XVIII. Struck

Jo stood pensive, her bloodshot eyes looking around in search of the source of the sound she had just heard. It wasn't much, really- just a rustling, a shuffling, barely discernable, yet coming to her in crystal clarity. She switched to the lenses of her I.R. Scanner, her eyes scanning back and forth between the pillars as she moved stealthily among them. Something was there. She knew it. Coming to a halt, she stood still and quieted her breathing. She closed her eyes, straining her ears for the slightest sound. All was quiet.

A tremendously loud sound ripped through her left ear, like the feedback of a microphone upon a speaker. Jo shouted and ripped her communicator from her ear. She then looked around, thinking she had heard a voice mixed in with the interference. Then she heard it again. It was distant, but she could clearly discern one word being shouted at her.

"JO!"

Joanna looked in the direction she had heard the voice, again seeing nothing.

"Up here!"

Jo raised her eyes to a distant precipice high up off the ground and saw the diminutive form of what appeared to be a human waving their arms in an attempt to flag down the young agent. Jo quickly replaced her earpiece and directed her lenses to zoom in on the figure. The person came into focus and Jo let out an enormous sigh of relief, her mouth widening into a smile.

"Lara." She stated almost in a chuckle. "Boy, am I glad to see you."

"Oh." Came Lara's voice in her earpiece. "I'd forgotten about the communicators. Sorry about that. I probably blew your eardrum out, didn't I?"

"No worries. I didn't need that ear anyway. I'm just glad to see a familiar face."

"Can you see a way for me to get down?"

"Hold on. Looks like there's a stone ladder directly underneath where you're standing."

Jo then holstered her gun and began jogging toward Lara's location while Lara worked her way over the side and made her way down the stone ladder. The two reached the bottom of the ladder at almost the same moment, Lara stepping off the ladder with an obvious limp.

Upon seeing her close up, Jo gained a concerned look and said, "Bugger! You like you've been through Hell!"

"Can't say that's far from the truth." Lara replied with her typical light-hearted smile as she attempted to smooth back some loose and frayed hairs. "Even had to face down a couple of demons."

Lara nodded in a particular direction and Jo looked to see the remains of another chozirim.

"A couple?" Jo said in consternation, noting the remains. "You mean you had to face more than one of those blasted things?"

"Well, no." Lara replied, beginning to re-do her braid. "The first was actually a Skedar."

Jo's eyes went wide.

"What?" she said. "A Skedar? Here?"

"What's worse, I had to face down a virtual army of your old friends."

Joanna thought for a moment before her eyes again went wide in revelation.

"Datadyne? You can't be serious! That's-"

"Impossible?" Lara finished her sentence. "That word seems to have lost its impact as of late. But if I may say so, looks like you've had a pretty rough go at it as well."

"Well, I did have to face down one of those statues. Exhausted upwards of thirty mines to take the blasted thing out."

"Huh. Doesn't surprise me." Lara replied as she finished retying her braid. "Those things are tougher than nails."

"Actually, my time was rather boring up until today. Lots of walking."

"Today?" Lara said, her brow becoming furrowed.

"Yes." Jo said in a slightly patronizing voice. "As in: they day after yesterday. I am able to keep time, you know."

"Wait. According to your clock, how long has it been since we parted?"

"Five days at least. Why?"

Lara nodded slowly in understanding.

"Right. Have you seen Samus?"

Joanna was about to answer when the distant sound of shattering glass filled her ears. The two turned and upon hearing nothing else, promptly headed back the way Jo had come. Passing Jo's rubble to the far side of the chamber, they found Samus lying on the ground near a shattered doorway. She pushed herself up off the floor with one hand as they approached. Before they could reach her, however, she cried out in pain and gripped her opposite arm.

"Samus." Lara called to her as they reached out to help her. "What's wr-"

They stopped as Samus held out her hand, keeping them at a distance. Even with her face staring at the ground, the two could still discern a look of fierce concentration. She was pulling all her resources to resist reacting to the pain of a separated shoulder joint. Slowly, she stood, again holding her arm, and shuffled over to a nearby pillar. Samus stood there a moment, taking in deep, shuddering breaths. Suddenly, she rammed her limp shoulder hard into the stone pillar. A sickening crunch briefly preceded a pain-filled scream that Samus could do nothing to hold back. Her scream melted into more shuddering breaths as she quickly regained her composure.

Tentatively, she began to exercise her shoulder, now firmly back in its socket, until she had reached full mobility, albeit with a large amount of soreness. But that would heal with time. There was still a task ahead of her. She needed to focus and push forward. She steeled her mind to that end as she looked at the two women. They both stood staring at Samus in disbelief. Samus noticed the unkemptness of the two, dirt smearing their clothes as well as their skin in various places. In fact, it seemed that only Lara's hair was more or less unruffled, which was very odd in itself. Apparently they had had a rougher time than she. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two as she considered this.

"You alright?" Joanna asked after several moments of silence.

"Fine." Samus replied evenly. "You two look terrible."

"Well that tends to happen when you have to face down a couple of fifty-foot statues." Lara replied.

Samus froze in her action.

"You encountered a Chozirim?" she asked in disbelief.

"Oh, you mean those walking death traps have a name? You could have mentioned we might run into them." Joanna said accusingly.

