Authors Notes: [A/N]: I used to be, well still am, on CBUB, a website based on putting famous characters against each other by posting an intro to them and allowing the fans vote who would win the fight. The site is great, but you never get to write the end... So anyhow. Here is the story I like one of the most.
The writing may start off a bit shakey, over-looked, and thusly childish, but I assure you. It gets better.
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Samus got the call about twenty hours ago. She came with her maximum Fusion Beta armor, the blue and purple shine of it was intimidating even to her. The stark presence of her reflection startled her. Looking into solid reflections in silver polish let her know that her job in the recent years have made her more than just a bounty hunter. She was now known as the Metroid Professional. Scientists in her ring of planets couldn't figure them out or get close enough to even know what they were.
She had all the data on them from SR-388 though, the planet in which she was forced to go, to check out the distress signals. To her horror it was more than just a sunken colony. And now, in her newly made armor, upgraded with all the non-stock essentials, cleaned and polished, she felt an eerie sense of Nostalgia. The call came from her terminal monitor, explaining a distress signal from a planet two light years away.
The farthest she would have ever traveled was today. She awoke from stasis lock where her ship had already landed. The temperatures were below freezing. The air that cut around her ship would incapacitate her if she wasn't in her armor. The city in which she landed in was massive, a metropolis at one point, but all the glass and polished bronze statues had been shattered and mauled. The city looked covered in tar and war. Nothing was here.
"Farmanergy" She whispered under her helmet, reading the large business block lettered sign in front of the building a few blocks down... She walked down the streets and came to the building in which the mission stated. A massive power plant just outside the center of the city. She noted how strange it was to have a power plant just inside the City. She shrugged and walked in, the doors broken from their hinges, the lights flickered on and off throughout every hallway and room.
She found what she was looking for quickly, the Main Terminal. She pushed a small disc into the computer terminal and everything came to life, and the recordings, the records, the audio receptors, the life that was once here, it all came to life on the monitors, and to her horror she found it wasn't just her galaxy that faced the threat of parasitic end...
Data//Loading....
Farmanergy: Planet Zobos JB's main provider of energy since 1080 C.C. The use of energy is unknown by most, but the retainers of energy cycled in and out of the power plants, planet wide, are in surplus. The excellent energy provider became under the protection of every country's government, just to have the cheaply made energy which seemed to have no draw backs what so ever.
Data//Secret//Confirming...
In 1043 C.C. an escape vessel crash landed over the atmosphere of Zobos JB, above the country of Ygario. Scientists who quickly excavated the site were found as only husks of skin, dead muscle, and bone. The military stepped in immediately and began to do their own research.
The new life discovered on board was highly complex bacterial parasites. They lived off of energy of almost any kind and had a knack for taking it straight from living things. Further research was placed about the excavation site for the next decades.
Data//Top Secret//Confirming...
The few incidents of the life form now known as, Parax B, escaping and infesting have caused even further research of what we know. The Parax, class B, level 1 is what we deal with on a daily basis and provides Farmanergy all revenue of energy. However, when escaping their holding vessels, and attach themselves to our humans, they develop into a much larger form. Now known as Parax B level 5. A few more controlled events were made, where we have attained the level 12 of Parax B, and the new breed of Parax H. Please see Parax Physiology on OPSE15.001.
For the past centuries Parax B, level 1 has been forced to transfer energy from the Earth's Soil to the cities. The reason for placing within the cities is because the energy is very short lived and we have yet to discover a conduit to carry it over a lengthy distance, other than using living tissue. The planet that is infected by the Parax is destroyed slowly and after about 30 years of constant infection is completely neutral to energy and life. See Parax Energy Resolution 11.3.r3
Data//Admin Control//Broken data strings...
Audio/Video discussion:
"At about three days ago we have gotten feed back of an incoming comet. We have predicted that it should land a few hundred miles within Hvourian's capital."
//
"The first six teams we have sent in have not come out of the crash landing site. The military is even more involved in this than they were centuries ago when the Parax infection landed." There was static that came in through the man's voice, "The entire world is spooked."
Data//Disc Full//
The screen flashed and turned off, the disc ejected and she took it into her hand. She soon realized her jaw was hung open and she shook her head in shame. "The fools," she whispered, "Parax... Metroid... How did you get here?" She put the Disc into a seal compartment in her suit and pulled out another disc and inserted it to the terminal counsel.
The computer skipped ahead about a month.
"The entire country of Hvourian is under the eye of the world. The first country on any planet to come under containment for biological hazard. The infection ratio is 9 out of ten people. The one non-infected person got out easy and was killed by the parasites. We have no name for the life forms that came from the crash; many of us in the research facilities call it The Flood."
