Okay, I just want to get this very clear. I'm not going for 100%. Partly because I'm not describing everything Composite and Samus do, and partly because I only know where about 50% of the items are. Also, I'm not looking up names for any enemies except the bosses. If I know it I'll use it, if not I'll just describe it. Get over it.

Also, don't expect this on time. It's the same complaint that is common among all FF writers my age. Need I explain further?

Chapter 4: Sector 2

"Atmospheric Stabilizers online. Despite this, the X have entered Sector 2, the tropical sector, abbreviated TRO. I'll brief you further when you get there." The AI announces. A wireframe diagram of the station rotates, bringing sector 2 front and center. We sign off and proceed back to the main deck sector hub.

On the elevator Samus turns to us, "You know, when that AI briefs us, I can't help but think of the real Adam. He understood me. I remember he'd finish every briefing with 'Any objections, Lady?' He knew I wouldn't disagree, well, not beyond saying the opposite of whatever reaction he wanted. He was the only person who could call me Lady without it sounding belittling or sarcastic. I couldn't say the same of the other squad members though. I wonder if I can trust the computer the same way I used to trust Adam."

We run out of the room with the sector 1 elevator and cross the circular hub to Sector 2 and connect to Samus's ship. We check with our ship and, unsurprisingly, find that Cobra has noticed nothing of importance. Samus's ship starts the briefing

"I have determined the identity of our intruder. It is an X mimicking Samus. It appears to have modified itself somewhat though, as some of the damage it has caused appears to have been fire damage." We flinch slightly at this, "So, to make things a bit easier, HQ has sent bomb data. There is a data room in this sector, but there's a problem… The map on the screen scrolls to the data room. "The data room is secured with a Level 1 Hatch. You'll need to find a security room to open it. I can't show you the location. It's not stored in the computer anywhere. Once you have bombs, return here. As for the X mimicking you, I've dubbed it the SA-X. It used a Power Bomb to escape, releasing the X-infected specimens. But the SA-X is your primary concern. Don't try to fight it. It mimics you at full power. You are still quite weak, especially to cold, a side-effect of the Metroid vaccine. Like a Metroid, you can be frozen with the Ice Beam. Needless to say, it has one. Based on the cameras, it is armed with Ice, Diffusion, and Plasma. I can't tell if it has Charge or Wave, but it would be a safe assumption. It also has Screw Attack and probably Space Jump. It certainly has Super Missiles and Power Bombs. It has Varia, but I can't be certain about Gravity. It does, of course, have morph ball, and it probably has bombs and spring ball. Anyway, go get the security door and get those bombs."

We run through the biometric room and into the recharge room, which Samus uses. We step up and place our hand on the console. The console extends and ejects a Missile. We pick it up.

AMMUNITION DETECTED: SCANNING…

TYPE: SELF-PROPELLED EXPLOSIVE MISSILE

DAMAGE MEDIUM

FIRE RATE: MEDIUM

READY

We load the missile and pump our shotgun. The barrel extends and opens in a cross. We eject the missile and reload an assault rifle clip. Samus has a pensive look on her face. "Something on your mind?" we ask, sensing that it's one of those things that she doesn't want to talk about, but really should. Sensing by experience, not telepathy.

"…Yes, the SA-X" Samus says after a moment, "I know that I didn't have any way of knowing, but I can't help the feeling that I'm responsible for the SA-X."

We think for a moment, "Well… We think of it this way. If you were to walk on apparently flat field, no way to know anything's wrong, and a mine blows up under you, could that be clled a mistake?"

"Uh… No?" Samus isn't sure where we're going, but she's got a pretty good idea, "Not legitimately anyway."

"Did you have any way of knowing the X were dangerous?"

"I should have thought of it, I thought it had just splattered against my armor. I've seen plenty of critters that do that. It's most certainly annoying."

"So, did you make a mistake given the current information?"

"Not really, but that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty. Though it occurs to me there's not really any difference between what you said and what a shrink might say, and the only difference between you right now and a shrink is a degree. Oh, well." She pops open the door out of the recharge room and runs along the overhang. "So, any idea where we're supposed to go?"

