New chapter! I know, it's really short, but I'm struggling with keeping my schoolwork under control. And the writer's block isn't helping any. ;)
Anyway, I don't own Metroid. Get over it and leave a review.
Pirates
Toré jumped back. He was not expecting the sight that greeted him from the other side of the door at all. There stood an equally astonished space pirate.
The two stared at each other dumbly for a second, not knowing exactly what to do. Then the pirate whipped out his blaster and fired a volley of blasts at Toré.
Without his suit, he'd be seriously hurt by the blaster shots hitting him, but the chozo had the most advanced technology in the galaxy. The suit was able to resist a lot of normally catastrophic damage by generating a shield from a series of batteries called energy tanks. Once all energy tanks had been drained of their energy, the suit was susceptible to damage. The energy tanks were rechargeable, and each tank held 99 units of energy. Interestingly enough, many guns and blasters' power were measured by how many units of energy they took from a chozo energy tank in one shot.
Toré acted immediately. He charged his power beam to full power, and then fired at the pirate. Unfortunately for the pirate, the space pirates had not yet developed the advanced shielding necessary to sustain multiple blaster shots. The pirate stumbled back, injured, but not killed by the blast. After shaking its head clear for a moment, it again raised its blaster to fire at Toré.
Toré jumped to the side, evading the blaster shots. He charged his blaster again, and fired a second time. This time the shot connected with the pirate's head, knocking him over. It did not get back up.
Toré's head was reeling. Why were there pirates here on Zebes, deep in the Brinstar mines? What did they want here?
Then a horrifying thought crossed into Toré's mind: What if they had gotten Samus?
Toré shuddered, forcing himself to remain thinking logically. He returned to the restoration statue in the previous room, recharging his suit's energy tanks, and then returned to the room where he had met the pirate. He realized that it was more of a mine shaft that he was standing at the bottom of. The walls were covered with large ledges, and therefore would not be hard at all to climb.
Toré began to make his way up the shaft. He noticed the many rippers flying around, and made a conscious effort to avoid them. Rippers were little turtle-like creatures with impenetrable exoskeletons. They fly about in simple patterns, taking in nutrients from the air. They do not eat, but they will not alter their course of flight, either. If anything gets in the way, they will push it out of the way or bite it until it moves. Seeing as Toré was in a mine shaft, one push from a ripper could send him hurtling down to the bottom of the shaft with potentially dangerous results.
After climbing for quite a while, Toré came upon a door on the left of the shaft. He had two choices: he could take the door and find out where it went, or he could continue up the shaft. After a moment's thought, he decided to take the door.
He noticed a skree on the ceiling, and shot it. He used his thermal visor to find a few more and took them out too. He then proceeded to enter the room. It was small, and seemed to be a dead end, but upon closer inspection, Toré saw that some of the rock near the bottom of the wall in front of him was actually simply packed soil.
Toré curled into his morph ball. He rolled over to the soil, and laid a bomb. The morph ball was equipped with two types of defense, just in case a chozo needed to defend himself while in morph ball mode. One was a small timed bomb, which could injure only small organisms. When this bomb was laid and the user remained in morph ball mode, sitting on top of the bomb when it blew up, the morph ball would pop up a bit from the force, but not be injured in any way. The second weapon was a super bomb, which had devastating effects, often decimating entire rooms.
Just as Toré had expected, the bomb blasted out a small hole in the soil, just big enough for him to fit through. Toré laid several more bombs in this fashion, forming a small tunnel for himself to fit through. He eventually made it out to the other side of the wall. He uncurled from morph ball mode to be attacked by a couple of skrees. He made quick work of them and surveyed his surroundings.
There was a door directly in front of him, and a small passageway leading gradually up off to one side. He tried the door, but found that it only led to a small storage room. He moved to the passageway, and sized it up. He could have crawled through it on his hands and knees, but he instead decided to use his morph ball. It was quite often the easiest and fastest mode of transportation when exploring caves.
Gradually the pathway widened, and Toré returned to his regular form. The path traveled upwards in a winding direction for a while, and then suddenly became straight. Toré was startled by a few more skree, but managed to remain unharmed by them.
After walking for a few minutes, the pathway stopped. There was a wide hole going straight up for a short distance. Toré would have to do some climbing. He approached the wall and tested for some good footholds. He made his way upwards, reaching the top in no time.
As Toré neared the top and began to crawl over the edge, he heard a sound that made his heart jump: A surprised roar, and then the cocking of a blaster.