Chapter 15:
Aglara and Aramon faced down Mewtwo as they realized that this opponent was a lot more powerful than their previous one. Not only that, but Mewtwo had completely restored Samus's energy and health as well. It was as if she had awakened fresh in the morning and just eaten her breakfast. The Magic Lords did not pay Samus much heed, though, for they knew that the real threat was Mewtwo. They then proceeded to initiate combat against Mewtwo when they began to chant, a clear prelude to performing a magical attack. Balls of pink energy formed in their hands and they targeted the psychic Pokémon. Once they zeroed in on him, they unleashed the pink balls of magic. The balls of magic rocketed towards Mewtwo with the Pokémon making no attempt to avoid them. Before they struck the Pokémon, though, they struck a shield bubble that had formed a couple feet away from Mewtwo. The balls splashed against the blue shield and were then rebounded back at the Magic Lords. Their eyes went wide as they did their best to dive out of the way of their own attacks. They were slow to react though, and were forced to take the full brunt of their own reflected attacks. The force of the impacts knocked them off their feet and through the air. They landed a few meters away and quickly rolled back up into a fighter's stance.
The two then drew their swords and pointed them at the heroes, Aramon towards Mewtwo, and Aglara towards Samus. Before they could launch an attack, though, they found themselves rocketing through the air backwards. They landed twenty meters away from their starting position and quickly rose to fighting posture once again. Before Mewtwo could continue to engage them, though, a blast of purple energy struck his shield in the back, knocking him to the ground. He looked behind and above him to find Dark Arceus descending from the Hall of Origin, powering another Judgment attack. Mewtwo powered another shield and powered a blue swirling Aura Sphere in his right hand. He launched the attack towards Dark Arceus's Judgment and the two attacks collided in midair, producing a massive explosion, along with a cloud of smoke. As the two attacks exploded, the ground shook and lightning crackled from the sky and portal above. Samus looked past Mewtwo and found the two Magic Lords preparing to attack Mewtwo, who was once again embroiled in his battle against Dark Arceus. Samus quickly scanned Dark Arceus as she interposed herself between Mewtwo and the Magic Lords in order to keep track of his health so she would know if he was either close to death and how much damage Mewtwo was doing to him. Upon scanning Dark Arceus, she found that he was at close to full health, his life bar appearing just below the Magic Lords'. A quick scan of Mewtwo indicated that he was at full health. She soon noticed Dark Arceus's health bar fill up completely. It was obvious to her that Dark Arceus and Mewtwo were on a whole other level of power and that there was not much that she would be able to do to help Mewtwo at the moment. She decided that it would be better to focus on the Magic Lords. She was at least able to inflict some damage on them, and could keep them away from Mewtwo for the time being. She would have to let Mewtwo handle Dark Arceus while she held off the Magic Lords.
Samus proceeded to unleash a hail of energy fire towards the two adolescent elf-like beings, taking their attention away from the psychic Pokémon and causing them to focus solely on her. As she assumed, the plasma blasts inflicted no damage to the Magic Lords. The two seemingly teenaged sorcerers then proceeded to chant a spell as Samus decided to switch to her Ice Missiles. She locked onto Aramon and fired a single Ice Missile his way. She then switched her targeting to Aglara and fired a missile at her. The two missiles erupted from her arm cannon less than a second apart, each missile zeroing in on either of the Magic Lords as they left her cannon. As she fired the missile, she noticed a cold sensation running up her arm, stopping at the point where the arm cannon ended. It did not hurt, though, so she thought little of it at the moment. Upon seeing the missiles streaking towards them, the two Magic Lords stopped their chanting and proceeded to flee from the missiles. Samus used this opportunity to fire some more plasma shots at them, hoping to score even some trivial damage on them. It was not to be, though, as she focused on their life bars and saw that they were not draining. All the while, Samus had been moving, making herself as difficult a target to hit as possible so as to avoid any counterattack.
