay, about that. What ship are you referring to?"

"The Pirate's ship." Fox fluffed his tail at his side and pondered this. So they were going to go invade a Pirate ship. Inwardly he almost felt like laughing at how ridiculous that sounded, but it was hardly the time. "I don't expect you to follow me." Samus added suddenly.

"Oh, I'm sure you'd like that," Fox chuckled, tapping his thighs with his hands absently. "But as long as Scales is involved, so am I. I hate leaving business unfinished."

"You won't get paid."

"Sure, I will....if I bring him in for that bounty you so graciously mentioned earlier." Samus flinched. At least it looked like she flinched – it was kind of hard to tell with the static coming through the window.

"We'll discuss that when the time comes," she said casually, her voice finally relaxing it seemed. Fox smiled toothily, feeling rather crafty all of a sudden. "For now we need to locate the Pirate's vessel. It's going to take some time, but if we focus on message signals and ask around it shouldn't be too hard." Fox nodded, stretching his hands out in front of himself clasped before relaxing and resting his head on a fist.

"I'd think they'd be somewhere close, else the signal wouldn't be so clear to Scales. I'll send out some requests and see if any of the local stations around here have spotted anything unusual." Samus nodded in reply.

"I'll start deciphering signals, then. When you've got any concrete information, meet me at the local space station in this quadrant." The map and coordinates popped up on Fox's screen left to Samus' comm window. He glanced over and looked at it. He knew the station well enough and nodded. "Be quick, fuzzums." With that, her signal shut off and her ship sped past him into the distance. Fox watched her go and went about finding information as to who had seen what. He was rather pleased at the station she'd chosen to meet at – they had good meatballs at the restaurant there. Now that she couldn't hear him he chuckled outwardly. They had nicknames for each other already and they'd barely been working together for a day.

Samus, on the other had, was a little amused that she was actually allowing someone to follow her OR work with her willingly. She usually preferred to do things alone – less risk of losing people or having them get in the way unnecessarily. Fox, it seemed, could handle himself though, so she decided to give the furball a shot. Besides that, the fact that they met up twice now struck her as a little unique. Particularly in the same day. As a child Samus had been taught to watch out for things that may have seemed coincidental but could have been something more. The Chozo had given her a very spiritual upbringing, and yet she tried to be rather logical best she could. So while she wouldn't immediately accept that Fox's reappearance may have meant something important, she didn't dismiss the thought entirely either.

Like all things... she figured she would just have to wait and see......