Next up, a continuation directly from Samus' point of view. I'll tell you now that this chapter might be the longest to date. I might even have longer chapters in the future too so I hope that won't be a problem, so long as I continue writing this without giving a permanent hiatus.
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 12: Hope or Despair
"Samus, Samus!" The unknown familiar voice kept repeating her name. After no response, they called out for Samus' name again. "Samus! Wake up! You've got a mission to do!
Samus tried lifting her head as she continued to struggle in regaining her consciousness. The voice then continued with a familiar phrase that she hasn't heard of since before she became a bounty hunter.
"Any objections, lady?"
"Wh-what?" She whispered, wondering for a moment as her vision was still blurred when trying to open her eyes carefully. "Adam? Is that... you?"
She sat up as she took her helmet off to take a deep breath and rub her temples due to a large headache she was experiencing. She then slowly began to rub her eyes in order to get a good grip on her surroundings. Once her headache began to fade away and her vision started to become clearer, she found out that the person who had saved her was none other than Rundas himself.
"There's the Samus I know; good and alive!" He said with a light-hearted tone.
"Rundas?" She couldn't believe that he has risked himself of losing his powers near the extreme heating environment in the abyss from where she almost fell to her death. Any second longer within the extreme heat and he could have potentially perished along with her. "Thank you. I'd probably be dead if it weren't for-"
"Don't worry about it," he said calmly, "even if it meant risking my own life, I'd do it a million times over." Rundas gave Samus a hand to help her stand up and then questioned Samus about a certain somebody that she was whispering about. "And who's Adam, by the way?"
"Oh umm..." Samus hesitated for a bit before finally answering, "He used to be my commanding officer and is more of a father-figure to me. I hear his voice sometimes whenever I'm in situations like this. I guess it's just something that happens whenever you admire someone deeply."
"I don't blame you," he sympathized, "I also hear my brother's voice whenever I'm in dangerous situations and every time I hear him, he would only tell me to keep going and never give up, no matter how much you feel like you're losing. His voice was there all along when I went in to save you down there. It kept me going, even after feeling I wasn't going to make it in time."
"Well, I'm glad to say that we have something else in common, right?" Said Samus as she put back her helmet on. "Anyway, how's everyone else doing?"
"I was just helping them take out some blue-eyed Pirates. After finishing up killing most of them, I decided to check up on you as I knew that dastardly dragon was going to put up a fight against you when he flew right above us. I'm glad I came when I did or else..."
"Thanks again. I know I can always count on you, even when I never do ask for the help directly," replied Samus, gratefully.
"Well, I should leave you to turn on this last generator, I'll let the others know to get ready for a whole turning point on this invasion."
"Right, I'll catch up with you guys in a bit."
Rundas nodded before leaving Samus to activate the last generator needed to reactivate the defense cannon.
Walking down next to the computer panel behind her, she began the process of activating the generator with her digitalized handprint on her power suit, turning on the main lights and shaft that led right into the deep hell she went through just before.
"Okay, everything seems to be in working order..." she said to herself as she stared at the whole room before confirming that the generator was fully powered on.
Before she managed to leave the generator room for good, an alarm started to go off, lighting the whole entire base in a crimson color. The lights that remained in its original state began flickering as small tremors rocked the whole base with small debris falling off from the roof of the base. Samus thought it was due to an impending attack from the Pirates themselves but later realized that the tremors were all due to the air strikes from both factions of the invasions. A female voice was then heard from all around the base announcing a danger that Samus nearly forgot how much closer it was than ever before.
"Attention all personnel! Meteor impact will occur in 5 minutes! Repeat! Meteor impact will occur in 5 minutes!"
"Time to hassle!" She told herself loudly.
As she fought her way through the corridors outside of Generator C, her radio beeped to life and the Aurora Unit that briefed the bounty hunters and freelancers, from what seemed to be long ago, appeared in her visor like a ghost.
"Samus," it said, "all efforts to stop the meteor have failed. Our only remaining chance of stopping that meteor is the defense cannon itself. You and three other hunters are required to get to the control tower and fire it. Only registered bounty hunters are able to bypass the security system of the defense mechanism. You must join the others immediately."
