Coming up now is the fourth chapter, following the events of the previous chapter.

P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.

Chapter 4: Sooner than Expected

"Samus, do you read?" Wash was trying to reach Samus in order to see if she could pick up his signal as him and Carolina had a completely different set of radio tech than that of Samus. Again he tried to get an answer, "Do you read, Samus?"

"Yes, I read you Washington. Loud and Clear." Samus replied.

"Wow. Never imagined this would work," Wash commented with a surprised tone.

"You still got a lot more to see what my suit can do. It's entirely made from the Chozo, a peaceful race that once took care of me after my parents died."

"I'm sorry to hear that..." Wash expressed his sympathy towards Samus. Hearing something like that happen to anybody can be difficult to digest, even if it was also about his enemies have to go through that as a kid.

"It happened a long time ago. No need to worry," Samus tried to save his sympathetic feelings as she knew this from behind his tone on the radio. It's not difficult for Samus to realize what others feel about her just by judging their tone of voice or even their body language since she had practice in doing so with her fellow teammates back in the Federation Army, including with her former commander, Adam Malkovich. "Anyway here are the coordinates. I'm sending them to you via your navigation suit system you have."

Carolina soon intervened when she heard this.

"How do you know we have-"

"I managed to do a quick scan to your suits and that's what I got from you, Washington, and even the others when you and your friends were arguing during our last meeting," Samus explained. "Like I said, you still got much to learn about me."

"I'm sure we do. I'm starting to have second thoughts about trusting you already."

Carolina wasn't sure if she and Wash were doing the right thing in trusting her, but the only way to find out about her true intentions were to join her and see how it all ends up. Nothing new from what Carolina has dealt with in the past so if all goes wrong, they can both "take care" of her, just like they did with certain others.

"Then keep those second thoughts in mind until the end of all this. Only way to find out is when we go through this together, right?"

Carolina felt uneasy after she heard Samus say her last sentence. It was as if she had the ability to read her mind too. What if her suit allowed her to do such thing? Or maybe she has the ability to do so naturally instead of her suit's help. In any case, she has to keep a close eye on her for anything that Samus might do to them. Trusting people is one of the things she has found the most difficult to do ever since the disasters happened when her whole team was turning against each other back in Project Freelancer. However, after her bond with Epsilon and the Reds and Blues she gained a lot of hope that there was still good in a lot of people, even though Epsilon was just an A.I. fragment. Even with A.I.s, they are all based on the mind and personality of someone, much like how Epsilon was based on an A.I.'s memories, in which that A.I. was also based on the Director of Project Freelancer himself.

"Doubts aside, we should get going," Samus reminded them. "The Admiral is eager to meet you both. Take your time in saying your goodbyes to your friends. You never know what'll happen after we leave this place."

"Roger that," Wash said. "We still have Lopez fixing the Pelican, but I think he's nearly done.

"Sounds good," Samus replied. "I was starting to worry you wouldn't have the ability to travel light-years apart from here."

Wash gave a small chuckle.

"Haha don't worry. We already had a couple of test subjects riding the last 2 Sarge broke down."

"Wow, so you wouldn't mind using your friends as test subjects for such thing?" Samus asked, curious if this was true or not.

"On the contrary, Sarge used Grif and himself as test subjects," Wash replied. "Let's just say while Sarge was trying to learn how to drive a Pelican, those two traveled at great speeds probably light-years away from here, got back and crashed the Pelican instantaneously and returned with all the symptoms you can get out of a great impact like that. They did the same with the other one we used to have."

Samus was now beginning to see more clearly about their dumb actions and was half glad they aren't coming along, yet again their stupidity has made them come this far so it wasn't really surprising to hear stories like this out of the Reds and Blues.

"That's some interesting story you got there. Anyways, as much as I'd love to hear more about you guys, you should start saying your goodbyes and come along right after. We don't have a lot of time so make it brief."

"We'll be in touch." He put out his radio and kept the channel opened. Wash turned to Carolina afterward. "We should do our goodbyes to the others, while Lopez tries finishing up on fixing the last Pelican we have".

"Wash, do you think we can trust Samus?" Carolina asked as she wanted to hear what Wash thinks about Samus. "She seems to be shady in a way."

"As far as I know, it sounds like she has gone through so much in her life, probably as traumatizing than our personal history together," Wash explained with a reassuring tone. "We dealt something like this in the past so just give her a chance to redeem herself at least. After the fall of our team back in Project Freelancer, I had a lot of endless reasons not to trust anyone anymore, including A.I.s themselves but look at us now. We've gone far and you of all people should know this better than anyone else."

