This chapter kicks it off with Rundas, Wash, and Carolina's point of view.

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 11: Deep Impact

"Our guns aren't doing anything!" Wash said in a panic. The pesky blue-eyed Pirates were infusing their guns and shields with phazon from their own bodies, rendering them invulnerable to normal conventional weapons. "What are we going to do now?!"

"We can't even fight them out here in the open!" Said Carolina as a wave of enemies were coming in their direction. "We're gonna have to push through and hope for the best!"

"As much as I hate to run from these fragile freaks, Carolina is right!" Said Rundas who couldn't believe in himself towards admitting his compliance. "We have to make our way through them and head back to the last generator we need to activate!"

The trio was being surrounded and since their weapons couldn't do anything against the phazon-infected Pirates, they found themselves to have no other choice but to get them out of the way with everything they've got.

"Get back!" Rundas ordered to the duo.

He began freezing any of the Pirates who tried blocking their way as he hovered across the dock with his ice powers, while both of the freelancers grabbed one of their scythes and slashed through some that were unfortunate enough to stay frozen long enough for them to slash them into pieces. Most didn't stay frozen for long before they managed to free themselves from the ice and tried getting rid of the bounty hunter and the freelancers before they finally escaped the area and roared in anger.

"Too close for comfort I'd say," stated Carolina as she took a deep breath with the others while leaning against the wall for a brief moment. "But we still have to keep going."

"Right," said Rundas as he was checking his integral status report on his suit for any possible damage.

"Geez, I can't stand the pain I'm getting on my right knee," Wash began to complain about the cramps he was getting. It wasn't because he was getting old but because after much severe training and sustaining multiple injuries in the past, it has been starting to take its toll.

"Aww... is Wash becoming an old man?" Carolina teased him.

"What? No! It's just that after all these years of training and fighting, it's been— ugh... whatever!"

After their brief rest, they continued onwards. Throughout their journey to the cargo area, not one Pirate was there to interfere with them, except for some crawltanks and other drones that appeared at random places. Just as they arrived at the cargo room, where the control tower's entrance was located, Ghor has already beaten them there, fighting more of the relentless drones that tried to come after them.

They joined forces with Ghor as soon as the trio saw what he was going up against. Wave after wave, they fought on for what seemed to be an eternity until the last crawltank fell and blew up into small fragments, demolishing any of the last crawlmines within the vicinity.

"And I thought... we've seen the last of them," Carolina struggled to take deep breathes after a long fight against the merciless drones.

"Talk about being old, Carol," Wash teased her back after seeing how many deep breathes she was taking, like a tired old-aged lady.

"Oh shut up!" She exclaimed in annoyance. "And don't ever call me that. Reminds me of my ex-boyfriend when he learned about my codename for Project Freelancer and started calling me that ever since. The next time we met, it didn't end well for him."

"Oh, I uh... didn't know... about that," Wash turned red and felt uncomfortable after hearing what she said about her ex since he knew exactly how far she would go under situations like that. He decided to change the subject afterward, in case Carolina felt like doing something harsh to him, "So um... shouldn't we go on ahead to the next generator or see how Samus is—"

"She's already on her way there," Ghor interrupted him broadly. He was still wearing his suit and with his altered personality, he began to explain what they needed to know. "We must form a defensive position and once Samus activates the last generator, we head on to the elevator leading to the control tower, with or without her."

"I'm sure she's able to handle her own pretty well, considering her past history with successful missions like preventing Space Pirates or phazon from taking over multiple planets like Zebes, Tallon IV, or Aether," said Rundas as he was checking their surroundings to see if there were any more of those creepy robotic crawlers hiding around somewhere.

"Sounds pretty much like our lives, considering what us, soldiers from the UNSC regions, have been through," said Carolina with some slight jealousy, though it wasn't like she couldn't take control over it; something that was a major issue to her in the past when being compared to others with people like Tex. She continued, "Planets like Sidewinder and Chorus have been quite a lot of stress to take in when it came to going against the insurrectionists, space pirate mercenaries, and even our own fallen corporation, Project Freelancer. I'm mainly talking about groups of human beings, corrupted with power and hungry for more. Even the corporation we used to work for was no different than them."