The Magic Lords continued to try to evade the missiles, but the projectiles continued to track them. As such, they decided that they had no choice but to take the brunt of the impact. They proceeded to raise a shield over themselves and let the missiles strike. The missiles struck their shield and detonated in an icy blast of energy. The shield glowed a bright white as the missiles struck. It absorbed the blows with ease and the two adolescents grinned at Samus. Samus grimaced. Her Ice Missiles were too slow to be able to hit them from range before they either raised a shield or avoided them all together. And as was shown before, they seemed to have a base durability that allowed them to withstand stacked Plasma Beam shots without any problems whatsoever. Even Charged Plasma Beam blasts had been all but useless against them. She did note, though, that they did their best to avoid her Ice Missiles, which made her think that the missiles somehow may have been a threat to them. She decided to test this theory further by firing another pair of missiles at the adolescents. Again, the Magic Lords attempted to evade the missiles, jumping away from them. The missiles tracked them and eventually caught up to the two youths. The missiles again detonated harmlessly against the shield they had previously erected over themselves. "I'm disappointed, Hunter," Aramon mocked. "The Chozo must have held you in high regard if they granted you a suit of Chozo power armor, even if the suit you wear now is nothing more than a shell of its former self."
While Aramon's arrogance did annoy Samus and she really wanted to wipe that grin off his face, she had to admit that things were not looking good for her at the moment. While she had avoided sustaining any damage in her fight against the Magic Lords, as of yet, she also knew that they were only playing with her. They had yet to launch any real attacks on her, with the only attack maybe being that spell she interrupted when she first fired her Ice Missiles towards them. There was still hope for her, though. If she could collapse that shield and fire a series of Ice Missiles, or even a Diffusion Missile, at them at point blank range, she might be able to freeze them for a while and potentially shatter them. The Magic Lords would not make this easy, though, as they drew their swords and pointed them up into the sky. Their swords began to glow yellow and Samus immediately went evasive as she prepared to fire her stacked Charged Plasma Beam in the hope of collapsing their shields. They were not making it easy for her, though, as they danced away from her stacked Plasma Beam shots, and the few that did manage to strike her shields, merely caused them to flare. Adam, however, scanned the shields and told her, "Samus, your stacked Plasma Beam is disrupting their shields a bit. The only issue is that it's not powerful enough to disrupt them entirely and break them apart. Perhaps a Charged Plasma Beam would be able to break the shield."
Samus nodded slightly and made the plans to try Adam's suggestion. It was worth a shot, considering that nothing she had tried previously was working on them. However, she knew that she would have to get close to the young Magic Lords for her plan to have any chance of success. And that would be difficult in and of itself since the Magic Lords were quite powerful and they had excellent reaction times. She knew that it would be her only shot at freezing them solid, though, and she knew that even if they were frozen, that they might not be able to be destroyed since they had already withstood a point blank Power Bomb explosion. The Magic Lords soon went on the attack and fired golden beams of energy from their swords. Samus barely managed to avoid the energy beams as she dove to the ground, allowing them to strike the ground behind her. Upon each strike, a ten-meter crater was gouged into the rocky ground. The power of the seemingly mundane attacks shocked Samus. Only now was she beginning to realize just how powerful these Magic Lords may well be, despite the fact that they were still only children.
Not too far away from the site of the battle between the Magic Lords and Samus, Mewtwo and Dark Arceus engaged in their own battle for the fate of the universe. Dark Arceus was proving to be a difficult opponent with tremendous defensive power and strong attacks and good speed, but Mewtwo's superior speed and special attack power were allowing him to hold his own against the technically superior Dark Omega Pokémon. He used his speed to great advantage as he dodged an attempted Body Slam by Dark Arceus. He moved faster than the eye could see as he evaded the attack and the Dark Omega Pokémon smashed the ground, throwing up dirt and debris and also causing the ground to shake. Mewtwo then countered with an Aura Sphere to the body of his enemy. He powered the sphere in his right hand and then fired it towards the dark Pokémon. The sphere struck Dark Arceus in the head, causing the beast to recoil and roar in both pain and annoyance. Dark Arceus retaliated with a blast of dark energy that blasted through Mewtwo's shields and hit him in the chest, sending him flying backwards. Mewtwo landed in a heap, but quickly recovered and stood up, using Recover to heal himself of the damage caused by the blast of energy.
