I merged these two because I realized that they were both really short. I also finished it a while back and simply forgot to upload it.
Chapter 7: Sector 6 and 5
"HQ has the Varia Suit data ready to download. Get to the data room here." The map scrolled, pointing out the target location, "But there's a problem. X from the Sub Zero sector are in this sector. They seem to have mutated. If you absorb one, you'll be frozen from within. This is probably a deliberate tactic. You should be able to stun them with your beam, and you'll be able to absorb them safely once you have the Varia suit. Be careful Samus."
Samus stretches, having wisely used the several hours sleeping. She hopped up and ran out of the room, weapon charging. As soon as we left the Recharge Room, we encountered a collection of small insect-like creatures. We draw our Disk and throw, hitting about two thirds of them and allowing Samus to quickly and efficiently finish off the last few. Samus's suit emits a glow. Our visor changes from transparent red to green. Colors become washed out and fine details become fuzzy, but our vision becomes much brighter. We cross the room once the insects are gone and go down and back up through a vertical room. The next room is wide open, but a large X floats in the center.
"There's one of them," Samus growls, she leaps up and shoots it. It stops its idle figure-eight pattern, twitching. We run below it and rapidly enter the next room. Another presumably blue X waits across from us. Samus morphs and drops some bombs on the platform, which hangs out over a long drop. The floor collapses, dropping her down outside of its detection range. We follow, spotting two doors that Samus opens and quickly closes, seeing the numbers of blue X in the area. Below a few more platforms is a room that doesn't seem to have any of them. Samus shoots a few destructible blocks, revealing that the bottom hid a blue X. Before she can react, the bX slams into her and is absorbed. Samus's immediate reaction is a bloodchilling scream of pain. She collapses to the ground, shuddering with cold.
We break a few branches off of a nearby bush and telekinetically use them to start a small fire for warmth. Several minutes later, Samus stoops shivering and raises her head, opening her eyes. "I… I'm not dead?" She asks in a weak, quivering voice, "And where did this fire come from?"
A slightly glowing branch plops onto the flames from the darkness. We step into the firelight. "That was us. You barely survived the X. We'll, both of us, have to be more careful."
A slight laugh, "You're telling me. I'm the one who almost died," She holds out a slightly quivering hand and we help her up. "I'll be okay in a few minutes. Thanks for the fire, that was good thinking." Her voice rapidly regains its strength. A few minutes later, she raises her arm into firing position, "Okay, let's go!"
We use telekinesis to pull the oxygen from the fire and dump the contents of a sandbag we digitized while Samus was out before moving on. "Fire safety is good," we add in a deadpan voice. Samus grunts and jumps down a ladder, destroying a loose wall panel to reveal a gap she can easily climb through. We peak over the edge of the platform and spot a few blue X, deciding that staying up is a good idea. Samus stuns a blue X over a pair of ladders and drops down, escaping into the next room. A few more X hover hear the ceiling, but they're too high to see her and move before she's past them. To buy time, she fires unaimed shots at them, hitting two of them. She crashes through a wall, us just behind, and bounces onto a latter. She lets go, landing on the ground and surging forward once again, blue X in hot pursuit. The two of us race into the next room, slamming the door just in front of them. Samus collects an energy tank and bombs part of the floor.
We follow her down and roll into another room. Samus rolls up to a wall, clearly debating weather or not to bomb it. The sound of approaching footsteps solves that dilemma quickly. We roll next to her and she detonates a bomb, dropping both of us into a sort of grate. We listen as the SA-X walks toward the wall we were just considering. We hear it morph, followed by the sound of some sort of countdown. Samus mutters an especially vile Chozo curse and shoots away from the sound at top speed. A massive detonation is heard, and a wave of energy explodes outward, barely missing us. We roll slightly out of cover, watching the SA-X walk past the now-destroyed wall.
"And that, we suppose, is what you call a Power Bomb?" We ask Samus.
"Yes. Normally I'm fine but this suit isn't thick enough to be undamaged. I'll be fine once I get the Varia upgrade."
The SA-X finishes its walk down the hall, down a ledge of some sort, and we hear it leave the area below. Samus rolls out behind us and we follow the SA-X, but not too fast. We travel through a room with a few assorted bugs, and into another habitat room. Samus shoots out part of the floor, drops down and prepares to shoot again.
"NO!" Samus whips around and sees our orange-glowing visor, "There's a blue X hiding in there. Shoot exactly there," We gesture at a specific block, "And you should be able to avoid all of them."
"How can you know this?"
"The Blue X are much lower than the ambient temperature. They show up on infrared just fine. Not as well as something hot, but pretty close."
Samus follows our instructions exactly and safely navigates to a door. A few more insects later, we make it to a door guard. Samus kills it with one missile and we enter the data room.
A Core-X, a big one, downloads the Varia Suit data as soon as we enter, destroying the terminal and floating out of the room. Samus fires missiles at it to no effect. We shoot forward and bury our blades in it, but to equal effect. Once the X escapes, we step to the damaged terminal and look at it. "There's no fixing this. Maybe Sis could do it, but there's nothing we can do."
