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Return to Coruscant [Exemplary] - Samus Aran - 08-04-2014
Samus switched on the lights to her apartment as she stepped off the landing pad and out of the rain. Her suit shimmered before fading into an orange light and vanishing. She shook her hair, crossed to the sofa, and threw herself down.
“Hey, Adam.”
“Hey, Samus.”
Adam was no normal artificial intelligence. Once a man, Samus’s commanding officer in her years at the Galactic Federation, he’d been one of the few people Samus had ever trusted entirely. In a bid to stop the Federation’s metroid-breeding program, he had sacrificed his own life.
Years later, Samus discovered that his intelligence and personality had been uploaded before his death. They’d been reunited only a short time before Samus had been jerked out of her own world to the Omniverse. But in the Omniverse, anything can be called from memory …
“I was worried about you, Samus.”
… Sometimes, she regretted that.
Samus folded her hands behind her head and gave a shrug. “I can’t check in all the time. Bounty hunting is my job, you know?”
There was a dull humming, the noise Adam’s computerised voice made when it was calculating the words to say. “I heard that the dragon had been killed, but you were nowhere to be found.”
“I was only gone a few days,” said Samus with a slight edge of ridicule in her tone.
“No you weren’t.” Adam’s deep tone never relayed much of his true feeling. He was much like Samus in that way. You had to read between the lines. “It might have seemed like days, but months have passed to us mundane secondaries.”
For the lack of anything to look at, Samus eyed the ceiling. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
There was a dull humming. “Were you hurt?”
Samus said nothing.
“Were you … did you die?”
The bounty hunter’s eyes flashed something between anger and concern. “No! I got … I got taken off guard. Sucker punched. Some people helped me out. Proto Man was there. I met some other guy, wizard, he took me back to his place. Seemed nice. It didn’t turn out to be a trap, in any case.”
There was a sound like a suppressed chuckle. “Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re alright. Are you going to be staying long?”
Samus frowned. “I don’t think so.”
The hunter was still on her mind. Cindy. She supposed it was no big deal, really, for one Prime to backstab another in the Omniverse. It probably happened all the time. No doubt it had been nothing personal to Cindy.
But it was personal to Samus. The anger flowed through her veins like molten lava. She would keep it there, beneath the surface. When the time came, she’d let it explode. Preferably, though, sooner than later.
“So what are you going to do?” asked Adam.
“For now? Sleep.”
And so she did.
Dragonfire. In reality, the Rathalos was a Rathalos. She could see it, and its face was plain, foolish. Like an angry dog. She had kept that sight in her mind’s eye as she fought it, and her fear was controllable. Ordinary. Day-to-day. Just another beast to be put down.
But in her dreams the eyes took on a sinister intelligence. A sadism. Before it, her arms felt weak, her suit suddenly so heavy. It was so fast, and its tail whipped around with a speed she could barely register. She was helpless as it bit down. Felt herself lifted in its jaws. All the Chozo’s protection, the armor they’d gifted her to keep her safe. The dragon didn’t care. It laughed. Its teeth cut through like butter, down into her flesh, and she couldn’t even scream.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 08-05-2014
Samus could feel the omnilium growing within her. Omni was pleased, it seemed, with her bounty-hunting efforts. Perhaps it was time she used some of that excess.
“Adam.” She said aloud. “Any new ideas for upgrades?”
“I was wondering about the defensive capabilities of your armor. You’re a great deal weaker than your last mission in the galaxy.”
Samus placed a finger across her lip. He was right. But that wasn’t all. “I’m more concerned about my speed. I’ve not been this sluggish in a long time. Speed serves defensive and offensive purposes. Plus, I can hardly chase down criminals when my Power Suit is like this.”
“True. Go with speed, then.”
It was a slow, gradual process, but when it was done Samus tested the suit out with a few high jump kicks. “Much more responsive. Still not great, but, at least I can run. What else?”
“You’re the expert, Samus. What do you need?”
Samus reeled off possibilities. “Firepower. Mobility. Defensive measures. A better visor. A ship I can actually use in a fight. The question is what do I need most?”