"I'm already on my way there," she answered. "Hopefully, there won't be anything to hinder my way through there."
"Would you like me to upload the coordinates to the control tower for you?" The AU 242 asked.
"No. I think I may have everything memorized by now. Thanks, anyway."
Samus' last reply was the only thing that 242 heard before cutting off communication with her. Now that Samus was outside, she saw something bright in the sky, as if a shooting star was passing by closely. Unfortunately for her and everyone else on the planet, it wasn't just a close up look at a shooting star but the same meteor that was previously mentioned by 242 and the Admiral. Just minutes before, it only looked like a small bright dot in the sky but now it seemed like a giant bright fireball that was about to rain hard on the planet itself, which could cause devastating consequences if not stopped in time.
"I can't let this planet suffer the same fate as Tallon IV and Aether before it," she told herself in her mind while trying to sound hopeful at once. "I wasn't there to help those other planets before impact but I'm here now to help this one and prevent another worldwide catastrophe from happening."
As she made her way to the other side of the base in her morph ball mode, she sensed incoming Pirate ships towards her, but they weren't there to kill her on sight. They were actually deploying their phazon-infected forces into the room on the other side of the door she needed to enter, much to Samus' frustration. Out of her morph ball mode and once upon entering inside Conduit C, her fears came to be true as large forces of blue-eyed Pirates were ready to face Samus and prevent her from joining up with the others.
"Ugh! Give me a break already!"
Meanwhile in the cargo hub area...
"Man do these Pirates take up more bullets than normal!" Wash growled as he kept shooting on the Pirates that got closer to him. "I'm already running low on ammo on everything!"
"Stop your complaining and keep taking them out with your mouth shut!" Exclaimed Ghor, who was still in his suit while fighting off the Pirates with his giant robotic bare hands.
Wash wanted to retaliate against Ghor for a moment before realizing they were on the same side after all. Plus, it reminded him of his early relationship with the reds and blues and the way he acted upon them. It was as if he was looking at his own reflection within Ghor himself which in part, made Wash feel uncomfortable just by having to think about it.
Carolina and Gandrayda seemed to have a better relationship than Ghor and Wash, to some extent. The two were seen to be punching and kicking every Pirate coming at them with all the strength they got, keeping each other's back from one end to another, much like a duo who have trained together since their early days in the military. However, much like to anyone else's annoyance with Gandrayda's childish actions, it was no better on Carolina's part.
"You've got some moves, Caroline," Gandrayda commented casually. "Mind if I ask who taught you that would inadvertently make us look like sisters?"
"My name is Carolina!" She huffed at her as she knocked out a Pirate with a powerful roundhouse kick, expressing her anger even further. "And mind your own business!"
"Well, if we are gonna be working together from here on out, might as well get to know each other a little bit better, am I right?"
Carolina ignored her request and kept killing more Pirates coming to their way, this time, with more force and frustration at the fact that Gandrayda was spilling her patience to the ground.
Vel was busy taking out his own infected comrades with his powerful entrusted scythe while being resentful and sympathetic all at once. However, he saw the whole thing with Carolina and Gandrayda in the corner of his eye and fully understood Carolina's frustration. He had to go through a similar process with Gandrayda and almost managed to shoot her dead. The fact that he had the strength of not shooting her directly made him think that if he was able to resist in doing so, then Carolina, whom he saw as a soldier trying to do what's best for her and her space colony, along with the other steel-colored soldier, could very well handle their relationship better than he did with Gandrayda. At least due to him being a Space Pirate himself.
Several minutes passed by and the last remaining Pirates were thrown to oblivion. Just after the last infected Pirate was taken care of, everyone dropped down to rest for a bit, still waiting on Rundas and Samus' return. All they could hear in the base were the alarms screaming all around them with small explosions still throwing the entire base in a state of tremors. All of the generators were online and the entrance to the elevator leading up to the control tower was now open.