"I'm guessing this is why they chose you both in order to give out a good hand here," Rundas commented.

"We're part of another group, though. We only joined here because—"

Carolina was cut off by the sound of the door, leading to Gen. C, opening as everyone in the room aimed their weapons at that specific direction, until they caught a glimpse of what seemed to be Gandrayda.

"Nice party we've got here," she said with a light-hearted tone as if she has just entered through the gates of a theme park.

"Is Samus with you?" Asked Wash.

"No, but there's someone I'd like you guys to meet."

"There's no time to be dating people in a time like this!" Exclaimed Ghor. Nobody knew whether he was joking around, being serious about it, or even both, due to his altered persona still taking over his whole brain network through his suit.

Just as the same door opened again, a Pirate came walking through.

Everyone aimed their guns at him and were about to shoot him until Gandrayda interfered, much to everyone's surprise.

"He's a friendly, don't shoot!"

"What do you mean he's a friendly?" A confused Wash asked. "It's a Space Pirate, isn't it?"

"You better tell us what's going on here young lady or else!" Ghor walked in front of the Space Pirate as he grabbed him and squeezed him tightly, ready to crush him to death. He faced the Pirate eye to eye and told him, "I don't mind spilling blood out of a Space Pirate with my own hands."

"Ghor, STOP!" Gandrayda demanded fiercely, something that was now out her character. "Orion's a part of us now! Look I hate Space Pirate gray more than anyone combined in this room, but this Pirate is gonna help us out with more intel about Dark Samus and the army she's been raising for months!"

Everyone in the room looked at her, either distraught or confused all at once.

"Dark Samus?" Said Rundas in disbelief.

"She's still... ALIVE?!" Exclaimed Ghor in a fearsome tone, still holding the Pirate tightly into his giant robotic hand on his suit.

"Yes, just like you heard. And if you want to know more about what's going on around here, he's gleaned on a lot of information about Dark Samus and the army she's been raising for the past few months, using the rest of what's left of the Pirates as martyrs of her cause," Gandrayda turned to face the struggling Pirate within Ghor's grasp, as he seemingly couldn't resist for much longer. She continued to explain, making sure that whatever she was saying, matched with his story. "He and a group of other Space Pirates, who went undercover, arrived here to infiltrate the actions of the other Pirates, who devote themselves directly to Dark Samus herself, including the dragon-like creature, Ridley. Believe it or not, Ridley is not just following orders from a giant one-eyed brain-dead AI, but from one of the most corrupted beings in the whole galaxy, or maybe even the universe in its entirety."

The other bounty hunters and freelancers tried to digest everything they heard, but Wash and Carolina knew nothing about this "Dark Samus" or even the name "Ridley".

Gandrayda then turned to plead to Ghor, "Please, I know you want to kill him for a better cause in stopping these Pirates from taking what's not theirs, but he is one of us now, whether we like it or not. If he does anything clever, I'll be there to take the blame. Right now, all we need to do is focus on the bigger picture here; the giant fireball heading directly at us and Dark Samus being behind everything."

Silence invaded the air around them for a brief moment afterward, until Ghor decided to let go of the Pirate in yellow armor.

"After this is over, me and you are going to have a nice talk about this," said Ghor in a threatening tone.

"Consider it... done," Orion said after trying to catch his breath for several seconds.

Surprisingly, Orion wasn't feeling any more anxious than what he felt when being around The Hunter. He was used to getting threats rubbed to his face, even within his own rank, but were much worse than whatever hell, Ghor was trying to give him. The Hunter got her nickname for a reason, hence why Orion felt uneasy when facing her in person, as not one Space Pirate was successful in capturing The Hunter, dead or alive.

After a small moment, he turned to face everyone else in the room, ready to introduce himself, "In the case that none of you know, my actual name is Vel 'Acacius. Orion is just a codename I go by within my ranks. You all can call me by whichever name you choose out of those choices."