Adam paused. “Tactical information. Your scan visor would come in real handy.”
Samus pursed one side of her lip. “Mmm … my X-Ray visor might be better.”
“Can’t you do both?”
Samus closed her eyes for a moment and furrowed her brow. Something like a mental brick wall stood in her way; she pressed against it to no avail. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
“Too bad. Well then, I’d go with the X-Ray visor. I can always advise you, but I can’t see through walls.”
Samus studied the wall for a moment. “Alright. I’ll defer to your military expertise,” she said wryly.
Within a few minutes, she was seeing through walls. “Damn,” said the hunter. “I didn’t know they had THIS many bugs in here.”
“I did tell you.”
Samus tapped the side of her helmet and the ghostly black-and-white world of x-rays was replaced with the real world. “Starting to wish I’d used that omnilium to get myself a better place to stay. Too late now,” she added before Adam could offer up another ‘I told you so’.
“So what’s the lady going to do with her new upgrades, I might ask?”
“Stay in and watch movies.” Samus smiled. “What do you think?”
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 08-07-2014
Samus descended on one of the many great elevators from Tier One. The gravity inside the pod was regulated, a good thing as otherwise she would’ve been trapped against its ceiling. She watched as the great streets vanished into darkness and the skyscrapers of Tier Two entered her view. It was truly magnificent, and more than a little dizzying to be up so high. Many preferred the windowless cabs, but Samus always liked to be able to see, even if little ever changed.
Tier Two was not near to the opulence of Tier One, but that only spoke of the latter’s lavishness. By her own world’s comparison, it would have been fairly standard for Federation homeworlds, prosperous as they were. It buzzed with activity. In some ways, this was where a lot of the real work got done. Above, politicians and nobles shook hands as the rich frittered away the city-verse’s money in clubs that continued through day and night. Tier Two was where most businesses set up shop proper. If you wanted to buy a car without taking out a mortgage, or a nice house without its own moat, this is where you came.
The light inside the pod dimmed momentarily as it shot through the floor of Tier Two and out the other side.
If Samus had been forced to pick favourites, the winner probably would have been Tier Three. A few years back, Tier Three had been something of a ghetto, and it still wasn’t anywhere you’d want to admit to living if you spent a lot of time under the real sun and cared what people thought of you. To Samus, it felt like what home should. You felt welcome here, whether you walked in wearing a dress or a suit of armor. You could walk the streets without being sized up or sized down. It was ordinary. Real. And most of the people who lived here were grateful. It was beginning to thrive, and it showed in the number of new buildings that were being erected. Many of them held that ‘just summoned’ sheen while others were being rapidly erected with the help of ships and scaffolding.
The elevator slowed as the ground grew nearer and nearer before stopping and opening with a hiss, the lights inside changing colour and indicating towards the exit. This was as far as it went. Samus stepped out and switched on her X-Ray visor. Beyond about twenty metres, the world went dark, but within her little circle of proximity she could see everything. A world of black and white, yet so much more detailed. She could see those who were carrying guns or wearing armor beneath their clothing. She could see the ones who scurried about in the tunnels beneath her feet, a world-between-worlds that most ignored or didn’t know about. She could see the workers lounging at their desks or pursuing more recreational activities behind closed doors.
It made her feel a bit voyeuristic, truth be told.
She tapped the side of her helmet again, pulling up the visor options and fiddling with the calibrations. She wanted to be able to use the X-Ray visor’s functionality without losing too much of her normal visual function. Luckily, her visor hadn’t been built in the 20th century. It flickered as the real world brightened into view, revealing the colours and contours the human eye was built to perceive. She fiddled with the settings some more until her X-Ray vision overlaid, allowing her to see both surface and subsurface details to a degree without switching between one or the other. It occurred to her that she probably looked stranger than normal, staring around as though she’d never seen a person or a building before. This wasn’t something that bothered her, particularly. She rarely elicited a normal response from other humans.