However, during their fight against the incoming waves of the phazon-infected Pirates, they were informed that at least four bounty hunters, who are registered within the Federation, were required to activate the defense cannon. There was only two present; Ghor and Gandrayda. The freelancers didn't count as bounty hunters since they weren't formally registered within the Federation itself and were only granted access inside Federation property under Dane's command. Vel wasn't even part of the Federation either and unbeknownst to them, he was in fact, already on their side of the fight, at least for now. At this point, it would only seem plausible that he was already wanted by his own species due to his actions with the hunters and freelancers. Although he was unsure if a few, to some degree, would agree with him working alongside the Federation in order to prevent further phazon corruption within the entire cosmos that could potentially seal all of their combined fates forever.
Having already heard the female voice before during their defense against the Pirates, it once again announced the amount of time left before an imminent danger was to come and abolish everyone on the planet.
"4 minutes, until meteor impact!"
Not long afterward, they heard a door open at a distance, startling almost everyone. They all began to stand on their guard until having realized it was Rundas who have returned after having left for Samus. Before anyone could say a word, they realized that Samus was still missing and hasn't come along with the ice hunter.
"Whatever happened to dear old Sammy?" Asked Gandrayda with a slightly worried look on her face.
"She'll be fine," reassured Rundas. "There were some more of those Pirates coming to our way too so it took some time before I managed to get here."
"You missed a few," said Carolina as they have fought more waves of Space Pirates just recently. "Lucky for you, we managed to stand against them." She began to look around towards the control tower entrance and back at the group, wondering if they should either move on forward or wait it out until the last bounty hunter would arrive. "So... what are we going to do now?"
"Wait for Samus to come back, I guess?" Wash suggested. "We only have three bounty hunters with us and Samus is the only one missing."
"Way to go, Mr. Captian Obvious," Carolina teased him.
Wash gave a small gesture, expressing his annoyance on Carolina's statement, "Ugh... really?! I mean, I was only merely trying to-"
"We've got a problem!" Ghor interrupted with his loud, deep voice.
"Now what?" Said Carolina, feeling frustrated to be hearing bad news every minute or so.
"Elevator's stuck on something!" He said furiously as he tried shooting whatever was stuck on the sides of the elevator with his plasma cannon, to no avail. "Seems like it got caught up with some mass of rubble during the initial attacks. I don't think our current arsenal would do much to help!"
"Stand aside," Vel ordered. "Let me handle it."
"What's a Pirate like YOU going TO DO?!" He inquired directly with a dark tone.
Vel didn't say a word and continued on with what he had in plan. He took out his scythe, along with a small glowing blue capsule filled with phazon and spilled the liquid phazon over it. The substance seemed to be fused with another chemical that caused it to have an even higher concentration of corrosive properties that when spilled, it dissolved much of the alloy that the ground was made of, instantaneously. The Pirate's scythe, however, seemed to be resistant to such properties and went on his way to destroy every piece of debris that was stuck on the elevator, carefully trying to avoid contact with the material from the elevator, in case it would cause a malfunction within. One stab after another, the group only stared at the Pirate at work.
"All done," he said calmly, shaking his scythe a little to dry it up and put it away afterward.
"Can't say I'm not impressed," commented Gandrayda, smiling at the thought of a Space Pirate actually doing something useful for them.
Ghor took a small gaze on the freelanced Pirate, still thinking he was going to spell trouble sooner or later, but he couldn't deny the fact that because of him, they are now able to gain access directly to the control room inside the tower. He put his thoughts aside and signaled everyone else to gather around in the elevator's platform.
"Now, let's all wait for Samus to arrive," he emphasized to everyone in the group. "If she doesn't get here within the minute, we're gonna have to force our way through without her!"
Rundas wanted to go and try to see if Samus was alright once more, but something in his mind told him that this time it wouldn't be necessary to go back and get Samus since they couldn't afford to lose another bounty hunter during their wait on a tight countdown and make them worry more than they need to. So he decided to calm himself down and promised himself that Samus will be here at any moment given.
The female voice that was heard throughout the base didn't care if anyone was already panicking and continued to announce the estimated time before their lives get taken away from them.