Carolina felt as if his statement was giving her enough energy to start taking some doubt away but then again, she still felt that precautions should be taken, in case they are both wrong about her.

"You're right," Carolina spoke quietly. "But that doesn't mean we should close down our guard on her. You never know the true colors of a person until you get to know them better at a personal level."

"Agreed," Wash said. "Let's go and let the others know we are leaving now."

Before they left, Lopez finally broke his silenced voice and spoke to them in Spanish.

[1]"En menos de 5 minutos, esto estara listo para despegar,"[1] Lopez informed them as he was finishing up fixing some loose wires underneath the control panels of the Pelican.

Wash and Carolina barely managed to understand one word he said, but whatever it was, [2]"minutos"[2] sounded more like he was about to finish up in a few minutes, after repairing the Pelican for more than a few hours.

"Okay, Lopez." Carolina said, nonetheless. "We'll be back in a few and thanks for fixing the Pelican for us."

[3]"De nada,"[3] Lopez replied.

After speaking to Wash and Carolina, Samus was laying on her seat inside her ship, feeling a bit exhausted for whatever reason. She began to contemplate on the things she has done in the past and how far she's gone in life. Even though her parents are dead, they would be proud of what she has accomplished in her life. Maybe this was meant to be, but if only Ridley and those malicious Space Pirates never targeted her home planet, she could be living a normal life, without a power suit, without Chozo DNA infused within her body, without having known Old Bird, Grey Voice, Adam, Anthony, Rundas, or her other comrades. But like they say, in every bad thing, there's always a good thing that comes out of it and for that reason, there's always something to fight for, something that keeps you going.

Just before Samus came to her senses, her ship's control panel came to life and Admiral Dane's upper body showed up in front of her. He looked like as if he was in a great rush and spoke loudly with some banging noises in the background as if they were getting attacked by something.

"Samus?! SAMUS! Do you read?!" The Admiral was beginning to sound desperate behind his tone.

"Yes, sir! What's going on?" Samus replied.

"There's an incoming Space Pirate attack on its way to Norion's orbit! I need you and whoever you are bringing with you to come as quickly as possible! We can't let these Space Pirates get a headst-"

"Sir!" A man in the background was heard before the Admiral was able to finish his sentence.

Dane turned his head to his right, ready to listen to whatever he had to say. "What is it?!"

"There is a least 3 Space Pirate ships coming to our way!" We have the heavy artillery to fight them off but we can only do much!"

"Do whatever you have to do to stop them!"

"On it, sir!"

Dane quickly turned his attention towards Samus.

"You know what to do Samus! Signing out."

"Wait, but what about-?"

It was already too late. Dane cut off the signal just before she was able to ask him if the other Bounty Hunters were already on their way there, in order to meet up with them and gain an advantage to fight off the Pirates.

"Damn!" She cursed.

Samus knew something like this was bound to happen.

"I need to let Washington and Carolina know about this before anything becomes worse."

Tucker and Caboose have been watching Wash and Carolina at a distance as they overheard some parts of their conversation between them and Samus. They didn't hear much, but enough to know that Samus knew pretty much a lot about them. For Caboose, it was interesting as he thought he could become friends with Samus one day, but Tucker thought otherwise, even though he really thought of hitting up with her at some point. He didn't mind not knowing what she looked like behind the alien suit, but nonetheless, she sounded hot enough for Tucker to put her on his list of sexy ladies.

"Hey, Tucker?" Caboose called for Tucker's attention just as they were seeing Wash and Carolina walking outside near the Pelican towards them.

Tucker turned his head towards him.

"Yes, Caboose?" He answered.

"Are Wash and Carolina gonna be okay?"

"When have they ever not been okay after huge ass fights against corporations like Charon Industries and Project Freelancer?" Tucker commented. "That's the real question."

"But they always get hurt in fights like that," Caboose replied. "No one really ends up fine after that."

"Dude they are the best of the best. I'm sure they'll be fine once they come back," Tucker reassured his blue teammate.

"We heard that," Carolina said as she and Wash were standing right in front of them, just as Tucker finished what he said.

"We never said anything wrong," Tucker blurted. Or did we?" He turned his head towards Caboose, giving him the expression to confirm what he said was right.

"Oh um... nope! We never did! But whatever bad things you might've seen, Tucker did it!" Caboose stated his infamous line of blaming Tucker for everything. After not having said it for a long time, he felt better just by saying it out loud.

"Really, Caboose?!" Tucker glowered. "I thought we were cool already!"