There was an entrance to Tier Four not far from here. An elevator still in relatively good working order, though Samus had had to fix it herself on no less than two occasions, when it had decided that moving people wasn’t really what it wanted to do in life. It was still better than taking the stairs; some of the seediest human beings in existence hung out in the corridors and crevices between this floor and the next. Mostly harmless, but cloying and often unsettling – drug addicts and homeless, mixed in with the occasional predator or wandering packs of kids who would vanish the moment you saw them. While they weren’t problems to be ignored, they required a finer tool than Samus. At the end of the day, she was a blunt instrument. A damn good blunt instrument, but that was it.
She found the elevator in its usual place, stuffed behind the back entrance of a pub named the Third Bottle and obscured by the city wall, which cut in here to form a crevice. It was used by a lot of workers and local types that still had business on the fourth tier and sense enough not to use the tunnels. She stepped in, hit the button, and leaned against the wall as the door closed.
Light funnelled in through the narrow horizontal windows, and she got a glimpse of the Fourth Tier. More of an eveningscape than the other tiers even in the middle of the day, the lights did a far worse job of emulating sunlight and got it somewhere between football stadium and ritzy nightclub. On the skyline, Samus could make out the F-Zero racing circuit, one of the few things able to seduce the rich down to this level. Most of it was obscured by looming towers of grey metal – the residential blocks that housed those stuck in the middle of Coruscant’s sandwich of super-rich and ultra-destitute.
The elevator gave a great clank and Samus steadied herself as it practically fell to the floor. Someone needed to do a proper maintenance on this one, it seemed. The Empire didn’t like people coming down here period, hence why the elevators didn’t descend past Tier Three. They liked people coming up even less. You could see why. As Samus stepped out of the elevator, she saw with her newly-upgraded visor that almost half of the residents out on the street were packing some kind of weapon. She had half a mind to confiscate the illegal weaponry. She didn’t, because of the disquieting suspicion that it would be denying those people their only defence.
This was the first tier on which Samus operated. It wasn’t a bad place, persay. You could get a good ramen, and the movie theatres showed lots of films that were too risqué or controversial to be allowed on the upper tiers. In many ways, it was a place people could come to be free of the Empire in Coruscant. Unfortunately, it was never that simple or easy. When you left a gap, something would always come to fill it. In the case of Tier Four, that was the gangs.
Gang violence wasn’t just common on Tier Four – it was the way people did business. You wouldn’t find a single shop owner here who wasn’t packing some sort of firearm, and most of them had other defences. Shop signs changed frequently, and it was impossible to tell whether the owners had gone out of business, gotten on the wrong side of someone or packed up to move somewhere else. If it was sometimes hard to fathom why so many chose to live in Camelot, even without the convenience of technology, a trip down to Tier Four provided a compelling explanation.
But Tier Four wasn’t where Samus was headed today. Ignoring the food-stands, merchants and touts, she made her way through the crowded streets to the nearest taxi vendor. The driver was a holographic man with a flat cap who, despite his immaterial nature, appeared to be chewing gum. The projector angled in Samus’s direction as she drew close and the cabbie spoke up. “Eyy if it isn’t Samus Aran! Been a while, where you been?”
“Dragons,” said Samus by way of explanation. She climbed into the back of the cab and said, “Tier Five, please,” before the cabbie could get another word in.
“Dragons, eh? Ohh, dragons! That one in er ah, Camelot wasn’t it? I saw that on the news. Big bastard wasn’t ‘e? ‘Course I never seen a small dragon.”
Samus sat back and let the driver talk, doing her best to focus on anything that wasn’t his brain-chiselling stream of consciousness. Taking her gunship would have allowed her to avoid this, but she was taking the slow route for a reason. She wanted to be covert. As powerful as she might be, there were places on Tier Five that made even her wary. Coruscant was a deep place, and its layers, peeled away, revealed something that shook her more than any dragon or monster. Just the thought of what she couldn’t see and didn’t know made her stomach lurch.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 08-16-2014
If Tier Four was a nightclub, then Five had more the air of a sprawling metro tunnel. It certainly nailed that air of dirty claustrophobia. Compared to the other tiers, the ceiling was oppressively close, as though it was in danger of falling down and crushing the entire tier.