"3 minutes, until meteor impact!"
"C'mon Samus... I know you can make it," he thought anxiously.
Moments earlier...
One kick to the face, another to the other, a direct charged beam shot to another's mandible-like mouth, missiles and continuous beam shots towards those in hypermode, and still, they kept coming from all over directions. Samus didn't know when to keep up with this and the menacing blue-eyed Space Pirates knew that wasting enough of her time would prevent her from regrouping with the others and guarantee the meteor to strike the planet and corrupt it with whatever fierce power it had. Since there was little to no time fighting off every Pirate that came to her way, she decided to punch her way through them and head towards the exit to the other side. However, much to her disappointment, she found out that the exit was blocked off completely.
Turning back to where she came from, Samus realized that a group of aeromines were present, but these ones seemed to have some modifications to them. By using her scan visor, she learned that they had a programming that allows them to lock all doors within the vicinity, thus keeping her trapped until she had to deal with both the blue-eyed Pirates and their drones.
"A meteor that's about to hit a planet that I'm standing on and now I'm trapped in here with a bunch of bloodthirsty Pirates and drones? Couldn't get any better..." Samus thought in her mind.
Her frustration was only brief, as she has found a way on how to deal with every single one of her enemies inside the room she was trapped in. She saw that there were loose cables swinging around that were still charged with electricity. She could put them in good use by luring the Pirates near her and fry them off with the cables that were giving off powerful sparks of electricity. Then she could roll herself in front of the loose cables in her morph ball and lure the relentless drones into frying themselves, cutting the time off from having to kill them one by one.
"3 minutes, until meteor impact!"
This announcement was her cue to execute her plans as soon as possible.
"Wish I had the wave beam upgrade," she thought.
She began to taunt the Pirates to come to her and fight like real bloodthirsty Pirates would do, instead of becoming failures to their dark leader.
"HEY!" She called them out. "You all are gonna be a bunch of idiotic failures if you don't end up killing me for your pathetic little dark 'mistress'!"
This angered the Pirates more than they already were and rushed at her, unknowingly that they were falling into her trap. At the right moment, she jumped over them and shoved the loose cables onto a group of four Pirates, frying them like batteries being overcharged with hundreds of volts than needed. The other group wasn't foolish enough to get near her and sprayed phazon hyper shots at her. Some even managed to hit her like powerful acidic shots that burned through her armor, making her grunt in pain for a short moment.
Not knowing what would be the most effective way of killing enemies turning to a hypermode state, she considered grabbing a dead Pirate's shield in hopes of deflecting hyper attacks. Much to her surprise, it actually managed to help her deflect them as needed. She concluded that, because the Pirates' weaponry is mostly composed of just false copies from original weaponry they have stolen from other colonies and civilizations, most of their weapons and defensive accessories would equal to one another, thus preventing for possible causes of friendly fire. Samus looked for a phazon-charged weapon anywhere she could, but every Pirate weapon she came across had just ordinary weapons and nothing related to phazon weaponry.
"What?!" She thought in disbelief. "How the hell do these Pirates use phazon as a weapon without needing actual phazon weapons for the radioactive material or even a PED suit with an external backpack, to begin with? Could it be that, due to phazon infection, they don't require the need to use such things?"
There was no time to look for answers. She had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Knocking down the group of Pirates, one by one, gave her enough time to get rid of the aeromines that kept her from getting out. As a last line of defense, the aeromines tried homing in on Samus as soon as they hit themselves against the sparking cables when Samus lured them in, but nearly hit her and instead, blew themselves up on the group of Pirates that were left standing, finishing them off completely. The termination of the aeromines caused the doors of both ends of Conduit C to unlock, quickly running towards the maintenance station, only to find out that there were even more aeromines waiting for her arrival.
"Wow, you guys are probably the most annoying little drones I've ever seen in a long while!" She said as she raised her arm cannon at them, frustratingly.
Realizing that she was running out of time and the others might already head on without her, promptly sealing their fates for a gamble they might not win against the security system, she decided to take in all the hits in her morph ball as the aeromines do minimal damage in her morph ball form. She waited for the aeromines to home in and explode near her.