Caboose just gave a sigh and spoke. "I only wanted to say it just to make me feel better."

"Okay, so what's going on again?" Wash questioned both of them as he was trying to wrap his head around what was happening at the moment.

"Just forget it," Tucker skipped to his question about trying to figure out what was going on between them and Samus. "So is everything alright with you and Samus?"

"Aside from a couple of uncertainty with whatever she has in plan to do, we're fine," Wash replied. "We don't really know for sure on whatever she may be up to, but if everything she said is true, we really have to do this so, either way, we've got no other choice. For all we know, we could all end up dead if we don't do anything about it so just to be on the safe side, we decided to go."

"We've also decided that it was better this way for only two people to go as we don't want to risk all of us getting either captured or killed," Carolina continued. "We got Lopez to modify our Recovery Beacons so that it would only transmit a secured signal to this place only. It won't be doing a widespread galaxy-wide signal transmission as it used to anymore.

"Wait, but didn't Samus mention that she scanned all of us back in the meeting room?" Wash began to be uncertain that Samus may already have known about it.

"You said it yourself. She won't know about it since she scanned us all before Lopez managed to modify our Recovery Beacons," Carolina recounted. She looked around, making sure she wasn't around to overhear their conversation. "Also, make sure to keep a low profile in case she's hiding somewhere around here."

"Wait, did you just said she scanned us all? Tucker asked with a concerned tone, worried that Samus might know everything about his own likings and possibly his sex life.

"Yes she did," Carolina answered blandly at Tucker. "We don't know how she did it or to what extent has she gotten information out us whether it could go back to our early lives or not, but even the cooperation that she works for knows a lot from us too, so I wouldn't doubt they know each and every one of our own backgrounds."

"Well that's very reassuring," Tucker remarked with a nervous tone in his voice. "I really hope she wasn't bothered with what she learned about me. BOW-CHICKA-BO-!"

"STOP IT!" Wash and Carlina shouted at the same time, tired of having to hear that ever again.

"What?" Tucker challenged, as he didn't understand why would they stop him from saying his catch-phrase after a long time. "I haven't really said it for a long time."

"I'm sure everybody knows it at this point," Caboose stated the obvious, oblivious of the real fact on why everyone around Tucker hates it a lot.

"Caboose, just shut up okay? You ain't helping." Tucker groaned as he turned to both Wash and Carolina and decided to change the subject. "So when are you guys leaving?

"That's what we came here for," Wash answered. "To tell you guys that-"

Wash was immediately cut off when they heard a female voice, coming from Wash and Carolina's radio.

"Come in Agent Washington and Carolina! Are you there?!" Samus started to sound as if she was in the best hurry.

"Oh! Is it the orange-Grif looking lady!?" Caboose grinned, wanting to say hi to her on the radio. "You should say hi to her for me."

"Caboose, just... maybe later, okay?" Carolina replied in a somewhat annoyed manner, trying not to sound harsh on him at the same time.

Wash and Carolina both felt their privacy has been shattered to pieces as they were about to give their goodbyes to both Tucker and Caboose. They all turned towards Samus, who was the one yelling at a distance.

"What is going on?" Carolina answered for the group as she was wondering why Samus' voice sounded in desperation.

"The Pirates are what's going on," Samus retorted behind the radio. "They already started doing an invasion towards one of the Federation's flagships. Sooner or later, they'll reach a planet not far from there called, Norion, in no time and they need our help. I'm sorry, but you might wanna hurry up and get that robot of yours to finish quickly on fixing that Pelican of yours."

"He might be already done fixing it by now. We'll wrap it up and let you know in a few," Wash replied, unsure if it was even a right answer to give her, considering the circumstances.

"Copy. Just don't take too long. Over and out."

"Well, it seems we are gonna be heading our way," Wash clarified to their blue teammates. "Make sure you guys let everybody else know we are leaving now. That's if anyone cares of course. If anything happens, contact Kimball and I'm sure she'll be able to help. I put the coordinates in this little tablet device I found laying around in the Pelican."

"Sure thing, Wash. I won't let you guys down," Tucker reassured him. After everything they've been through, Tucker and Wash have become more close than the time they first met. He didn't have a more stable friendship with Carolina, but even now Tucker knows her limits and that helped him a lot to make his friendship more stable with her.

"And please... make sure to keep everyone safe here, Tucker," Carolina ordered, knowing that she can put her faith in him more than anyone else in their group. "You are the only one in this group that's capable of leading everyone to safety and you proved yourself quite a lot during our fight against the chairman and his expendable mercenaries."