Through this patchwork surface of gaps, grating and hanging wires descended the taxi, its bright headlamps illuminating a path through the dust and darkness.
“Down there,” said Samus, indicating to one of the larger streets.
The cabbie continued his stream of prying questions and running commentary all the way to the ground. A drop of omnilium was exchanged and the human predator emerged, never gladder to be entering a ghetto.
The streets were, at first glance, not too different from Tier Four. The biggest difference was the energy; a creeping impression of desperation. Even as she took her first steps from the taxi, Samus found herself harangued by urchins and peddlers; they could’ve spotted her shiny suit a mile away. Others Samus marked mentally as they retreated further into the shadows at the sight of her. She had become well known here.
The bounty hunter offered no omnilium to her unwanted welcome party, ignoring their pleads. On the job was no time to let her heart out of the suit. Besides, the last thing she needed was orphans following her around every time she came to Tier Five. Not with her line of work. She ignored them, stepping through with deliberate haste. Once she was here, it wouldn’t be long before the gang’s spotters got word of her arrival.
For the first time since the beginning of their descent, Adam piped up. “The bounty was last seen in this area. It’s the territory of the red shells. A bunch of humanoids from the Ashen Plains who broke off from the kingdom there to form their own faction. They’re big showboats. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Samus grunted. She kept her eyes on the corners, the windows, the rooftops. Already her x-ray visor was proving to be an excellent investment. Despite the puny range, the told her where to watch. Her mind attached notes to every skeleton. Clear. Clear. Clear. Suspicious. Clear.
Before long her entourage had given up. Samus has made a mental note that stealth capabilities would be an excellent upgrade from missions like this. It was hard not to get ahead of herself when she was only limited by omnilium quantity.
The plan was simple. Go in to the gang’s territory and wait to be attacked. Samus worked best in missions that required little finesse. Fortuitously, in this case, her opponents weren’t exactly the Illuminati. Not ten minutes had passed since her arrival before figure leapt from the shadows.
Maybe five feet. Humanoid … was a stretch. The red shells lived up to their name. It was a turtle on two legs. Clad in a red bandanna and an open red jacket below, which was a … Red shell. It drew a yellow, clawed hand to its mouth, grasping its cigar between two digits and blowing out a stream of white smoke. Two visor indicators on Samus’s HUD indicated that two other humanoids were closing in behind. She kept her eyes on the leader and played dumb from now.
“Turn around and leave, hunter,” said the turtle with what Samus guessed was an intimidating tone.
Samus had practice with these scenarios. She slipped into the drill was confident ease, her voice betraying not a shred of emotion. “I’m looking for the android who burned an Imperial soldier to death in this area. I’m going to need you to share any information you have as to his whereabouts.” It wasn’t difficult to see why some believed Samus herself was an android, not a human.
Samus’s HUD flashed, one of the red silhouettes closing in from behind. She raised her left arm and blocked the incoming claw, pivoting as she did so and bringing her right arm cannon round and into the assailant’s face. It connected and sent him reeling to the floor. The next turtle was closing in from below, a spinning shell. Samus jumped. The second, shellified turtle slammed straight into his downed friend, who went spinning under Samus’s legs and straight into their leader. Three for three. Strike. The turtles groaned.
“Tell me where the android is,” said Samus, the tone of negotiation replaced with one of simple command.
The turtles got up. Even to them, it was painfully obvious that they were outmatched. The leader stood up, picking up his cigar again and putting it back in his mouth. “Tch.”
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 08-17-2014
He knew the exact time of when it all happened. He could convert it into seconds, minutes or hours. In fact, he had. Back and forth. Over and over. His sensors provided visual backup. A perfect photographic memory to most humans. To Vitruvius, just an internal backlog of everything he's seen in his very long life. The kinetic imprints were left in his body. The feel of that raging inferno welling up in his system, almost like his infrastructure was being compromised. The explosion of chemical flames erupting from his hands. The heatsinks instantly cooling the fire within when all was said and done.