In response we project a map out of our Ki, "Well, this room looks like a hub. If we go this way," we point at a lower room on the left wall, "It goes to the Data Room, and the security lock probably isn't next to the data room. The room above it probably isn't it for the same reason. This little room to the right probably isn't it because it's too accessible. Plus the blue security hatch wouldn't be guarding the blue lock, because there wouldn't be any way to get to it. So it can only b the one in front of us." We point at a hatch well in front of us. We copy some sort of red wallhugger that can stick to the walls, ceilings, and floors. (Stick to any surface, strong contact damage, no ranged attack.) Samus blasts several of them and we enter the nex chamber, blasting several more of them while climbing. Samus wordlessly points at the blue hatch blocking the suspected security room. We equally wordlessly point at the map, which indicates that the room extends upward, as does the current room. She nods and we continue upward. The top has a white hatch, which we shoot open. Samus jumps down in a somersault and lands on her feet. We float down in a sitting position, legs tucked under and right arm in between, shotgun muzzle first. We first used this flight position in battle, but later dubbed it "The Enemy's Gate is Down" after a similar technique from a novel we'd read. By the time we land, Samus has already unlocked the door by stepping on the platform in the middle of the room, activating the console. We open the blue door and continue out.

Hopping down towards the data room, we turn down a hall and to another room. We hop up a platform, onto an upper roof and blast some sort of flying creature. Down the hall we enter the Data Room. Samus steps into the chamber. When the energy field dissipates, she steps out, rolls into ball form and drops a small sphere about half a meter in diameter. It explodes after a second, propelling her upward. She unrolls.

"Doesn't that hurt?" We ask.

"Which part? The ball morph or the bomb?" she aasks in response.

"Both"

"Oh, the bomb simply doesn't bother me because it's just not strong enough to penetrate my armor. When I use the morph ball, I just curl into a ball and my suit creates a spherical energy field around me. So, how are you going to do your own bomb equivalent?"

"Just a simple telekinetic burst. Nothing fancy."

We step out of the data room and instantly hear a large explosion followed by loud footsteps. Samus gets it before we do, "The exit!" She runs down and shoots the exit door a few times before shaking her head, "It's gone. Though I did see a couple bomb tunnels that could be useful." She hops up the platforms and morphs, dropping a bomb. The bomb detonates, breaking a block. She rolls into the hole and comes out a minute later proceeded by an RU expansion, which flops to the ground unceremoniously. "Thought you might not want to go rolling through a tunnel you didn't have to, and I was already there."

We nod silently and load our sniper ammo, sending three beams of light into red wallhuggers. The three unlucky contestants derez with an angry sound. We take the chance to transform into ball form and take up station in front of the ball tunnel at the far end of the room. Our ball glows a white-green color before we release a small shockwave. The ball tunnel cover stays intact… But the floor under it doesn't. We crash into a small tunnel that's only one meter tall, but about three meters wide. We roll to the side just in time for Samus to plop down much more gracefully, if it's possible to be graceful in the form of a one meter sphere. We get the distinct impression she's smirking inside her helmet. We scan our surroundings using a combination of visual and ultrasonic sensors distributed around the surface of our sphere. We don't begin to wonder how Samus navigates without uploading her last meal. It almost makes us nauseous even without a stomach to feel nausea with. We roll down the tunnel, which seems to have a sort of s-curve just to be confusing. We drop over the edge and dodge one of the flying creatures, opening the nearest door before turning away upon seeing only a biometric transmission room. We blast two fliers and a wallhugger before opening the door at the end of the room. This one is much more interesting. We can see the entrance to some sort of ball maze. Above this is a ledge. Samus glances at it, and, presumably on a hunch, jumps onto a block, morphs, and bombs. A sort of pillar rises out of the ground. Samus crouches and shoots a block that appears cracked slightly and crawls through into a chamber. We follow, hearing the sound of a flier being blasted. She tries to jump up onto a ledge, but can't jump high enough.

"Let us," we say in a cocky tone, morphing and releasing telekinetic blasts until another pillar rises up. We jump onto the pillar, load the RU expansion at the top and toss a Missile Expansion to a waiting Samus. We quickly bomb and burst our way through the maze, letting Samus blast several wallhuggers and eventually falling to a lower chamber, into a side hall that leads down, and into another room. We feel it necessary to comment, "Wow, the place is really messed up. Look at those vines growing everywhere," referencing the vines growing over everything that doesn't move.

"Yeah," Samus responds, "It is impressive. Luckily the vines don't inhibit movement any." We follow her as she blasts a flier and a wallhugger before dropping onto some collapsing blocks. Samus charges a shot and does a somersault jump into some sort of sidehopper, shooting it at point-blank range. It derezes into an X and expels a spike that hits us in the back, seeing as we're dealing with a wallhugger on the ceiling. Upon hearing our yelp, Samus glances over, and seeing that we weren't damaged, grins and asks, "What, did I hurt you?" and blasts another wallhugger.

We rub our back with a disgruntled expression, right above the point where our swords cross, and suddenly mock a draw and lunge, snarling, "Don't test us," before we both explode into a gale of laughter.