Samus sighs and walks out of the room into a large platforms hang over a large water pool, the middle two slightly lower. We follow. As soon as Samus steps onto the third platform, the Core-X, now larger, yellow, and with smaller yellow Core-X surrounding it, phases through the opposite wall and tries to ram Samus. Samus dodges out of the way and shoots a missile towards it. The missile simply bounces off. Samus tries a different tactic, shooting one of the smaller orbiting X with a charge shot. The X groans and disappears. We draw our Disk and send it bouncing around, killing a few more of the small X and damaging the big one. Once we figure out how to hurt it, the battle becomes easy but annoying. Dodge, fire charge shot or throw disk, rinse and repeat. Once all the smaller X are destroyed and the big one is badly damaged, it reverts to a normal Core-X, which Samus easily dispatches with missiles. She absorbs the X and drops to the ground. A massive energy discharge happens, causing her suit to dramatically change. Most of the blue has changed to yellow, and the red parts changed to purple. We nodded simply and darted off to the side opposite of the data room, through another room, and into a vertical chamber. As Samus climbed the ladder, several blue X played kamikaze pilot with her, only to be absorbed to no effect. The one at the top of the room got smart and tried to run, but Samus shot it and absorbed the stunned creature.
"Nice," we comment, "Resistant to cold now." Samus leads us through a few more rooms and quickly back to the navigation room.
"Good, you have the Varia function restored. You will be able to survive cold environments. However, you're no nearer being able to fight the SA-X. A Plasma Beam might work, but I can't make HQ work any faster. They do, however, have an Ice Missile upgrade for you in Sector 5, as your cellular makeup would reject the Ice Beam. Go to Sector 5, I'll brief there."
"HQ has Ice Missiles ready for you. The data room is here. It is and get the Ice Missiles." The AI signs off and we open our map, scowling at the sparse information.
"We're not sure, maybe it's somewhere down here?"
"I know less than you on the subject. But it's a starting point." Samus steps out of the recharge room. A blast of cold hits us, causing us to flinch in surprise. We blast a yellow wallhugger from the aquatic sector. Samus climbs the ladder across from its alcove in the wall, randomly firing until she locates a missile block and destroys it. The two of us flop into a room with a large glass backing. We grimace.
"Now, that's not a security hazard at all."
"Samus nods in agreement and blasts some sort of creature that jumps into the air and floats down, firing energy bolts straight down. It poses no threat. We drop down, and then go back up after going under a hanging wall and through another door. The metal flooring is now caked in ice. Some sort of fliers that simply float dumbly around. Samus barely acknowledges their existence. A blue X runs away before Samus can shoot it. "This is too easy," we comment.
"Yes, that's what's got me worried," Samus responds, "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."
We hit the bottom of the room, but both the map and the thin floor say it's not. We touch it and feel the familiar cracks of a speed block. Samus yells at us to get clear, racing out of an connecting room she'd noticed and breaking the booster blocks. The path lead to a door we couldn't open and a block Samus bombed out, revealing another door that we could. A group of floaters bounced around in a sealed section of the chamber. We couldn't see them, but we could certainly hear them. We didn't bother with fighting them, we just went around the compartment and continued on.
We shot out part of the floor of the next room and dropped in front of a green quivering lump on the floor. "What are these?"
"Not sure, They aren't dangerous unless you shoot them though," Samus responded.
We ignored it and continued along, jumping past two of them and into the security room. Samus unlocked the yellow hatches and we continued on into an especially frustrating room filled with gold wallhuggers and collapsing blocks. Samus opened a gate in the next room, and we charged into the room next to the data room's anti-chamber, which included a gate to make things interesting.
In the data room, Samus entered the chamber and came out a moment later, firing a missile that left a blue trail and a patch of ice on the wall. We left the room and fell down a shaft with a few brown enemies floating around horizontally. Samus grimaced and skillfully dodged them, rolling into a somersault. We entered the room with the pulsating mass just in time to see it be turned into a taller mass that pulsated with a dangerous sound and generally a more dangerous appearance. We growled and fired at it to no effect. Samus fired an ice missile at it, freezing it instantly. We jumped up it and opened the floor above it, climbing into a room with one of the small masses between two high platforms. Samus shot a gold wallhugger on the ceiling and destroyed it again when it reformed. Samus then fired a missile at the mass when it absorbed the wallhugger X and grew. We blazed over its frozen form and through the door on the other side, smashing through a speed wall, jumping up, and entering the room before the data room. We jumped up the assorted platforms and through a few more rooms.
Samus blasted a large ceiling-hugging creature with an ice missile, but it didn't freeze. Samus muttered a curse and fired at it again. It derezed into a pair of X. As soon as we entered this room and immediately a siren went off.
"Emergency In Sector 3" A feminine voice announced calmly. We growled out a stream of Mandalorian profanity and shot up to the Navigaiton room…