As surprising as it was, it didn't take long before one of them started a chain reaction of small explosions that barely made Samus flinch within her morph ball. Thankfully, she didn't endure as much damage as she thought.
"I have to hurry!" She told herself after coming out of her morph ball form.
Having arrived at the cargo hub area, she saw that the whole group of freelancers and bounty hunters were just about to leave her behind until Wash managed to quickly stop them from doing so once he caught a glimpse on Samus.
"Hey! STOP!" He ordered and pointed them at Samus. "Look! Samus is right over there!"
"Sammy?" Gandrayda said as she also had a look on her before everyone else did.
"Over here!" Rundas hollered as he waved to Samus for their location.
Right after everyone noticed her presence, Samus quickly rushed forward before a couple of Space Pirates that followed her all the way through manage to get a good grip on her. Barely managing to evade them by mere inches, she shut off the entrance to the control tower and activated the elevator to go on their way to the control room.
"That was a close one," Samus panted, trying to catch her breath as the elevator started to move upwards. "Anyways... I'm back; in one piece for the most part."
"2 minutes, until meteor impact!"
"You're late!" Gandrayda exclaimed, stealing the first phrase out of everyone's mouth after having heard the amount of time they have left. "We were about to leave you behind."
"I apologize," she replied, still panting at a lower volume. "There was just some loose ends that needed to be taken care of before I was even allowed to get here."
"You're feeling okay Samus? You seem more exhausted than most of us here," Wash asked with a concerned look through his helmet.
"I've been better," she told him.
"Don't worry about her," comforted Rundas. "She's gone through worse than before and it'll take more than just a flying cybernetically-enhanced Pirate dragon to put her out for good, right Samus?"
"Considering I was thrown into an extremely heated abyss and almost died right after fighting off my archnemesis, yeah... I think I've been through worse," Samus shot back, not minding whether she did sound serious enough or sarcastic at the end. Even she didn't know which was the worst time she's ever experienced when standing near death's door. "But I owe Rundas my life. If it wasn't for him, I would've probably never come back and if bypassing the security system via hacking wasn't going to work, we'd probably all die with the planet itself turning into nothing more than a wasteland."
"Wait, you mean Ridley or whatever that thing is called, was that one flying beast who put up a fight against you?" Sputtered Wash, looking surprised as he knew one ordinary-military man like him, or even as a freelancer himself, wouldn't seemingly stand a chance against it just by looking at it. "That thing looks a lot more intimidating than even one of our friend's old robotic mantis! Or even this dude with the giant suit of armor right next to me!"
Ghor turned to face Wash, looking both offended and satisfied at once. Wash didn't know if he was staring at him to intimidate him even more, but he simply turned to face the opposite direction, trying to ignore Ghor's intimidating stare that seemingly looked into his soul through both his visor and eyes.
"Right... Maybe... I take that back on what I just said," Wash mumbled softly, feeling embarrassed about himself.
Vel began to feel nervous again, after having yet again, to be in the same room with the same hunter that wiped out most of his Pirate forces, back in Zebes and other parts of the outer colonies, but he didn't let it get to him. He kept telling himself that, no matter what happens, his actions will be justified one way or the other, even if it meant dire consequences against himself, but for a better future; whether it be for his own kind that has yet to be under the control of The Dark Hunter or the people he has been fighting alongside with. He couldn't help the fact that even though some might still hate him for what his kind has done to most of them, they were starting to grow on him a little.
"After we finish doing what we came here to do," he said out loud, in order to grab everyone's attention, "I will help you out in any way you wish and then turn myself in. I am not willing to face execution as punishment for my current actions or suffer a fate worse than death itself. I understand that my brethren may have caused much trouble within your lives, but I am willing to do whatever it takes to protect the cosmos from this upcoming corruption coming to devour the light out of our very own souls; stained or not."
Gandrayda chuckled for a brief moment, "Well, don't get too comfy yet, Ori. We still have yet to see how the Federation themselves react to the fact that a Pirate is actually on our side for once. Not saying you are in official terms or capacity, but I think you know what I mean."