After recovering from Dark Arceus's attack, Mewtwo stood still for a few seconds and used Calm Mind to boost his already tremendous special attack powers, as well as his special defense abilities. He wanted to force Dark Arceus to utilize his own power increasing attacks, so that he could score a free hit on him. Dark Arceus did not take the bait, though, and he merely unleashed another Judgment attack upon Mewtwo. Mewtwo's enhanced defenses, however, allowed him to raise a stronger shield this time around. The purple ball of Judgment split off into a series of purple meteors that rained down upon the psychic Pokémon. Each of the meteors struck Mewtwo's shield, causing it to flare a bright blue, and then rebounded off of the shield and back to Dark Arceus. The dark Pokémon recoiled in surprise at the sight of his own attack being reflected back at him. "No!" he cried as the meteors converged upon him and struck. The damage to the surrounding area was minimal, but Mewtwo could feel that if that attack had struck the ground and not Dark Arceus, that it could have razed most of the continent. Even so, though, since Dark Arceus was a Dark type Pokémon, he suffered minimal damage from the attack. "Is that all you've got Mewtwo?" he asked haughtily.
Mewtwo gave a confident smile. He knew that his reflected attack would not inflict much damage to the Pokémon, but it did grant him a means of safety, at least for a time. He suspected that his shield would be able to withstand at least one more strike before collapsing. And with his already superior special attack being boosted by Calm Mind, and having an super effective attack in the form of Aura Sphere, he knew that he had the edge against Dark Arceus, despite having his signature, and most powerful, move, Psystrike, being useless against Dark Arceus due to the Pokémon being a Dark type Pokémon. Mewtwo used this opportunity to boost his Special Attack and Special Defense abilities even higher with another Calm Mind. The fact that Dark Arceus had not increased his abilities to counter Mewtwo's buffs was beginning to make the psychic Pokémon wonder if he even knew Calm Mind, or if he did, whether or not he had the ability to sense an opponent's power.
Dark Arceus soon powered another ball of Judgment and prepared to unleash it upon Mewtwo. However, this time, he made it so that it would not split off into a series of meteors, but remain a condensed ball and strike at a smaller point on Mewtwo's shields. He wanted to see how well Mewtwo's shield stood up to a tightly focused direct attack that had a type advantage against it. The ball of energy formed in front of Dark Arceus's mouth as the Pokémon opened his mouth and once it had formed, he unleashed it at Mewtwo. Mewtwo could easily feel the energy behind this ball and knew that if it struck the Earth, that it would be disastrous for the planet. That meant that he had no choice but to take the full brunt of the attack head on and hope for the best. Indeed, Mewtwo took the full power of the attack head on when the ball collided with his shield. He could feel that this attack was stronger than before, since his shield was not redirecting the attack back at Dark Arceus. Dark Arceus grinned at the sight and began to push more energy into his attack, putting even more strain on Mewtwo's shield. Mewtwo felt his shield begin to buckle and eventually collapse. He then unleashed his Aura Sphere on Dark Arceus's ball of Judgment and managed to push it back to the enemy Pokémon, since Dark Arceus's attack had been weakened while breaking through Mewtwo's shield. Dark Arceus jumped out of the way of the attacks and the balls of energy went sailing up towards the purple vortex that was still in the sky, glaring down at everyone. Mewtwo used Calm Mind once more, knowing that his shield was down and that he would have to concentrate to construct another. Dark Arceus was wise to Mewtwo's tactics now, and, thus, he began to use Calm Mind in order to raise his own Special Attack and Special Defense as well, mainly because he knew that Mewtwo's Aura Sphere was inflicting quite a bit of damage per hit. He needed to have a little extra bulk before he could power up some of his other abilities in order to give himself a good chance of beating his opponent.