Vitruvius stared at his exposed palms. Open. Closed. Opening with each finger slowly extending. He stared at his wrist, looking for the barrel that killed the innocent. He couldn't see it. No choke. No exit. Just the sinews of wiring and the flexible metals that made up his arm. Completely normal. He searched through his coding and programming, going in full detail, scanning lines and lines of processes, programs and master systems. He couldn't access anything that led through the keywords he saw during that incident. Everything was on lock down and hidden from active searches. Centuries of being functioning and all the in depth routine checks and not once did he come across anything that even hinted at his systems being tampered with or his body being modified in such a way that he was a war machine.
A war machine? He couldn't imagine being one. He had been designed to be creative and expressive. He had been created specifically to avoid war. To deter struggle. His creators died for their cause. If the military had taken him during his shut down period, why hadn't they just produced replicas? He may not have been able to find any leads within his system regarding his weaponization, but he could determine for himself that at some point he had been altered. And the military was the obvious perpetrator.
In all his time back home, the dangers he faced, the fights he was in and the deaths of humans on his hands, not once did he malfunction in such a way. And while he had killed people before, it was as punishment for their crimes and the detriment to his society of peace he was trying to build. Never had he killed for the sake of killing. Nor had he killed through miscalculation. He didn't miscalculate. He was precise. Every move was triple checked and analyzed for best possible outcomes. This particular event was a...glitch. He glitched. What happened was not an intended action. He would have gladly been shot by a weak laser and escaped and repaired himself over setting a man on fire and watching his body char black and melt.
But that's not what happened. And worse he had not faced the consequences of his actions. He was responsible for all this and yet he had run away. Why? Why had he run away? And why did he continue hide? He couldn't process what he had done. He needed to check his systems. Needed to find the fault and correct it. If he allowed himself to be caught, how much of a chance would he have to search himself? Especially being an inorganic killing an organic? They would have deactivated him. And if these Tiers were any clue to how this Verse worked then he'd probably be parted out.
Yet he found nothing. Had nothing but speculation. Very probable speculation. But not facts that he could present. Or anything he could fully understand without further evidence. Worse, he had a code. Not a code programmed into his system. But a philosophy he adopted as he set up society back home. People could not do harm without punishment being administered. If their crimes were outrageous or they had a serious defect that made them a continued threat to civilization, they needed a permanent solution. Whatever the solution ended up being. Those rules applied to him as well. He had murdered without reason. Taken a life under very weak circumstances. And he lost control of his own body and reflexes. He was dangerous. He needed to face this head on and with integrity.
His hideout had been a series of buildings in the worse parts of Tier Five. He needed seclusion to work on his programming. The buildings had provided excellent cover and for the Imperial guards who had gone looking for the murderer, he was able to sneak from building to building, room to room to avoid detection. The structures were mostly abandoned aside from the gangs or other unfriendly types that gathered. It seemed to be their playground. A sense of uprightness had compelled him to act and bring them down. But his rationalization told him he'd be better off not drawing further attention to himself and just to continue figuring out what was wrong with his systems.
He rested on the fourth floor of some rotting building that overlooked the main street passing through the area. No accommodations, no furniture, nothing. Just an empty room with wood floor and two windows facing the same direction toward the more densely populated city. Vitruvius stood there without his cloak. His streamlined body resembling a human male with excellent musculature. A heavy chest plate of black metals designed to relax and contract like human pectorals. Rows of individual moving ribs and abdominals that allowed him to bend, tighten and rotate like a normal biological entity. His hands rested behind his back as he stared out the window. The wandering single eye dashed a blue streak back and forth as he scanned his surroundings. Could it be his adventure would come to a close just as suddenly as it began? Would this Omni being allow it to end so simply since he was considered “interesting”? He enjoyed new experiences, but something deep inside him prompted him that being back in his own world may be preferable to whatever came next.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 08-22-2014
The turtle jerked his head towards a nearby building, raising a claw. “He’s holed up somewhere in that building over there. Jimmy here saw him. Ain’t that right Jimmy?”