Samus still didn't know what to think about the freelanced Pirate herself; whether to see him as her teammate or enemy. "Listen, Orion, I don't know if you are actually trying to be on our side or not, but after this is over, it'll be me who gets to take you in and then see if there could be any deals that both you and the Federation can work out. Just remember that you could potentially face imprisonment for life if nothing gets to be worked out and even if something did, the possibility is still there."
"I'll take my chances," Vel replied, seemingly accepting whatever fate has in store for him by this point.
So much has happened since their debriefing back on the moon, Iris, and Carolina was still focusing on what has been going on lately, still running on fumes based upon what little, Samus have said compared to what she has experienced in this past couple of hours.
"Samus," she called to her.
"Yes?" She replied.
"You still need to tell us every single detail about these Pirates or anything else you have yet to fill us in about. Not to mention this, Ridley creature you never mentioned about until now."
Samus noticed her irritated expression faintly through her visor and answered back, "My apologies, but considering the lack of time we've had since then, I'm afraid I won't be able to tell you anything more until we finish what we came here for. I can't promise you anything, but I'll be making sure to fill you in on the rest of the details later."
"QUITE!" Ordered Ghor with the loudest and deepest voice he could do.
There was a moment of silence and they listened to the announcer that came to be counting down the number of seconds left, instead of just mere minutes.
"90 seconds, until meteor impact!"
"Hear that?" He continued, "The meteor is approaching faster than you think!"
Gandrayda took a good look at above them and the entrance still seemed far away from them as the elevator was moving up at a steady pace, expecting it to go faster before the countdown drops to zero. At the same time, her hopes weren't going any higher and were already starting to look at the worst case scenario.
"You know, if we don't make it to the top in time, we can kiss this planet good-bye."
"Hey!" Rundas grabbed her attention before she continued saying anything else. "Relax, we're the good guys here. Justice will prevail and all that stuff..." He wasn't even sure if they were going to make it, but judging from his past actions, he still had something else to hope for by clinging with whatever optimism he had left to hold on to. He turned to Samus, hoping she would at least give him a nod towards his optimism, "Right, Samus?"
Samus didn't utter a word and was left closing her eyes, thinking about what Rundas said just now, before giving him a reluctant answer.
"I... hope so."
"If it was up to me, I wouldn't count on it..." Wash pointed out, thinking about his past experiences that proved to come at a high price for just about anything he ever did.
As the elevator closed to a stop just a few moments later, everyone on the elevator came to rush in towards the control room without any hesitation.
"70 seconds, until meteor impact"
Samus and Rundas were among the first to arrive at the control panel and put their handprints on a blank screen that showed off a white-outlined handprint. Gandrayda and Ghor followed after and the control panel unlocked its settings and modifications for the defense cannon, seemingly becoming in a working state.
"Right. Everyone, I'm gonna need you guys to cover me for any possible intruders while I try to get this thing activated," Samus ordered.
"On it!" Complied Carolina as she stood on her guard, looking around them.
"We'll let you know if there's anything unusual, Sammy," Gandrayda followed after. The others doing the same thing.
Samus began typing in the codes for activation that the AU from the Olympus has sent to her. She had to type them down manually as fast as she could with only her free left hand, but with the timer not giving her a break, it was as if she was in typing class all over again but this time, only with one hand and with their whole lives and a planet's fate at stake.
"C'mon... you can do this," Samus told herself in her mind as her adrenaline was pumping inside all over her body, seemingly increasing by each second that passed by as she typed word by word and number by number.
Wash moved on his way to search for anything useful around the room. In the back of the room, he saw some lockers that were seemingly unlocked and opened a few of them, finding ammo for almost any sort of weapon that even weapons from UNSC standard issue use. It was as if they had some sort of weapons storage in case of a break-in and took the advantage to take in anything he could, giving half of the ammo he found to Carolina.