"Okay," Samus says after a minute, taking her hands off her knees, "Humor break over, let's get back to the navigation room," She points at a door and we follow, jumping up two ledges and shooting a few enemies below the opposite side of the pillar. She shoots a few small jumping creatures and bombs out another of the metal pillars we love so much, crawling up onto another of the tall blue pillars in this utilitarian room. We strafe around another of the little dome jumpers before drawing our blades and going to work. In the next room, a tall vertical tower, we slice up another of the wallhuggers crawling along the ground. We hop up two platforms and down a small side shaft. It seems to be a mistake as it's too high to jump back out, having a step on the other side allowing us to climb it. Samus simply somersaults into the wall above. The door behind the pillar and kicks off, mounting the top of the pillar and jumping back down. We follow her in.

Samus zaps a sidehopper in the next room and a walllhugger in the room after that. Straight ahead she sends her biometrics to her ship for no particular reason and continues through. The next room has some sort of little spike ball that Samus simply hits with charge shots. We glance at them and decide to ignore them, as they probably have no useful abilities. The room after that has some wallhuggers and nothing else. Samus bombs out part of the ground and missiles a barrier X to death, absorbing the red X.

"Well, let's get this over with," we comment, shooting the door open and reloading our assault magazine. Samus runs through the door, already charging up a shot and we follow on her heels. The room has a small pillar in front of the door. Samus jumps it easily and drops off the other side. We hear an expulsion of air as she lands further down than expected. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, just surprised. Get down here."

The expected Core-X floats in the middle of the room, surrounded by smaller X. The collection rez into a tall blue creature. It has a stacked segmented body with a single large eye and four sensory tentacles at its head. Samus lowers her weapon and her helmet emits a soft oscillating buzz for a moment before she speaks up. "Zazabi. It attacks by jumping and floating down on its prey. Its weakness is that when it opens its mouth it opens a channel straight to its brain."

"How do you know this?"

"My helmet can scan enemies and other objects."

"Ah. Playtime!" We swap out our magazine for a sniper clip. Samus raises her weapon and shoots the Zazabi and it gives a slight yelp before turning her way. It starts to slide along the ground towards her, using its mouth as a foot. We start playing some music in our helmet to get in rhythm, a quirk of unknown origin. The creature jumps very high, arcing over Samus's head and landing with a splat on the other side. Samus stands still, waiting for it to come at her. It jumps a second time and stops, hovering right above her. Its mouth opens wide and it starts to fall. Samus rapidly alternates missiles and normal uncharged shots, causing four of the distinctive grunts of an X in pain. Samus throws herself out of the way as it comes crashing down. One of its segments explodes, covering Samus in plant guts. We throw our Disk at it, getting its attention, and, waiting for it to open itself up, yell at Samus "You look ridiculous!"

Samus grins and waits. The Zazabi opens up and we hit it with two of our solid-core sniper shots. A second segment explodes and Samus responds "So do you!"

"Yeah, we deserved that." We take out a third segment and Samus returns its focus to her. We take the opportunity to reload. Samus prepares to fire before we yell "Wait just a sec," charging forward, jumping, and grabbing one of the head tentacles, which are now right above head level.

Copy Form
Name: Zazabi
Type: Parasite: Wetware Semi-Sentient, Host: Wetware Non-Sentient
Abilities: High jump, Vertical Float
Strengths: Heavily armored, Feed on consumed enemies
Weaknesses: Low contact damage, No ranged attack, Explosives can free prey, mouth leads directly to brain
Known Morph Restrictions: Metroid universe
Copy Complete
Verification Complete

It looks distinctly surprised when a full height Zazabi appears next to it for a second. It shakes itself and continues towards Samus, jumps, and eats about four missiles, derezing into a Core-X and a quickly absorbed cloud of regular X. We eject our sniper magazine and pick up a missile from Hammerspace, loading it in. Our shotgun opens into a cross and we fire at the X. It gives a yelp and bounces away from us, right towards Samus. Samus strafes out of the way and gives it a present from her charge shot. We hit it again, followed by Samus. While the core shielding is still up, it's moving slowly and clearly not going to survive much longer. We eject our latest missile and return our shotgun to its normal form, charging forwards and unloading both barrels at point blank range. The shield dissolves and Samus absorbs it, restoring her High Jump and Spring Ball abilities. She jumps up the high walls at the edge of the chamber and waits for us to catch up.

We pull our Disk off our back and activate subroutine control, projecting a hologram from the middle, adding a Gold level Y-Amp subroutine, allowing us to easily clear the same jumps. We go back one room and ask Samus, "What happened to the wallhuggers?" noting the lack o the annoying little things.

Samus curses and points at a chrysalis on the ceiling and anther on the wall, "Right there."