“Sure did.”
Samus took off.
“That was easy,” said Adam.
“Having a reputation has its advantages,” replied Samus.
The building was a featureless block of grey. Indistinguishable from any other in the neighbourhood. Samus noted that there were three entrances. A front entrance, a small back entrance, and a fire escape on the side. Besides the windows, of course. Not knowing the mark’s abilities, she assumed that anywhere was a potential escape route. Never hurt to know your exits, though.
Samus took the stairs. Her X-Ray visor showed her anything within about twenty metres. Each floor was about one hundred metres long, and the broken elevator buttons had told her that there were four floors total. Most of the rooms were empty, but some had disquieting signs of life. A room of obvious drug users, its inhabitants either crashed out or shooting up. A boarded up room with what she assumed was a family unit sheltering inside. A room with one person and several thin animals that barked as she passed. She felt disgusted that the Empire could allow such poverty, even as she felt the sinking weight of what little she’d done to help these people.
But she put those thoughts out of her mind. One thing at a time. Nobody was safe with a killer on the loose, and that was her job. She continued to ascend, walking just short of running. For all she knew, the mark was no longer here, but she was closing in.
She reached the third floor and walked down it. Empty. Empty. Empty. But at the far end of the room, she looked up and saw one figure. Manlike, but with no skeleton. Her heart rate went up. That’s our android.
She turned back to the stairs, moving as quietly as possible, and ascended to the fourth floor. Slowly she walked down the long corridor, her light footsteps deafening in the silence. She drew within X-Ray range of the figure. Still there, at his window. The hunter closed in.
In front of the door, she stopped. There was nothing on her indicator besides the android.
She listened.
The shot hit her in the middle of the back, smashing her against the doorframe. She drew breath, but as she did another slammed into her helmet. She saw stars. Her heads-up-display flashed red before vanishing completely. A moment later it was back, errors riddling the screen.
Half-slumped against the door, she managed to roll and dodge just as another shot smashed through the doorway. She got to her feet and ran. She looked behind her as she did, and saw a figure emerging into the corridor from the opposite flat doorway.
It looked like a cross between a space pirate and … herself. All she saw in the brief glimpse was a red visor, silver-grey armor and a claw. It opened up and fired another shot at her.
She ducked to the ground as it sailed above her head. “What …” she mumbled as she hit the ground, eyes wide.
“Just run, Samus!” It was the voice of Adam. For once, she didn’t argue.
She turned into a doorway and kicked it down. Another shot sailed past as she did. She ran to the window, and now she could hear the thing’s footsteps. It was running after her. She wasted no time, running to the window and ramming into it with her shoulder. She smashed through and out.
Falling four storeys, even with power armor, was not something you did unless you had to. She went head-over-heels and somehow managed to place her feet first. She hit the ground hard and tumbled forward onto her right side, spinning across the ground and into a wide alleyway. Two surprised smokers yelled and managed to position themselves out of the way.
She didn’t need to scream. The pain felt like it was doing all the screaming for her. She pushed against the ground and her right arm went numb. The left complied, though, and somehow she pushed herself to the ground. Her right ankle felt like it might be broken, but she stumbled forward anyway, crying “Get away!” as she did so.
More shots came down from the window and she could do nothing but keep running as the bystanders were run through by energy bullets. She got to the end of the alleyway and checked her location. Why did she have to be so far from the main streets?
Easy, answered her brain. They set you up.
Her mind processed the revelation but put it aside for now. “Keep running,” confirmed Adam. “There’s an elevator once you reach the main street.”
She ran, and her screaming body confirmed that she’d broken several bones in the fall. She felt half-concussed from the shot to the head, and her back felt no better. But still she ran until her body seemed to give up on complaining and just accept that this had to happen.
The elevator was in sight. She limped towards it as fast as she could.
Then it stepped out. Between her and the elevator. It spotted her and raised its claw-cannon, revealing an arm cannon much like hers which immediately began to glow with energy. Samus grit her teeth in anger, frustration, confusion. Who was this stalker and where had they come from? Her X-ray visor hadn’t indicated anything, even now the figure before her didn’t register on her sensors. And now they stood before her, completely unaided but completely able to kill her. It didn’t look good.