After being given supplies of ammunition, Carolina moved to see through the window panels around the room. On the horizon near the mountain range, there was a bright blue orb that flew right past the mountain range before it disappeared out of view immediately. It made her think that she was just imagining things but considering that it looked quite similar to the blue aura that she saw on the dark being she came across with earlier, it made her think twice before trying to make sense of it.
"Did I actually just see something? Or was it just my-"
"DONE!" Samus interrupted. "Now to wait until the codes execute the command for activation and we are ready to fire this thing!"
Wash was more focused on what Carolina said earlier and wanted to find out what it was that she meant.
"Wait, what did you say that-"
There was a loud thunderous sound that interrupted Wash and struck every corner of the room, throwing both of the freelancers and bounty hunters off balance for a moment. The same bright blue ball that flew over the horizon was what landed in front of them but this time, it looked much bigger than expected. It was so bright, none of them could see what it really was; whether it was a rare ball of lightning or some other type of phenomena that not one person in the group did know about.
They all tried to take a good look at it as its light started to dim and the dark being that every phazon-corrupted Pirate has been worshipping has revealed itself to them. Dark Samus has arrived with the objective to stop them from firing the defense cannon at all costs.
Carolina and Samus were the only ones in the whole group to look more horrified than the others.
"It's her!" Carolina exclaimed, feeling terrified at the sight of the same dark being that gave a creepy laughter to her earlier in the day. "The same dark beast!"
"No..." Samus murmured in disbelief. "How... how can you still be alive?!"
Ghor didn't want to waste the opportunity of killing the dark being and demanded everyone to shoot her on sight.
"OPEN FIRE!"
Everyone immediately started shooting at the phazon creature with no hesitation. However, their shots were only ricocheting away from her, rendering all of their current weapons, useless.
"Why isn't anything working!" Wash yelled in frustration.
"I mentioned it before that none of our current weapons would hurt such being," Vel pointed out, not knowing what to do himself.
Desperate to do anything against the corrupt creature, Wash grabbed the rocket launcher that he found in the lockers not long ago and shot at least two rockets near the ground that Dark Samus was standing, in order to prevent it from getting deflected. All it did, however, was merely make Dark Samus laugh uncontrollably in a demonic manner and began taunting at Wash, feeling unstoppable.
"You little cretin! Even with your biggest toys, you wouldn't be able to kill me!" She then turned to the person who she stole the phazon suit and DNA from, "You'd be surprised by the sheer number of new tricks I have at hand, all thanks to the combat data I've gathered from you and everyone else."
The dark creature didn't waste any more time and much to her amusement, she began shooting back at everyone, knocking all but a few of them down. The shots weren't fatal but it was enough to give them a good knockback and small stings of pain due to having high amounts of phazon radiation. It was useless to do any sort of retaliation against Dark Samus as none of their weapons would actually do anything against her at all.
Dark Samus then walked towards the fallen Pirate and stepped on his chest, ready to have him crushed to death by her own foot, aiming her cloned arm cannon at him. "Thanks to you, now I will finally be able to complete my full convergence of the galaxy and universe into nothing but pure phazon worlds!"
"Wh... what?" Vel mumbled as he was groaning in pain. He would've thought it was The Hunter to be feared, but The Dark Hunter has already proven to be more fearsome than The Hunter herself. Although he thought he was already done for, he still wanted to find out what was exactly The Dark Hunter talking about.
"Don't kid yourself!" She continued to taunt him, "You realize why you were the only surviving member of the mining crew back when you first left Aether, right?"
"I sneaked through..." Vel tried catching his breath whilst getting stepped on by Dark Samus, "...towards an escape pod!"
"That was my plan all along," she shot back. "Since you have had a history of defiance against your own kind, I let you escape after I was reborn with all the phazon that was collected inside the ship. Since then, I had been tracking your movements all along. For that reason alone, I was finally able to locate one of the outside colonies, such as planets called, Zebes and SR388!"
"What?!" Samus was in disbelief from what she has heard from her own dark twin.
Her doppelganger turned to face a confused Samus.
"You heard what I said! I've already sent in a group to infiltrate both worlds and grab as many of my children and siblings as they can, and send them to a place where they will grow and become even more powerful than what you all can imagine!" She then turned back to her victim underneath her, "Too bad you're just another number among the list of expendable agents. I expected more from you!"