Mewtwo had other ideas, though, as he quickly fired off another Aura Sphere. Even with his enhanced Special Defense, Dark Arceus knew that it would be foolish for him to take an Aura Sphere to the face. As such, he created a Substitute and then backed away, ascending the stairs and making his way back up to the Hall of Origin where he could use Recover to restore the health he used when creating the Substitute. The Aura Sphere struck the Substitute and instantly annihilated it. Mewtwo looked up at Dark Arceus and could feel his attack power rising, along with the dark Pokémon spinning around. Dark Arceus was using Swords Dance in order to increase his physical attack power. Mewtwo went to pursue the dark Pokémon and take the fight to him but was stopped when a golden stream of energy struck him in the back, knocking him to the ground. The surprise attack was not sufficient to kill Mewtwo or even inflict serious damage to him, and would have inflicted less if he had not been caught off guard, but it did take his attention off of Dark Arceus and force him to also focus on what was going on behind him. And that would be trouble. He grimaced as he realized that he was dangerously close to fighting a two-front war; a war made even more dangerous by the fact that one of his opponents was at the very least his equal, and more likely his superior on an even playing field, and the others were no slouches in combat, either.
Behind the psychic Pokémon, Samus was busy engaging the Magic Lord youths in a difficult and hotly contested battle. Samus was sent flying through the air as half of her Energy Tanks were taken out by a golden burst of energy unleashed by Aglara's sword. Aglara gave off a shrill laugh as Samus was hit. "Weak," she mocked, hoping to cause Samus to become more frustrated at her inability to do any real damage to her and cause her to attack more boldly. The bounty hunter did not take the bait, though, and she merely charged another Plasma Beam blast and fired on Aglara. Aglara quickly sidestepped the beam and gave another laugh until she heard a grunt echo from behind her. Her sidestepping the beam had allowed it to strike Aramon's shield and collapse it. "You idiot!" he cried at his sister. "Watch what you're doing!"
"Be more observant, then, moron!" Aglara called back. Aglara then turned to face Aramon and approached him menacingly. This gave Samus the perfect opportunity to collapse her shield with a Charged Plasma Beam blast. The green ball of energy formed at the end of her arm cannon as she charged the blast and after a second, she unleashed the blast of energy at Aglara. Since Aglara had her back turned, she did not see the blast coming, and Aramon was in no mood to let her know that Samus was launching an attack. The blast splashed against Aglara's shield and managed to collapse it with one hit. This only caused the two Magic Lords to begin bickering even more with one another. Aglara turned and glared at her brother. "You worthless bastard! Look at what you did?"
"What I did? You're the fool who stepped aside and allowed that human to collapse your shield with that special beam of hers," Aramon roared in response. "You're always blaming me for your own screwups! Now get back in there and kill that stupid human girl!"
"You do it if you're so strong!" Aglara screamed back at the top of her lungs. With that, the two began to fight. Aramon, not one to take his sister's insult lightly, thrust his sword towards the lower abdomen of Aglara. She parried the attack with her sword and fired a beam of energy from the sword's tip directly at Aramon, despite the fact that her sword had been pointing up towards the sky. The golden beam of energy struck Aramon in the chest and sent him flying through the air. He hit the floor with a thud and looked up at Aglara, his face almost looking demonic with the rage he now held towards his sister. Aglara's expression echoed her brother's as she charged him. He raised his hand and without any warning, lightning erupted from his fingertips. The lightning instantly crossed the distance between himself and Aglara and struck Aglara in the chest. Electricity arced all over her body and she gave a cry of shock and pain as she was sent hurtling through the air. Aramon then rose to charge his fallen sister.
Meanwhile, Samus was looking at the two exceedingly powerful siblings fight with one another and decided that it would be wiser to sit out of the fight. She looked over at Mewtwo and nodded, thinking, They're busy for the moment. You take on that other creature. I'll do my best to keep those two adolescents at bay.
Mewtwo nodded in acknowledgment and flew up the translucent stairway in pursuit of Dark Arceus.
Back down on the ground, though, Samus could not observe the fighting sibling for much longer, for several humans quickly came towards her. They wore uniforms that consisted of black pants and gray and black shirts with a stylized "G" on their chests. So this is the Team Galactic that the people of Earth keep talking about, she thought. She saw the Vice-Chairman, or rather, Chairman, Cyrus, making his way towards the stairway that led up to the Hall of Origin. She had a bad feeling that Cyrus was going to try to assist Dark Arceus in his battle against Mewtwo. She focused on the Chairman and prepared to fire her Plasma Beam in order to stop him, for she saw the "G" on his uniform as well. Before she could fire, though, she felt several weights impact her suit from the rear.