Her eyes gazed over to the other screens which showed the Flood, brown, decayed fleshy matter monsters that sprang with whip like limbs and phalanges capable of wielding many other weapons. The data skipped ahead a few more months. And a news reporter took the spot of the scientist.
"Entire countries are being evacuated now as the horror has streaked across the world. The parasites that have landed less than a year ago which are now known as the Flood have taken over country after country. Military forces have finally come together and are signing the Arms Pact, where nuclear weaponry will be used to wipe out the matter once countries of the western hemisphere are cleared out."
Her mind flashed back to the Metroids of her galaxy and their ability to absorb energy, especially when facing death. The screen came back to another scientist, this one much younger, much more terrified.
"Doctor McHan was detained for releasing information on the Parax entities. I think they may kill him. I am Doctor Jing Xhiang, I am his replacement. Our research facility is the last one left of our kind. It's been a day since the nuclear blasts touched down across the world and silence has taken over. I fear for the worst."
She shook her head and the time line moved forward. Now a six divided video screen came up which she immediately deciphered to be a unit of soldier's helm cams recording events live. They marched each with moonbeam flash lights coming from their fatigue armor. They were in a research facility, broken down; the lights were completely out, with the exception of random red lights that hung in and out of reality.
Audio came on while the soldier marched through the building, but it was a scientist speaking. "The Parax have escaped and their first duty it seemed was to release their imprisoned brethren. On top of this, they seem to be not only immune to the nuclear blasts outside of thirty kilometers, but also absorptive to it. The new Class O breeds are the main threat to global infection. The 'fliers' that are the Class O Parax have made it everywhere, crashing into Facilities and releasing the power plant's prisoners.
"On top of that, the Flood who survived the blasts of the first strike nuclear launches by burrowing underground. They are very responsive as well, capturing left vehicles and weapons, they managed to fly over one hundred jets and aircrafts across the ocean to the last surviving hemisphere. We shot down over 90%, but there was so much left. The skeptical scientists give our planet six more months." As this was said, shadows bounced periodically through his speech on the cameras. And one by one, each camera turned into snow. Cries of disbelief filled the audio.
The screen flashes forward again, six months...
"General John Shaun Francis Porter the IV, this is planet Zobos JB. We are still awaiting your package. I repeat, we are awaiting the package that was promised us months ago. Our planet is fallen, we are the last military instillation left. They are laughing at us. The Parax, the Flood. They are laughing because they have grown bored with us and have begun their own fight with each other. We are alive because they have finally met each other. God help us."
Samus took the full disc from the Terminal and let out a sigh and placed the disc in her sealed suit and placed another one into the terminal. The screen flash, "Receptor Feedback Only." Her eyes grew wide to the red flashing error lights on the screen. She thought otherwise on what she just did, but her job was to find everything out, get a sample if possible, and leave. They told her everything was dead months ago here. She repeated that in her head as she pulled a cord from her collar armor and pushed it into the terminal. Her eyes sank from reality and into oblivion.
Meeeh... Her vision whipped around. She hated these recepticons. Troooid... Her head tossed back the other way, but no. Her actual body stood motionless, her nervous system ran the psyche trip she was in now. She roamed the lands that the video relay systems saw them. She soon came to the conclusion that nothing was left, except them.
Her form walked the empty streets of where she was. She now realized it wasn't the season that made the cold and snow and sunless skies. It was nuclear winter. The decay of everything was overwhelming. She had been on many missions, many which included the horror of the Metroid, but nothing that involved the genocide of a planet. Her foot steps echoed into the nothingness.
Cars were turned over in the street and ash littered the air as much as the oxygen. She could hear the wind bending and weaving through the broken windows and bent steel of the traffic lights. The eerie echoing of every step she took. The light was manifested through the gray clouds. Everything looked like the future of death. The evolution of decay. Her heart thudded louder and louder. The clouds seemed to get darker with every pulse. And then it stopped.
The teeth lashed open, snapping as if to make a breath. The green and yellow eyes only inches from her own behind her mask. The vivid display was a highly evolved Metroid. Its purple scaly skin flashed in the embers of gray death. It stared at her, as if she was there. She forced her mind through the error. She was not really there, this was an illusion. A mere freak accident, just a coincidence. Her heart still stopped though and heart breath refused to complete.
The glowing yellow eyes turned as the large winged beast shifted his torso to look over, it's eyes grew large and it's fangs stretched out of it's mandibles before letting out a terrible shriek. Purple and blue blood flew through her image. The beast became riddled with bullets and fell to the ground.