Vel 'Acacius? Interesting name... Wash thought in his mind about the Pirate. It's not like he never dealt with aliens before, but having to directly interact with one and from an alien race that's considered a major threat to humans and other intelligent beings in this region, he was beginning to think that both his and Carolina's lives were about to go through major turns. He wasn't fond of interacting with other aliens, especially after what happened when he betrayed everyone whom he showed care for in exchange for his own freedom, but what other choice does he have now? As he gave into his thoughts about it, he turned to Carolina to see if she had anything else to say about this whole situation, but all she seemed to do was staring down at the ground. He walked closer to her in order to make sure she was doing fine.

"Hey, Carolina?" He called for her attention. "Is everything alright?"

No response. It was as if she were Lopez with her main power turned off or went into standby mode. Wash didn't feel like everything was alright after seeing Carolina just frozen in thought, glaring at the ground beneath her. Then after a brief moment, she gave out a low response.

"Dark Samus..." she said with anxiety behind her voice, "a dark figure that looked almost identical to the original Samus."

"Wait, what?" Said Wash in confusion. "You've seen her?"

Everyone turned towards the freelancers, as Wash's phrase grabbed everyone's attention.

"Seen who, again?" Asked Rundas.

"I'm with him on this one," commented Grandrayda.

Carolina then began to turn to everyone else around her and then turned directly to Wash.

"Wash, that thing I saw when we first split up to go activate the first two generators, my radioactive sensors were rising at high peaks. Pools of phazon were all over and sometime later, that's when something came crashing down into the base and that laugh was... something that can drive you insane in your sleep. She or it, all of a sudden, disappeared in thin air as small blue particles right before my eyes! It was as if she knew I was falling directly into a trap!" She then grabbed Wash by the shoulders looked at him, face to face. "If this 'Dark Samus' creature is as dangerous as they say she is, no one out there will be prepared for the disasters that she might bring and everyone is going to either suffer or die!"

"Hey, calm down! That's why we are here, right? So long as we finish what we came here for, we'll be fine," Wash reassured her, grabbing both of her hands and dropping them slowly off from his shoulders.

"Yes, but—" she stopped for a moment before finally spitting out the rest of her sentence, "I just don't wanna lose anyone else anymore..."

"I know that feeling," Was replied, still remembering how he almost lost Carolina not so long ago, not to mention everything they've gone through together in past years.

Soon after, Vel took a good listen of the two and offered them some advice in dealing with Dark Samus, or as he and his kind would say, the Dark Hunter.

"You want to know how to take down the Dark Hunter? You are going to need some outside help as everyone's current equipment will be of no match against hers. As you humans say, only if you play fire with fire, will you be able to defeat her in battle and that is if you have enough concentrated firepower at full capacity with similar augmented weaponry as her. The only main conflict with this solution is that, in theory, you will not be able to handle such power on your own and will put you at high risk of going under the influence of the corrupt powers of phazon itself, transforming you into something far more dangerous than what you can imagine. Death will become a luxury after that."

Taking all of that into account was probably more frightening than they thought it would be. Not one person in the room was ready to admit that they felt their skin crawl all around them as they felt frightened about becoming a pure phazon being like Dark Samus just for the sake of getting rid of her for good.

"How are we able to know you're telling the truth?" Asked Wash, hesitant on whether to take Vel's word for it or not. For all he knew, he could just be trying to get into their heads or something worse.

"When the time comes, you will see the light of the truth that I speak," said Vel.

There was a loud roar coming from outside of the base. It didn't sound like any type of aircraft they've come to known or any other friendly reinforcements.

"Guys, I think we've got a new problem," warned Rundas as he was looking through the cracked roof of the base above them where a dark shadow overpowered the sunlight that shined on them.

"Ridley, you bastard!" Exclaimed Ghor, who knew exactly who or what it was that was flying above the base. "It seems like he's calling out an army of Space Pirates to raid inside the facility once more in this section of the base. Quickly! We must prepare ourselves for the worst to happen!"

"So that's Ridley," said Carolina as she watched him fly over them.