Turning back around, she saw several grunts of Team Galactic, and several other creatures standing before them. The creatures consisted of purple and white skunks, bats that looked to be mostly mouths with wings, and deathly thin cat-like creatures that carried none of the grace or power of Mewtwo. She suspected that these were also Pokémon. Remembering that they were said to be sentient, she took no pity for them as she took aim at each one and fired a single plasma beam shot at them, felling the creatures with one hit, each. They had made their choices the moment they had sided with Team Galactic. She then fired on the human Team Galactic members, who were now drawing weapons on her and swiftly dispatched them as well. She then checked her HUD and found that some of the creatures were still alive, albeit seriously injured. She considered finishing off the fallen creatures, but she eventually decided against it. With the deaths of their human masters, she would give them a chance to do something else with their lives. However, if any of them were to try to attack her, she would kill said attackers without a second thought, as a foolish Glameow found out when it tried to blindside Samus by unleashing a Thunderbolt attack on her. The yellow bolt of lightning was emitted from the cat-like Pokémon's body and it struck Samus, disrupting her visor for a few seconds and taking off fifty units of energy from her current Energy Tank. Still, Samus had seen the location of the Pokémon before it had launched the attack and retaliated with an uncharged plasma blast, and proceeded to annihilate the head and the upper torso cat-like Pokémon. The death of their comrade convinced the other Pokémon to abandon the fight and flee the mountain peak.
Looking back at Aglara and Aramon fight, Samus noticed that their battle was inflicting significant damage to the both of them. She grinned, knowing that her opportunity to take them out of action was coming. She looked back at Cyrus, who was going up to the site of Mewtwo and Dark Arceus's battle, and figured that he did not have anything that could threaten Mewtwo. At least, he did not have anything that would force her to risk missing her opportunity to neutralize the threat posed by the two Magic Lords. As they continued to fight, she noticed that they were beginning to slow down and look a little winded. Viewing this as her opportunity, she switched to her Ice Missiles and began to charge her Diffusion Missile. As she was charging her missile, she felt a sharp, freezing pain shoot through her arm starting at her hand and working itself all the way up to the shoulder. She suppressed a cry at the sensation and did her best to concentrate on the Magic Lords and approach them undetected, which was not too difficult since they were embroiled in a swordfight. The sound of swords clashing rang out over the peak of Mount Coronet as they struggled to gain the upper hand against the other. As they were pushing against each other, Samus fired her Diffusion Missile. As the missile erupted from her arm cannon, the freezing sensation got worse as she felt her entire right arm begin to go numb. Her suit seemed to sense that something was wrong and instantly vented all of the freezing gas and energy from her cannon. Freezing blue and white gas and even some energy was vented from the cannon and a mist formed to Samus's right.
She watched as the missile streaked towards the unsuspecting Magic Lords. Just as the missile was about to strike, they seemed to notice the oncoming missile; but it was too little, too late. The missile made contact with Aglara and detonated, instantly encasing her in a block of ice. Aramon was too slow to react and thus, was unable to either outrun the expanding wave of freezing energy or raise a shield to protect himself from the wave. The bluish wave of energy washed over him and soon, he found himself encased in a block of ice as well.
Samus moved a safe distance away from the freezing mist that had been vented from her arm cannon and looked to see the results of her Diffusion Missile. She also switched back to her Plasma Beam and charged a plasma blast, which seemed to warm up her arm and return feeling to it. She saw that her Diffusion Missile had been successful in freezing the Magic Lords. However, she could see droplets of water begin to form, as well as the ice around Aglara begin to crack. Samus knew that she did not have the time to curl into Morph Ball form and destroy them with her Power Bombs, nor would she arrive in time to shatter them with her Screw Attack. Using beams was also out of the equation since she surmised that she would be more likely to hasten their defrosting than shatter them. However, she would not have to worry about them for long, for a field of blue energy appeared around them.