"That's impossible." Samus spoke as though she had not picked up on Jo's thinly veiled accusation. She spoke as if she could, through force of will, cause Joanna's words to be false. "You wouldn't even be alive, much less standing there talking to us if you had-"

"Actually, we both encountered our own, separately." Lara interrupted. "I told you we could handle ourselves. Obviously, you still don't believe us."

Samus wanted to reiterate how impossible the prospect was that anyone should survive an attack by a Chozirim. She wanted to tell them of the sacredness of their construction, of their unrestrainable wrath. But it was all useless. Here the two women stood before her, triumphant, alive, and far more capable in their own right than she would have imagined them to be. Still, she simply could not accept the prospect on pure faith. And so, after a long moment, her lips parted and she stated quite plainly, "Show me."

Jo and Lara glanced at each other, a look of impatience passing between them. Lara lead the way, limping. Samus followed and Jo took up the rear. They reached the remains of Joanna's chozirim and Lara stood back as Samus, still in total disbelief, slowly approached the wreckage. Her eyes darted to the enormous hole in the wall and then swept the remains of the statue. They came to rest on a large chunk of the head and she moved to it. Kneeling reverently before it, she lifted it gingerly from its grave and ran her hand over its surface. Another remnant of her people: gone. Familiar feelings of loss and grief rose up within her. It seemed she could not escape them. Ever stronger were they within the walls of a Chozo ruin.

Yet in the back of her mind, she was aware of Lara and Joanna's presence and willed herself away from showing emotion. She could not let them see her in any sort of weakness. She could not give them that advantage, should they turn out to be enemies. But, as she sat there, forcing the grief down, hiding it deep within her soul, a strange sensation took hold of her, as if her heart was hardening against such loss of her past. No! She could not let that happen! She could not!

Suddenly, the emotion rushed back with a power and force she could not contain and she found herself almost compulsively sliding her arms around the head fragment and pulling it to her chest. She laid her head upon its hard surface in the same compulsory manner as unbidden tears began to flow with quiet sobs.

Lara watched the whole scene with intrigue, Samus' connection with this alien race now plainly apparent. She looked over at Jo who stood with her arms crossed. She looked annoyed. Lara was going to signal to her not to say anything, but then she saw the look in her eyes. Strangely, they carried a look of sympathy as they watched the scene before them. Lara had to remind herself that she didn't know Joanna any better than she knew Samus. The young agent clearly had a past that identified, at least somewhat, with Samus' pain. And out of nowhere, it struck Lara how hard-hearted she had become. She was not without her own pain. Her conscience stung at the accusation and her mood grew darker as she fought to keep in balance the facts of the situation they were in with the emotions now running high in all three of them. She shook her head, both at herself and the situation in which she now found herself; traveling with these two women, each with a past that seemed to haunt them at every turn. Lara wondered at Joanna, her paranoid, closed-off mindset, and what secret pain she was holding tightly inside her.

Joanna watched with watery eyes, her own emotions at her own loss finding surface. Though she still managed a tight leash on them, she yet found a tear trickling down her cheek. She hastily wiped it away. Her suspicion of Samus wrestled with sympathy for her pain. She disliked this situation and wished it to end as quickly as possible. Yet she could not bring herself to suggest that they should keep moving. After all, there were no enemies present and they were in no particular hurry. And, on some, deeply hidden level, Joanna felt that perhaps she needed something like this; some…friends like this.

After some long moments, Samus at last placed the fragment back on the ground, stood up and began to wipe the tears from her face, attempting to regain her composure.

"How…" the first word came out weakly. She cleared her throat and tried again, "How did you manage to defeat it?"

Her voice was stronger that time; near normal. Joanna also cleared her throat, reburying her emotions.

"Explosives." She replied. "Upwards of thirty remote mines."

"Did it have anything in its claws?" Samus asked, her voice unchanged as she stared at the gaping hole. "An orb or a strange item?"

Jo glanced at Lara and replied, "Yes, a small gem. Some kind of crystal, about the size of a skipping stone."

"I found one too." Lara put in, "Except mine was cylindrical in shape."

"Give them to me." Samus stated, not at all demanding.

"Why?" Joanna said, her suspicion having returned "What are they?"

Samus turned around to face them, a look of controlled anger upon her face. She looked at them, seeing them in a new light of strength, having defeated the chozirim. She respected that, but she also knew that strength could be turned against her. She had to be careful not to let her emotions cloud her thinking. Calmly, but still with a hint of impatience, she replied, "They're the activation crystals for a suit of chozean battle armor, the casing of which I am carrying on my back. I need them to activate the suit."

Lara prepared herself and spoke as gently as she could.

"I don't think that's a good idea just yet, Samus." She said.

Samus looked at her, her anger obviously building.

"What?" she said.

"Just hear me out." Lara came back, her hands moving in a gesture indicating for Samus to keep calm. "There were three pathways to take and three different Chozirim to face. Each one had a component of your battle armor. Have those components ever been presented separately before?"

Samus thought about it a moment, her mind struggling with her impatient anger and the need to think things through calmly.

"No." she reluctantly replied.

"Right." Lara continued. "It seems to me that it was purposely set up this way. You said yourself how impossible it is to take down one of these guardians. Jo and I managed to do it, but I'll admit it was only by the slimmest of margins. An ordinary human grunt, or even an alien like the skedar would have little chance against them. It was obviously set up this way in order both to protect and to access the real treasure of this place. Each of these items is likely a key to-"

"Down!" Came Jo's voice as a hail of gunfire filled the chamber.