"Wow," He gasped, shocked at the fact Carolina trusts him to that extent.

"What is it?" She wondered.

"I'm surprised you trust me a lot like that," Tucker stated.

"Well if you want, I can go tell Sarge or in fact, I can go radio him to do that job right about now," Carolina jested at him.

"NO NO! It's fne! Thanks though," He shot back. "By the way, when are you guys coming back?"

"We don't know for sure, but from what Samus has told us in the meeting, it could take a few days or so, depending on how much time they would want us there," Carolina explained.

"Good cuz I thought you guys were probably going to take longer than that."

"Like I said, we don't know for sure so expect the unexpected," She replied.

After Tucker and Carolina finished their conversation Wash then called for Caboose's attention.

"Caboose."

"Yes, Mr. Washington?" He replied.

"I can't promise you anything, but there is one thing I can say to you, buddy," Wash handed him over a picture of him and Caboose, without their helmets on. "Remember that time when you caught me off guard without my helmet on and you found an old camera laying about at our base? I let you take a picture with me just once and told you to give me the picture and never tell anyone about it. Well, I changed my mind, so keep it and do whatever you like with it."

Caboose was just staring at the picture for a long moment. He then turned his head towards Wash with a smile behind his helmet.

"Thank you... Wash! You're the nicest person ever!"

He ran towards Wash and hugged him as Carolina and Tucker were only watching the whole situation, silently and shocked at the fact that Wash didn't mind for someone like Caboose to take a picture with him, especially with his helmet off. When they finished up their hug, Wash continued to explain.

"This is something that I've put in mind in case we don't come back. Something that Church wasn't able to leave behind as something to remember him by."

"Dude, not even I get something like this?" Tucker pleaded with slight jealousy.

"C'mon you know Caboose was affected by Church's death more than anyone else and you should be one of the first people to understand that," Wash shot back at him.

"I guess that's fair," Tucker said in a more understanding manner, a bit ashamed of what he said. "Sorry about that. By the way, you look awesome with that beard you are growing."

"Oh shut up. It itches a lot whenever I have my helmet on," Wash complained. "And I can't even use my hands to scratch myself whenever it does itch. The worst feeling ever!"

"Hey Tucker, I can share the picture with you if you want," Caboose stated as he was trying to hand over the picture to him.

"No thanks, Caboose. It's yours to keep."

"But then you won't be jealous that way."

"I'll be fine, Caboose. Don't worry."

At that moment, Lopez came back from the Pelican and informed both Wash and Carolina about it.

[4]"Ya esta listo,"[4] Lopez said with his usual robotic voice. [5]"Cuando quieran irse."[5]

"Um.. grrrahcias... Lopez," Wash replied as he was having a hard time trying to say "thanks" in Spanish.

[6]"Un placer Señor Washington y ustéd también Señorita Carolina,"[6] Replied Lopez. He never was annoyed to serve the freelancers but was more frustrating in serving the others, especially the Reds, whom they boss him around almost every day. He soon left on his way to their base to fix another Warthog that Sarge just recently broke not long ago.

Carolina then watched what time it was on her digital clock within her visor and realized they spent more than 5 minutes after they got in contact with Samus.

"I think we should get going Wash. We don't want to be late now," She then looked towards Caboose and Tucker, before leaving to the Pelican. "Take good care!"

"Don't forget what I said, okay?" Wash reminded Tucker about what he needed to do in case anything goes wrong.

"You can count on it," Tucker nodded. Wash returned a smile to him and soon followed after Carolina.

"Bye Wash and Carolina!" Caboose waved at both of them towards the horizon until they weren't seen again inside the Pelican. Both him and Tucker watched as Samus' ship and the Pelican took off into the atmosphere and vanished without a trace soon after.

Afterward, Caboose then called for Tucker's attention "Hey Tucker?"

"Yeah?" He replied.

"Do you think they'll be coming back?"

"I told you, man. I'm sure they will be," Replied Tucker, trying to sound confident himself as he wasn't sure if they were going to be fine or not.

[To be continued...]

That was that. I'm currently writing up the next chapter and having some difficulties to make things up so if you see anything that's nonsense, please forgive me lol. Anyway, as always, please leave a review! It helps me out quite a lot!

Below are the Spanish Translations of the chapter:

[1] - "In less than 5 minutes, this will be ready for take off,"

[2] - "minutes"

[3] - "You're Welcome"

[4] - "It's ready"

[5] - "Whenever you guys want to leave."

[6] - "A pleasure Mr. Washington and Miss Carolina,"