The adolescent Magic Lords proceeded to rise into the air as their defrosting had suddenly halted. They accelerated into the air and were sent on a direct course for the purple vortex that was swirling above a transparent platform that was suspended high in the sky. Up on the platform, she watched as Dark Arceus repeatedly swiped his claws at Mewtwo, a purplish-black energy surrounding his claws. Mewtwo deftly dodged the swipe but did not counterattack. She then noticed Mewtwo's eyes glowing blue, indicating that he was the one that was in control of the still frozen Magic Lords. As such, she knew that she had to do something to keep Dark Arceus at bay while Mewtwo dealt with the Magic Lords. She charged her Plasma Beam and was about to fire on the dark Pokémon when an explosion formed near her, sending her flying. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she had seen an energy bolt come down onto the surface as she was preparing to fire on Dark Arceus. Up in the Hall of Origin, Dark Arceus managed to hit Mewtwo in the chest with an ExtremeSpeed attack and the psychic cat-like Pokémon was sent flying through the air, reeling. She then saw Cyrus appear several steps behind and below Mewtwo and release his Pokémon. The new Chairman's Pokémon proceeded to launch their most powerful attacks on Mewtwo. The psychic Pokémon managed to raise a shield to protect himself from their attacks but combined with Dark Arceus's Judgment attack and the attacks of Cyrus's Pokémon, his shield beginning to buckle and his focus on the frozen Magic Lords was broken. The Magic Lords promptly fell back down to the Earth, where they struck the ground, but did not shatter.
Samus risked a glance up into the sky and found an alien transport descending from the sky. So far, it had not fired any more shots at her. She then refocused her attention back on the Magic Lords. Samus then switched back to her Ice Missiles and fired two missiles at the frozen statues in order to keep them frozen. The two missiles erupted from her arm cannon and another jolt of freezing pain shot up her arm. This one was not as bad as the one that had occurred when she used her Diffusion Missile, but she did not want to have to use Ice Missiles anymore. The missiles proceeded to strike the Magic Lords, preventing them from defrosting. She then focused her attention towards Cyrus, since she viewed him as the bigger threat at the moment, along with the fact that her other weapons were not guaranteed to shatter the Magic Lords.
She raced towards the new Chairman and opened fire with her Plasma Beam. Her beam struck Cyrus's Gyarados, a large blue and white sea-serpent-like Pokémon and Spiritomb, a round purple and green gaseous Pokémon, inflicting severe damage to both Pokémon. They fell to the ground, unconscious and ceased to move, though Samus's HUD indicated that they were still alive. Cyrus yelled towards his remaining Pokémon, "Continue attacking Mewtwo! We must give Arceus enough time to complete the Judgment attack!"
Upon hearing Cyrus give his orders to his Pokémon, she fired a spray of shots towards the Pokémon in an attempt to have them focus on her, and allow Mewtwo the chance to not only deal with Dark Arceus, but also deal with the frozen Magic Lords, who were likely about to defrost. Her shots winged Cyrus's Crobat, a purple bat-like Pokémon with two sets of wings and scored a direct hit on Houndoom, a black dog-like Pokémon with silver horns in place of ears. Since Houndoom was a Fire type Pokémon, he was able to resist Samus's Plasma Beam a bit, but still suffered significant damage from her attack. As such, he was taken out of the fight, nursing the burns inflicted by Samus's Plasma Beam. Cyrus's sole remaining combat capable Pokémon, Weavile, a gray bipedal cat-like Pokémon with a red collar, crown, and two red tails took one look at the situation and, realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, fled the battle. Cyrus turned and pulled out what looked to be a Chozo Technology Disruptor pistol and fired a bluish-white burst of energy towards Samus. Samus danced away from the blast and fired a blast of energy towards Cyrus, who dove towards Mewtwo in order to avoid Samus's attack. He was not completely successful as his Chozo Technology Disruptor pistol was struck by the attack and shattered by her beam. Cyrus dropped the pistol's remains and fled from Samus, towards the top of the stairs. Samus was about to pursue when a pulsing green energy pulse struck her suit, taking off almost all of her remaining Energy Tanks from her Omega Fusion Suit. She looked above her and found two armored figures descend from the descending transport. Samus then yelled to Mewtwo, "Mewtwo, we've got company. If you're going to get rid of the Magic Lords, do it now!"