We follow her through the biometrics rom, through the next room, and into the room with a sidehoppper, which Samus blasts and neatly dodges the spike it fires. She runs up to the door and curses, seeing it destroyed by the SA-X. In frustration, she bombs the floor and falls down a hole. We laugh and follow… And immediately stop laughing, hearing footsteps below the floor. We shoot around Samus and bomb out the end floor, darting back so as to not fall down and unmprph so we're lying on our stomach. We pull a small camera on a hose out of Hammerspace and feed it down the gap, giving us an unmistakable view of the SA-X walking away. It opens the door on the end of the corridor and leaves. We return the Flexcam to Hammerspace and do a rather inelegant dive down the hole, landing smack on our face. Samus laughs and lands on our back before rolling off and unmorphing., clutching her knees. "That was priceless! I really wish I could record video."

"You do know that we just saw the SA-X, right?"

"Yeah, I recognize my own footsteps," She gets serious again, "So, where'd you get the camera?"

"Playing way too many spy games. They're often used to look under doors and such. Thought it would be useful to have, so we made one. Not really that hard either. It can't beat an X-ray scanner, but it's not a bad piece f kit. Our X-ray visuals are down and we haven't gotten around to repairing them after an incident a while back involving a backfiring EMP. Bit of an oversight that... Moving on?"

We run out of the corridor and into the vertical area that led to the door the SA-X destroyed for us. We use high jump to scale up and into a utilitarian room with a flier and a tropical room with a sidehopper. Down the ball tunnel at the top of the sidehpper room is the main room of the sector, across from the NBR trio. We follow Samus back to the Recharge Room to the Navigation Room.

"We've got trouble. Releasing the security lock may have been a bad idea, the SA-X has entered the water environment in Sector 4, abbreviated AQA, with several thousand X"

"How did it get there so fast?" We ask, "We saw it in Sector 2 not five minutes ago!" We interrupt, "And only several thousand? This'll be easy!"

"…Okay, you done yet?" At our silence, "Right. Get o Sector 4. I'l brief you further when you arrive."

On the elevator, Samus turns to us, again with something on her mind, "The SA-X. Me at my strongest, but heartless. It's probably just a killing machine. I have to stop it before it realizes its potential."

"Then it's a good thing you've got us!" we say exuberantly, reaching up to slap her shoulder plate, before jerking ur hand back in surprise when we feel energy starting to drain from us.

"Well," Samus comments, "It seems I got more from the Metroid Vaccine than the ability to absorb X and vulnerability to cold. That's the Metroid's signature energy draining ability at work. It's why so many groups have tried to make them into bioweapons. The Space Pirates, the planet Phaze to an extent, the… Galactic Federation… Oh blast I hope they aren't trying that again. Don't tell the AI I suspect that, if I'm wrong no problem and if I'm right then it'll just alert HQ that I'm on to them." We nod in assent and follow her off the elevator and across to sector 4.

"This sector has taken heavy damage. I knew the X were destructive, but this almost makes me wonder if they're sentient somehow. But I digress. This sector houses a creature called Serris. It's fast, ultra-high speeds in fact."

"Sounds fun," Samus says, miming rubbing her hands together.

"It was most likely released by the SA-X, but I can't be certain, nor do I know why other than to cause destruction."

"Probably stretching its wings as it were, trying to see what it's capable of," we state.

"It's natural behavior is to periodically return to its breeding chamber. The X most likely haven't changed that. While we'd prefer you didn't, you are authorized to terminate it if you must. Be warned, some broken power nodes have electrified the water. We can't turn them off without risking affecting the entire station."

"Bit of a design flaw that is," we say.

"HQ agrees. Don't get in the water if you can avoid it." The AI signs off and we lead Samus out into the biometric rom.

"Oh, we're gonna get in the water all we want. We've been meaning to play with ur electrical powers."

"…Okay, you do that." Samus says, slightly confused.

And that's all for this chapter. Actually, I think it's the longest delay I've had. I've been drowning in homework for a nice chunk of the time, but that's only part f it. I'd like to blame s many things, but most of them only apply to at most a week. I'd put it at about 30% homework, 10% other things and 60% being due to my signature procrastination. Sorry, I'll try and pick up my rate.

So… Next chapter I get to play with Composite's electrical powers. This'll be fun!

Now all I need is a keyboard without a dodgy "o" key and it'll be perfect. I mostly have to push it harder than normal, but I can work with it for now.

EDIT: I meant to upload this on Saturday (Dec 3, 2016,) In fact I had it uploaded and was editing when the real world spontaneously decided to put a 40 pound bag of goat dung in far too close proximity to a hurricane-force air movement device, so I've been putting out proverbial fires all week. Sorry about that.

And please, leave some reviews! I really want to know what my readers think!