Here's the next chapter! Hope you enjoy it!
PixieGirl13- Yeah, Caern's slowly building up some self-confidence throughout the story. I guess anyone would, spending that much time with Samus. And that sounds something Naoimi would do:P Here's your update!
Aran'sApprentice- What's going to happen? If I told you that, we wouldn't have much of a story left now, would we?
CDBuder- I actually do own all but Super Metroid of the Metroid games. I'm simply writing this fic in such a way that you don't really need to know what happens in the games to understand it.
On to the story!
Loss
"Hang on, Caern! Try to hang on!" Samus called urgently up to her friend. Caern shouted something incoherently as he frantically tried to find another foothold. There was nothing Samus could do to help him with this: She could only stand and watch.
Caern managed to stabilize himself again, and stayed still for a few minutes to catch his breath. He still had a long way to go yet, and the last thing he wanted to do was fall.
"Come on, Caern, you've got to keep moving! Your muscles won't hold long enough for you to just sit there," Samus urged. Caern tried to keep moving, but it seemed that wherever he moved to, the rock face would crumble away.
"You're panicking! You need to keep calm, or you'll never make it!" Samus shouted. Caern took a few deep breaths, and tried again. He slowly managed to make his way down the face of the cliff, losing his footing a few times, but always regaining it eventually.
As Caern was nearing the ledge, the cliff face broke off again. This time, both of his hands came loose, sending him flying backwards. Samus shouted in surprise as he landed with a loud thud on the ledge. She turned down to look at him, and realized that he had the wind knocked out of him. After a few seconds, Caern began gasping for air, his lungs protesting angrily.
"It's okay, it's okay," Samus murmured, "You'll be okay in a few seconds." Sure enough, Caern managed to retake control of his breathing and sit up. Both humans let out a sigh of relief.
After a few moments of silence to catch their breath and gather their thoughts, Samus decided to plan out their next move. She looked over the edge and saw another ledge not too far away below them. There was a small spiny creature sleeping on it. Samus pulled a gun from her belt and fired at the thing. It was destroyed.
"Easy enough," Samus remarked to herself. "Come on," she said to Caern, "We can jump to the next ledge." Caern hesitated. "Don't tell me you're afraid to! You just scaled that huge cliff, and now you can't jump a few units?" Samus looked away, disgusted. What did she care? She could just leave him behind. She took a few steps back and then gracefully leapt to the next ledge, landing on her feet.
Samus waited a few moments for Caern to come, and when he didn't, she decided to move on. She saw another ledge within jumping distance with a few more of those spiny creatures on it. She pulled both guns and aimed at them, hoping it would be just as easy to kill these ones as the first one.
Just then, Caern came sailing down from above, trying to land on the ledge. Instead, he overshot the ledge by a few units and just barely grazed it with his boots. He slipped off the other side, screaming.
Without thinking, Samus dropped both guns into the abyss and grabbed Caern's wrists. She was lurched forward with his momentum, but managed to plant her feet and haul Caern back up onto the ledge.
Both Samus and Caern had their hearts pounding like crazy, adrenaline running through their veins. Samus had saved Caern's life again.
"Samus, thank you so much! I— I don't know how to thank you enough— I…" Caern continued to gush on, filled with gratitude. Samus immediately regretted dropping the guns.
"Okay, I get it. Shut up," Samus snapped. She was frustrated both at Caern's incompetence and their general bad luck. She really couldn't blame him, as much as she wanted to, because Caern was not raised by Chozo and therefore could not even come close to keeping up with Samus. Nevertheless, she needed somebody to be angry at and the only other one around was Caern.
"Hand me one of your guns," Samus ordered Caern, who was still shocked by Samus' bluntness. Dumbfounded, he pulled one of the guns from his belt and handed it to Samus. She aimed the gun at the creatures on the ledge and fired a few shots. They were easy targets, and shooting them actually made Samus feel a little better.
"You're going to have to jump again," Samus told an uneasy Caern. She quickly landed on the ledge and turned around to face Caern. She wanted to be able to catch him if need be.
Caern tried not to appear afraid, but he could not help but show it as he tried to jump to the ledge. This time he made it, but Samus had to catch him and stabilize him so that he did not fall on his face. They followed this same procedure several times and made their way down the shaft.
After a few ledges, they saw a door across the shaft on a short ledge. They decided not to risk jumping the entire length of the shaft and continued downwards. Shortly after seeing the first door, they found another one, this one close enough to jump to. Upon reaching the door, Samus opened it and they gazed into the room beyond.
Both of them were shocked to see that the floor was covered in a yellow, slightly bubbling liquid, with little 'islands' here and there like stepping stones across a lake.
"What is that stuff?" Caern asked.
Forgetting her anger, Samus replied, "I think its acid. We've used stuff like it in chemistry class to dissolve metal." Both humans' stomachs flipped. One wrong move could mean a slow and painful death.
"Well, we don't have any choice. We'll have to cross. Look: The first jump will be the longest one, and then after that we should be able to basically step across," Samus noted. "Let's not dwell on it." With that, Samus jumped to the first stone. It was the widest of the islands, and both she and Caern would be able to fit on it easily.
"Come on! Don't think about it, just jump," Samus urged Caern. He took a deep breath, stepped back a few steps, and then leapt towards the first island.