Her eyes led her to the muzzle flashes and loud party fire from the walking corpses. They were brown and white, like eggs dipped in tea and formed into the disgusting walking monsters of the Flood, there was about six of them, all walking, some with pistols, and some with automatic rifles. They let out beastly wheezing cries of victory as they stirred and stampeded forward from the alley in which they came. They came just in front of her to peer over the dead Metroid.
The smaller flood units lashed their whip like arms out and lacerated over the dead flesh. Soon all over they were over killing the purple corpse. But they all soon stopped and turned their defunct heads to her. Staring through soulless eyes of the once living and now consumed. Their necks rotting backwards, and seemed to be hanging from just dead tendons, so much that the whistling winds made them bobble too and fro. Her heart stopped again and she almost contemplative to begin fighting herself.
They did not blink but only stared and her hand began to reach across herself to begin powering up her plasma cannon. They all turned their shriveled heads to her movements. She almost died of shock, was she really there. Was this just propaganda of her once living? She almost cried out in horror, all of it so much for her. And she almost did until she saw plumes of black smoke fill he vision and then cries from the empty vocals of the Flood and then a shriek right after. She turned around to see a Metroid, with glowing red eyes and his hand smoldering from releasing biologically produced liquid napalm.
He reached out to touch the high leveled Metroid. Its exoskeleton was a silvery blue, and it's only opening was the chest which revealed a vital organ, which in itself could take a beating. Its red eyes seemed to stare into her helmet, a cold deathly stare which seemed to consume her soul, the way it would suck the energy from living tissue. Her hand came closer to the shining armor of its exoskeleton.
Its beady eyes stared back, grim and still. Her own stare which showed all her resolve. She had never been this close to a living Metroid for this long, this still. It scared her. And she wasn't sure which was worst, the Flood which she had just learned about, or the Metroid, her long biological enemy.
Her hand came to the armor and sank through, its image became a haze of pixilated particles that fizzled and rippled through all her imagery. They traded colors and became different hues. As if she changed the channel in slow motion everything around her changed. The violent torrent of colors slowed down as the recepticons fixed itself completely and now she was in a red lit passageway of a building that looked of death.
Her breath eased as she surveyed the area. She even began checking her sensors, but realized this was only an illusion and her detective sensors play not part in this dimension of replay in which she stepped forth into. A cold display of sparks came from junction boxes mounted to the wall and lights flickered, causing leaping shadows.
He form began to walk down the dark hallways, her shadows become perplexed in a gore of red light, shining three or four of herself in a meld of different colors of black and red. She looked at them curiously and then they seemed to flash away from her sight. She shook her head, her mind playing tricks on her, her shadows could not exist in this 'play' world. She continued walking turning corner after corner, seeing the same thing in different lengths. She came upon stairs and doors, pushing through and walking up and down them, hoping to get lost and finding out more.
It wasn't until she stumbled into a room where the lights were halogen white and yellow, dimly lit, the bulbs were about to go out and she was guessing that the auxiliary lights here were never sheathed in red. Under the lamp of cascading light was crunching noises. The shadows writhed behind the light and she stared in utter disgust at the crunching, the smashing, and the mashing. Like bones being chewed and blood being slurped through a hole riddled straw.
Grub like beings covered a red and silver body. Almost identical other than the color and damages done, to the other previous Metroid infected. And the yellow bulbs stained brown and green like mold around it's horizon edges covered the mortal body. She gazed as they shot probes into it's armor, only breaking the brittle straws. On covered the vulnerable organ on it's chest and several more spines covered the revealed chest plate.
It happened slowly, the body of the Metroid quivered and seemed to become ancient. It's skin seemed to tighten around every muscle, the armor it wore shed into a flaccid rusted metal, but was actually molecular tissue of the decay that the flood was made out of. It's eyes became wider and wider as it's skin pushed back on it's head, and the eyes became almost non-existent. The mandibles hung open and the teeth started to fall out one by one, leaving only a few of the sharp fangs.
It began to convulse as it's skin that was excess receded along it's limbs, creating the whip blisters that hung from it. The convulsions became to violent that the parasite bulbs of the flood flew into the wall exploding like smash paper bags. It came to it's feet, it's body looking like it was made of wire on the inside, it's jaw a peeling back of horror and it's eyes deathly. The curtain of skin it hung by slowly moved forward, as if a new calf learning to walk.
She learned that moment of a new horror in which she bestowed in her memory. The Metroid was once her greatest nightmare, and now seeing this, she wished to rethink this disposition.
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