"Always the typical evil dragon from your average fairytale. Hmph, never gets old," commented Gandrayda as she took a small chuckle.

Just as Ghor said, Ridley has called out for reinforcements as a wave of Space Pirates came bursting inside the cargo room, in which the group was located. Every Pirate that raided the facility were all phazon-infected Pirates and none of them seemed to recognize who Vel 'Acacius actually was, other than a traitor who never joined their ranks with Ridley and Dark Samus. Vel knew one of them in particular, however. It was his own best friend who has fallen victim under the influence of the dark power he was warned about. Vel 'Acacius felt sympathetic for a brief moment, yet, didn't nearly feel half as bad as he did when he was about to kill Gandrayda back in the mothership he used to be stationed at. He then pretended that he was just another blue-eyed Pirate that he needed to now take care of.

And so he did, without much hesitation along with the rest of the group he was in.

Good riddance, you fool... he said in his mind as he quickly managed to overpower him and kill him along with others that were coming towards their way. So long as they were far too gone with phazon sickness, he wouldn't mind taking them out, but those that weren't infected and used to be his comrades who vowed to take orders from the Dark Hunter herself, he'd feel like death was a mercy he would gladly grant them as part of honoring his own kind in part of redemption for their betrayals.

Rundas was probably more worried about Samus than anyone else in the room as he knew that Ridley was already on his way to Generator C and dispatched most of his blue-eyed army to try and breach through the elevator in order to stop them from activating the defense system, should Samus succeed in her mission before or even after his arrival. He thought to himself if he should leave everyone here and help Samus fight off Ridley or just continue helping everyone here and wait for Samus' arrival. Not knowing what was going on with her was haunting him, but a part of him knew that Samus was going to be fine on her own, much like every time she gets sent on a solo mission, like him. He finally decided to stay and fight the pesky Pirates that were trying to breach through their defenses and couldn't help but pray for Samus' safety as she was like a sister to him.

Meanwhile...

The deafening sound of metal and glass breaking apart made Samus' suit vibrate on impact as it was designed to withstand even the loudest noises and impacts that even a Chozo is able to endure without the suit, compared to that of a human's physical characteristics. She found herself to be free-falling into a deep abyss as she turned her head to an endless pit and saw nothing but a dark tunnel, glowing in red as she approached it faster than the average speeding car.

Impact imminent in... 16800 meters

16700 meters

16600 meters

16500 meters

Her visor kept on reading the amount of distance left before a deep impact was about to happen between her and the main energy core of Generator C. It was almost as if every one hundred meters was a second closer to her inevitable doom.

This can't be any good.. she thought of the obvious.

Not long after she was able to see her surroundings, she saw Ridley above her, taunting her as both of them were falling in the same direction, almost as if they were destined to share the same fate, but Ridley wasn't bothered by it at all. His mind was more focused on to simply have Samus terminated one way or another, even if it meant to die along with her.

"RAAAWR!" Ridley roared at her in fury. "I should have killed you when you were just a kid if I knew how much of a nuisance you were going to be! Now, DIE!"

He charged at her directly to her direction at high speed and managed to take a grip on Samus just before she tried to do anything to avoid him until it was already too late. He began to squeeze her tightly and prepared his giant claw in order to have Samus grow weak after each hit he'd try to do to her.

"If we are going to have to share a coffin together, I rather you go in first!" Raged Samus as she prepared to shoot him multiple missiles to his mouth, along with a fully charged beam shot to his glowing hand that caused Ridley to scream in pain and drop Samus into the abyss once more.

"You think you can kill me? After having tried multiple times in the past?!" Ridley boasted as he began to prepare a projectile attack on her. "You cannot kill me! I will always keep returning from the grave, so long as you are still ALIVE!"

A big wave of fire sprung to life from Ridley's breath as he began following his aim to wherever Samus decided to move. Samus tried her best to avoid his beam of fire as even her Varia Suit wasn't able to handle such heat from the projectile as it was fully concentrated with both plasma and fire. It hit her a couple of times, which made Samus grunt in pain for several seconds after having contact with it, but it didn't stop her from shooting concentrated amounts of beam shots at his mouth, where it was the most vulnerable spot he had, along with his chest. Both kept on sharing hard hits to one another, which only managed to fuel them with anger by each hit that was thrown to one another.