Mewtwo nodded and proceeded to blast Dark Arceus with an Aura Sphere. The sphere struck the dark Pokémon in the head and dazed him for a moment. In that moment, Mewtwo telekinetically grabbed the frozen Magic Lords, who were beginning to defrost once more, and launched them towards the vortex. A blue energy field formed around the adolescents and they began to rise into the air. They were accelerated towards the swirling vortex and without Cyrus's Pokémon to distract him, Mewtwo was able to hold off Dark Arceus and propel the Magic Lords into the rift, and hopefully to their deaths. The frozen Magic Lords rose into the vortex and within a few seconds, had disappeared from sight. Once Mewtwo felt their presences disappear, he felt that they had been dealt with, at least for the time being. Now he could focus his full attention on Dark Arceus since Cyrus was no threat without his Pokémon or a gun. That was before a stream of energy fire came down and assaulted Mewtwo, forcing him to push more of his energy into his shields to resist the attack. He grunted with frustration as he had to hold off the attack, along with Dark Arceus. To make matters worse, he was without any support for the time being since had her own problems to deal with on the mountain peak below.
Below the Hall of Origin, where Mewtwo and Dark Arceus resumed their battle, Samus focused on the transport descending from the sky. She saw two armored figures standing on the edge of the transport as it descended. In addition, a floating golden orb with a long vertical line on its left, and a smaller horizontal line on its bottom suddenly appeared with a flash only a few feet away from her. She looked past the orb and found the transport and the two armored figures launching an assault on Mewtwo. The figures quickly jumped off of the ship and rockets activated on their feet and back, keeping them close to the transport and allowing them to add their own firepower to the transport's. Mewtwo recoiled and grunted with each hit as he struggled to hold off a ball of Judgment from Dark Arceus. He glanced upwards and saw the transport but did nothing to neutralize its threat. She was shocked to see Mewtwo having so much trouble protecting himself against the energy fire of the transport and the two armored soldiers until she realized that it was his power that was preventing the entirety of Mount Coronet from being vaporized by their energy blasts. And this was being done while keeping Dark Arceus at bay; a task that was made more difficult since the Dark Omega Pokémon was firing blast after blast of Judgment into Mewtwo's shield. She scanned the transport and discovered that the beam weapons that were being used by the transport had unique properties that allowed them to drain shields at an increased rate, far greater than their conventional firepower would allow. In fact, according to her scans, these weapons had been designed for use against planetary shields. In addition, her scans clearly told her that this transport was not of Federation, Space Pirate, Chozo, or Luminoth design. Still, given the nature of the technology that she had seen, she figured that it had to be of an older race that was likely a contemporary of the Chozo and Luminoth, possibly the N'Kren or the Ylla. If it turned out to be the case, then the question that sprang to mind was why would they reveal themselves at this moment, and why come to Earth? In addition to the special weapons, the Heavy Assault Transport also had heavy shields, far stronger than they should have been for a ship of its size. Not only that, but they seemed to be designed to block magical and psychic attacks, for Mewtwo had not taken the time to disable the ship, despite the threat that it posed. And with the psychic Pokémon busy fending off Dark Arceus, she had a feeling that he could not spare the necessary power to deal with the transport. Unfortunately, she did not have the firepower to bring down the transport either, but something had to be done, for Mewtwo could not hold out against the attacks from the Dark Arceus, the armored soldiers, and the transport forever. She then scanned the two figures and found that she had no files on them at all, but their firepower seemed to be capital ship grade. Now, Mewtwo's struggles made a lot more sense. She knew that she had to do something fast or one of the blasts would break through Mewtwo's shield and severely injure, if not kill him outright.
Samus charged her Plasma Beam and prepared to fire on one of the transport's weapons when the two armored figures descended and placed themselves between her and the transport. However, the golden orb floated in between them and something clicked in her mind that she should fire on the orb, rather than on the armored figures and the transport. She fired her Charged Plasma Beam at the orb and shattered it with one shot. Her suit was immediately surrounded by an aura that alternated its color from blue to green to gold and to an orange-red. She felt the power of her arm cannon's beam weaponry increase dramatically. The power was so great that she felt as if all of her suit's energy had been pushed into her arm cannon for a single massively powerful energy blast. Knowing that she had no real choice but to take out the transport before the transport and its escorting armored soldiers managed to weaken Mewtwo's shield enough for Dark Arceus to be able to break through, she zeroed in on the ship.