"You may do as you please, but your reign will not be a long lasted victory!" Vel shot back, knowing that even if he kept his mouth shut, he would be dead either way so aggravating his attacker was the least he could do before his life would be taken away.
Dark Samus began the process of slowly crushing the Pirate to death, but before she was able to finish off the doomed Pirated, the control panel's computer announced it has just completed executing the activation codes, distracting her from killing him.
"Activation process complete. Please confirm."
Rundas decided not to waste any more time and dashed towards the control panel to fire the defense cannon, only for Dark Samus to knock him back away from the computer with her phazon-charged arm cannon. In response, Samus angrily charged at her doppelganger. Because Dark Samus is a near perfect identical clone to that of Samus, she had just the same amount, if not, better reflexes than Samus herself as she was swiftly knocked back by her evil twin. Not to mention Dark Samus having an invisible force that surrounded her for protection from any outside harm.
"As I said... useless. Ahh ha ha ha ha!" The dark being boasted as she burst into a maniacal laughter afterward.
Having thoroughly planned their fates, she ultimately decided to step back from the Pirate and walked towards the debris from where she once came through. The dark creature turned around to face them, with the opposing group having no clue as to what she was planning to do next, and began to charge up her variant version of Samus' charge beam, filling the room with full of blue light. The blue light then turned to a huge wave of intensive amounts of phazon energy, knocking every person in the room to the ground, unconscious. Having seemingly finished what her minions couldn't do, she gave one final demonic laughter before flying away, heading towards an unknown destination as she disappeared from view into Norion's atmosphere.
"Meteor at approximately 800km. All personnel, prepare for impact."
The faint voice was heard in the background as a room of unconscious people were scattered inside the control tower. It seemed like even though the meteor was still several hundreds of kilometers away, the meteor was raging through the planet's atmosphere and entering at an extremely high velocity.
However, only one person was still left standing but heavily injured. A weak Samus was still fighting for her last strength as she dragged herself on the ground towards the control panel. Raising one arm and the next, the least she could do was lean against the chair next to her. The pain she was experiencing inside both her chest and abdominal areas was immense and unbearing, but the thought of having to save yet another planet from an impending doom was the only thing that was driving her to keep going. After much struggle, she was finally able to press the confirmation button for the firing process to commence.
The defense cannon gained life as it fired a giant laser beam right above Norion's atmosphere, hitting a mirrored satellite that just finished aiming and following the meteor's path, destroying it into a million pieces that soon after, disintegrated through the atmosphere. From the planet's surface, one would be able to see as if a small rogue star was demolished and left bright luminous pieces of debris burning up inside the atmosphere and into the sky itself. Any second longer and the whole world would've suffered a similar fate like Tallon IV and Aether themselves.
"We... we did it..." said Samus in a weak voice. She was profoundly happy that they managed to destroy the meteor. However, she began to worry more about her teammates and all of their potential fates. She couldn't resist from trying to fall to the ground for much longer and soon began to mumble to herself repeatedly before falling unconscious like the rest of her comrades.
"We did it... we—we did... it... did-it... we... we... did... it..."
The air inside the control tower soon fell into silence as the wind outside of the broke glass panel was the only thing filling in the empty sounds of isolation around the fallen bounty hunters and freelancers.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! It took me a bit longer to do since half of it was more of a rehash from the first half of the very first chapter and had to do some things differently. I tried adding in more details and a few additions here and there in order to provide a more refreshing way of seeing how this whole entire scene turned out to be in the end. Again, I'm sorry for the slow uploads. Writing isn't my main forte, but my motivation to keep writing this whole crossover is still there. I haven't given up! At least not yet... ^.^ But I don't plan on discontinuing this any time soon. I'll be making sure to see it till the very end and I already have so many ideas for the ending of this fanfic, even though it is far from being finished xD Anyways, leave a review and do some criticism! Really appreciate the criticism I got before! It'll help me out a lot more than you think! Stay tuned for the next upcoming chapter!