She charged her arm cannon.
The distance was a few metres. Samus could see her opponent more clearly now. The derivative design was obvious. The Stalker, whoever they were, was nothing but a copycat. Nobody could truly emulate the original Chozo designs. Not even the federation had managed it. The ambush had been impressive. Their weaponry was formidable, perhaps even stronger than her own. But I … Samus reminded herself.
I’m Samus Aran.
She whipped her left arm out, unleashing her grapple beam towards the wall above the elevator. The Stalker’s shot flew out, just missing her feet. Samus sailed forward up and over the Stalker’s head, and kicked back with her broken heel. The shock was immense. All the kinetic energy from her charge beam raced out through the boot, into the Stalker’s helmet. The Stalker careened forwards, face hitting the dirt, and Samus let go of the grapple beam just in time to fly forward into the elevator.
Another painful fall, this time not so much because of the impact itself but because of her already-broken bones. She lurched up and hammered the elevator keys. Miraculously, it only took a few seconds before the doors closed. She felt the Stalker scream a few seconds later as she disappeared from sight. Even as she rose, she felt shots crash into the wall around the lift. But the grav-boosters kicked in, and she was away.
Samus took deep, ragged breaths. She looked down at her right arm through her X-Ray visor. Broken hand. Broken wrist. She looked at her legs. Fractured tibia. Her swollen foot was far too big for the suit. But she dared not remove it just yet. She grit her teeth and endured the pain for now.
“What the hell,” she panted, “Was that?”
“It looked pirate in design.”
“Right. So the space pirates are here?”
“Maybe. Maybe it was a Prime.”
Samus cursed. “That bounty is still out there. They’ll have run by now.”
Adam didn’t contradict her.
A minute later, the elevator opened onto Tier Four, and Samus stumbled out. The crowds parted at her battle-torn appearance, giving her space to summon a vehicle. It took longer than usual, her focus distracted by thoughts of the other hunter who could be somewhere around. But somehow despite the pain and the fear, she managed to summon a vehicle she could control with only her left arm and leg, and rode it towards the upward-bound elevator.
It was only at Tier One that she relaxed fully. Back at her flat, she removed her suit and struggled to her bed. She lay there in her drying blood and let the pain engulf her.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 08-22-2014
Samus didn’t sleep until she was fully healed. It took almost twenty four hours. At Adam’s insistence, she’d taken some painkillers, but refused anything that would affect her lucidity. She wouldn’t be taken off guard again. When she finally did sleep, it was in nestled in the cockpit of her ship, high above the Coruscant nightscape.
Her suit, itself part of her, repaired itself in unison. She’d first noticed this back in Camelot, but this was the first time she’d ever suffered such extensive injuries – in the Omniverse or otherwise.
For the first time in a while, she felt a flash of sick rage towards Omni himself. To take away her power and leave her so vulnerable. She felt weak, and she knew that that was part of Omni’s game. To make her raise her power. She’d even started to enjoy it, in a way. Forget her stalker. Forget the Empire. Omni was the real enemy, and would be until the very end.
She opened her communicator and looked at the small list of contacts. Who among those would stand at her side? More importantly, did she really want to do this?
She tapped her knee for a second, thinking. Then she pressed the ‘call’ button.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 08-22-2014
Ones and zeroes repeated in infinite combinations, scrolling at a speed no human eye could possibly read at. High lights. Cross references. Take these combinations and process them this way. Let's take the lines and rotate them this way. Taking note of how the code organized itself in a cypher we can find repetitions and a pattern. Follow the pattern to forge a trail of breadcrumbs through back doors. Back doors he shouldn't have. Had he the glands, Vitruvius would be sweating as he orchestrated his brain in complex maneuvers to break down what he couldn't through simple search prompts and minor hacking skills. His own head required some mastery over computer literacy and decoding.
