A/N: Well, I've finally gotten this chapter out. I know it's been a long time coming: I've had two vacations and a whopping case of writer's block, but in the end I finally got this story back on track. I've also added a few terms to the glossary.
Tikitikirevenge- Hawaiian pizza? How did you ever guess?
Warior- Samus doesn't have her thermal visor yet. Recall that she received it from the chozo with relatively limited functions: Missiles, charge beam, morph ball (plus morph ball bomb) and scan visor. Anything else she must find elsewhere, and that may or may not happen in this story.
Alleycat1312- It was supposed to be humorous. XD And I didn't really want Url to put up a huge fight: Samus has to get a swelled head.
Pixiegirl13- Welcome back! The fic is far from over: Url was just a warm-up! evil grin
Well, that should do it! On to the chapter!
A New Pastime
Samus sat in her chair, holding the two checks in her hand. In one day, she had made one-hundred-fifty thousand GFSCs: Enough to buy a modest house.
She reached for another slice of Hawaiian pizza. Now that she had some money, she could afford to splurge on things like that. She knew exactly what she was going to do: First thing in the morning, she was going to deposit her checks, and then find a good real estate agent and buy herself a house. She wanted out of this apartment building badly, and desperately wanted to find a place where she could don her power suit more secretively.
Samus sighed and sat back a bit, very relaxed. This bounty hunting business was stressful, but it was all worth it for the money in your hand once you turn in your prize. It was instant cash – a quick fix – and it was a job that actually kept Samus stimulated.
Of course, it also came with its fair share of dangers.
-X-
It did not take Samus long to move her few possessions into her new home. She quite enjoyed the look on the homeowner's face when she wrote him a check for the house's value in full, right up front. All in all, it cost her one-hundred-forty-two GFSCs.
She now had more room than she knew what to do with. She used the remaining money to buy furniture for her new home. Shopping was a new experience for her: The chozo rarely did any shopping like that, minus the buying and selling done in the marketplace, and she hadn't had any money until now to go shopping anyway.
At the end of a long day of organizing and reorganizing her furniture in her house, she plopped into her big, fluffy bed. She was exhausted, but she also was brimming with giddiness, excited that she was finally amounting to something.
Weeks passed, and Samus took her time settling into her house. She had no form of transportation to speak of, just a large empty garage. It was not long before she felt trapped again, and she set out in search of adventure.
While surfing the internet she found something that caught her eye: The local police had placed a bounty of thirty-thousand GFSCs on a pair of petty thieves. They've been pursuing the thieves for months, and their crime sprees seem to keep on getting more elaborate as time goes on.
Samus had gotten a swelled head from her first hunt. If she could track down one-hundred-fifty-thousand GFSCs worth of criminals in one day, how hard could a thirty-thousand GFSC bounty be any harder? Surely this would be an easy mission.
She couldn't be more wrong.
-X-
Samus sat silently behind a parked vehicle, an armored lump upon the desolate sidewalk. She had been studying the actions of this pair of criminals for two weeks now. They were two humans named Mera Quinn and Jed Astimi, and Samus had good reason to believe that they would be robbing this mini-mart tonight. Samus planned to ambush the couple before they even entered the mart and make her catch.
She had been sitting still for just under two hours now, and her knees were starting to hurt. She was beginning to wonder if she had made some sort of mistake.
But there was no mistake.
A sharp blow to the back of her head sent Samus sprawling on her back on the rocky pavement. A dark figure was looming over her, a gun in hand. Samus could make out few of the person's features in the dark, but she was fairly certain that he was wearing a ski mask.
The person laughed. "Nice try," Came a feminine voice. This must have been Mera. The gun was pointed at Samus' face.
Springing into action, Samus shot out her leg and tripped the woman, knocking her to the ground and sending her gun flying through the air. Samus quickly got to her feet and pinned Mera to the ground with her foot.
I knew this would be easy, Samus thought to herself as she prepared to knock Mera out. Before she could, however, there was a gunshot from somewhere behind her and she was thrown back to the ground. Her health meter registered seventy-eight: Whoever was shooting at her had a powerful gun.
Samus swore under her breath as she realized her mistake: She knew where Mera was, but she had forgotten about Jed. Thinking quickly, she rolled into her morph ball and rolled to the other side of the vehicle she had been crouching behind.
Unfurling, Samus took up a defensive position. She knew it wouldn't be long before her assailants got over the shock of what they had just seen and tried to attack her again.
Sure enough, shots soon rang out around Samus, each barely missing their mark. It had become a shootout, and there could only be one winner.
Springing up from her position behind the vehicle, Samus fired a few shots in the direction of the criminals. She ducked under some return fire.
Then, silence. Samus' heart beat faster as each minute passed by, causing more and more of an uneasy feeling to form in her gut. Something very bad was about to happen; Samus could just feel it.
Suddenly there was the sound of tires squealing behind her, and a few more shots rang out in her direction. One of them connected, and brought her health meter to fifty-five.
Samus jumped upright and spun around to see a vehicle speeding away too fast to pursue. She swore and stomped her foot: Her quarry had escaped. Then another curious sight met her: There were people milling about the mini-mart in front of her with a worried look on their faces. The clerk behind the desk was talking hurriedly on a telecom, clearly frazzled.
Mera and Jed had managed to rob the mini-mart behind her back.