Before she fired, though, she looked down at Adam, whose carrier unit was still attached to her left arm. Not knowing the effect that firing her new beam would have, she told him, "Adam, disengage yourself from my suit and get as far away from here as possible. I don't know what the firing of this new beam will do so I don't want you to accidentally get caught in its wash."
"Understood, lady," Adam responded, attempting to put some humor into his voice. The small data container unit that he had transferred himself into when he had been disconnected from Samus's gunship disconnected itself from Samus's left arm and floated away towards the edge of Spear Pillar. He still wanted to get some scans on the armored soldiers, assuming that they were not destroyed by Samus's new beam.
Once Adam was safely away, Samus targeted the transport and prepared to fire her new beam, whatever it was. As she fired her beam towards the transport and the two enemy armored figures, a bluish-white ball quickly formed at the end of her arm cannon as it charged and prepared to fire. In less than a second, a massive stream of bluish-white energy erupted from her cannon. The beam traveled relatively slowly, but was still fast enough to strike a large ship like the transport. However, the two armored figures managed to evade her fire so she tried to compensate and direct the massive wave of energy to include them as well. She found that it was difficult to move her arm and it took all of her strength to move the cannon so that she could move it over the armored soldiers. Eventually, with great difficulty, she was able to collect them in the beam as well. The beam quickly drained the shields of the transport and her beam struck the hull directly. At first, the hull around the impact point turned orange, then yellow, and eventually it was completely burned through. The outer edges of the large hole that was burned into the ship were still yellow and pieces of superheated metal were falling from the ship. The beam emerged from the top of the ship and the now gored ship's engines began to flicker and go silent. The ship seemingly lost all power and began to descend to the ground. It struck the seemingly reeling armored soldiers as they had been forced to endure the full brunt of the attack and they were driven into the ground by the falling transport as it crashed. Upon crashing into the ground, the transport threw up a great deal of dirt and debris. The front and lower parts of the transport crumpled upon impact and panels fell of the sides of the ship as the hull bent due to the impact.
Samus, however, had actually fared significantly worse than the transport, for upon using her new energy beam, which she now referred to as the Zero Laser, her suit began to break apart. All of the pieces of metal that were molded together that made up her suit broke apart and fell off her body. First the suit's arms, then the torso, and finally the legs fell to the ground and scattered before the bounty hunter. The last piece of armor to fall of was her arm cannon. In the span of a few seconds, Samus had gone from having a suit with more than two hundred missiles, multiple beam weapons, and a little less than nine remaining Energy Tanks to being almost completely defenseless save for an emergency energy pistol and plasma whip and a small personal shield projector she wore on her left wrist. The good news, though, seemed to be that with the transport no longer attacking Mewtwo that he was now able to fight evenly with Dark Arceus once more. Still, she figured that he was expending a great deal of energy fighting the dark Pokémon, though, and she knew that it would only be a matter of time before he gave out. The question was whether or not he would defeat Dark Arceus before he used up all of his energy; or would Dark Arceus give out even before Mewtwo? She began to make her way up the stairs so she could support Mewtwo anyway she could and to watch his back when a stream of pulsing green energy erupted from the crashed transport. Emerging from the new hole in the ship were the two armored figures that had been attacking Mewtwo along with the transport. She also saw several more large figures emerging from a now open panel on the ship. "Oh crud," she said with dread. Without her armor, she knew that she was no match for the armored soldiers that were flying towards her. And she did not give herself good odds against the other soldiers that were approaching her, either. Still, she had little choice. She had to give Mewtwo enough time to deal with Dark Arceus before the other soldiers killed her and could focus solely on Mewtwo uncontested. She then charged towards the oncoming soldiers, knowing that she would likely die, but knowing that every moment she gave Mewtwo took them one step closer to saving the Earth, and possibly even the galaxy and/or the universe.