10500 meters

10400 meters

10300 meters

Looking back at the distance left before imminent impact, the countdown wasn't stopping for anything as it would only go faster with many hits endured by both Samus and Ridley that would only keep sending them further into the depths of whatever hell was waiting for them deep into the abyss. After having to fight Ridley for what seemed to be like an eternity, she had enough for what Ridley has done to her in the past. If she was going to die at any moment in time, she would have to make sure that she kills Ridley for good before being killed by the impact itself. She sent a hailstorm of missiles towards his chest, in which most missed on the spot, but some managed to hit him directly into where it was most painful to him and tried to concentrate her fire to his mouth, where it began to make him feel weak as time went on.

Ridley, having a similar hatred with that of Samus, tried everything in his power to protect his weak spots and concentrated on throwing projectiles of intense fire and electricity to have her stunned and be sure to get as many hits as he could against Samus. Some of his projectiles would manage to take Samus by surprise, stunning her and taking major blows from Ridley's claws and sharp tail that could easily break normal human bones if not protected by any suit resilient to high damage.

5200 meters

5100 meters

5000 meters

"Give up now and I'll make sure your death will become quick and painless, just like mommy and daddy!"

Samus could not believe what Ridley has just told her. This enraged her even more to the point that she wasn't even thinking rationally or carefully, and quickly retorted against Ridley by getting closer to him, grabbing him by the mouth as she opened it as wide as she could and began screaming at him with every shot she put into him, fueled with hatred, anger, and desperation as tears begin to drop inside her helmet with intense emotions that came flowing through her.

"Don't you... EVER...! EVER! MENTION...! MY...! PARENTS! YOU BASTARD!"

One final missile and a fully charged beam shot were enough to take Ridley down. Dead or unconscious, it didn't matter to her now. His body was probably either going to disintegrate or was going to undergo heavy fractures all over, making sure he will stay dead this time around. Samus felt relieved as she has just avenged her parents for sure, but at the same time, she knew that her time was running out and everything that was once in her mind, was coming in a flash; her homeplanet, K-2L, her second homeplanet, Zebes, her biological parents, Virginia and Rodney Aran, from the little moments she could remember with them, the Chozo that once took care of her after her parents' death, her father-figure and former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, her brother-figure, Rundas, and everyone else who she has met both in the past and recent times.

WARNING! IMPACT IMMINENT IN 10, 9, 8, 7, 6

Everything that flowed inside her mind was hitting her hard emotionally, like someone trying to rip her from the inside out. She kept thinking of the things she was about to leave behind and mostly left unfinished; something that made Samus drop silently in tears as she closed her eyes and prepared for her imminent doom.

Then, there was something or someone that caught her in mid-air. It was a gentle catch and after a few moments of thinking whether she was still alive or dead as a ghost, relieving the same moment of the impact she may have taken not so long ago, the shocking idea made her black out completely and laid in the arms of the unknown person or entity that caught her moments before her death.

And that's that!

Sorry I didn't get this chapter up on time. I finished up this chapter and was almost done with the next one, until some sort of corruption failure in my flash drive forced me to format it and everything I wrote for this chapter went back to square one, along with the other one. I gave up on trying to rewrite them for a couple of weeks until I finally came to terms with it and got over it. This chapter was probably going to be slightly different, but more ideas came to mind so I just dropped whatever came up in my brain for this chapter.

One more thing, I made up a name for Orion (which isn't really an original character, but also not much of an official character either) and his actual name is Vel 'Acacius. Vel, meaning a war god, and Acacius, meaning not evil or just innocent. We all know Space Pirates are in no way innocent, but I felt like Acacius was a good name for Orion as he isn't necessarily evil, for the most part anyway, but we shall see. :3

Next chapter is probably going to be up by next month most likely, if not, a bit earlier, but as I said before, I can't really make any promises. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and look forward to the next one!