His cognitive abilities lost their inhuman effect as all power went to breaking down the walls that held the secret to what happened prior to the war his world had suffered. Body standing still like a statue as he attempted one final system check to see if he could discover his own secrets. Blue eyes staring through the window. Hands behind his back. Brain firing off electronic commands as his internal screens started lining up all the data. He was getting somewhere. He was getting close. Maybe he'd uncover his glitch...
...Crash.
Something above him made a sick smashing sound. Another exchange of force meeting force. This time sounding like the discharge of a weapon. His data stalled. He turned inward momentarily to see all his little ones and zeroes give way to focus on reality. His neon lenses snapped to full color as his systems hit red alert and sent him into fight or flight mode. A parasympathetic nervous system response in most biological beings, but a literal mode for Vitruvius. He listened as more shots fired and the sound of footsteps fell in a panicked run as someone was escaping an attacker.
It would take him thirty eight seconds to drape his cloak, run up the stores and accurately find where the struggle was taking place. By the measure of the running and the dimensions of the rooms in this building, he would be far too late to catch up. Better to just stay put and analyze.
At that moment the burst of shattering glass echoed above him and a body went tumbling down below. Orange in color. Mechanical. The details were locked away for further scanning. His head pressed to the window as he watched the stranger run off, effectively retreating from what had attacked it. Could there be hunters after him now? Had his deeds drawn the attention of Marshals calling out to the Outlaw? Had he lungs, he would sigh in exasperation. This was becoming a mess.
Donning his jacket and cloak, Vitruvius pulled the hood deep over his face, obscuring himself once more as he departed from the structure. There were beings after him now. But had the one firing their weapon been after him? Or perhaps the mechanical stranger falling was his new enemy? Had they both been after him? He'd imagine a bounty could not be shared amongst the hunters. A lingering follow up hoped the one who fell four stories to the ground wasn't hurt. Enough people had been hurt because of him.
Quietly vacating his premises, Vitruvius decided it was time to give up the ghost. He could continue his code breaking as The Empire decided his fate. No one else needed to get hurt because of him. Whether they be innocent victims to his unstable system or the hunters who pursue him because of his selfish desires to preserve himself.
Hitting the streets, the machine tightened his cloak around him as he headed for the upper Tiers. Hopefully he could make it to Tier One without being caught or attacked.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 08-27-2014
The Tiers held less wonder and excitement as he traversed through them again. He had a prime directive and all his curiosity was focused on what could potentially happen once he reached Tier One once more. The lights, the glitz, the faces, they all passed by with minimal analyzation or hard memory storage. Just features and colors he would recall and later fill in blanks to create whole pictures.
As he got closer to the higher Tiers, particularly Two, he noticed people were tightening up their guard around him. It would be foolish to think they didn't have any surveillance on him. With the advanced tech they should have been able to put together some kind of profile on him. He wondered if his identity as a robot was uncovered. He didn't care for that idea one bit.
At Tier One he was back to the bustling metropolis this place seemed to be on the surface. It was a stark contrast from the dark, lonely place he had been spending the past three days. And yet all the ignorant faces, the high society and the Stepford styled monotony seemed even more isolating.
He took a moment to take in the city once more. Would the Empire's patrol men come after her in the blink of an eye? Would the greatly feared Judge Dredd appear? Or would another hunter come after him? He felt his system prep itself for self preservation. An involuntary action. Like a firewall sensing danger and scanning for threats. Ironic how similar his internal systems were so like the systems of a human. Yet how different he processed and acted compared to humans. Strip away the ability to feel emotions and man would have been perfect. Realistically however, Vitruvius envied man for their flawed, illogical emotional responses. He...admired their traits, was terrified of their capacity for evil, but desired the emotions that inspired all their greatness.
But that was here nor there. He was making himself an open target by standing around in Tier One and he had business to attend to and would have found it preferable if he did it on his own or was escorted by someone who wouldn't execute with extreme prejudice or belonged solely to corrupt Empire.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 08-28-2014
It turned out that Takamachi didn’t have a receiver. Samus frowned. She hadn’t expected someone from such an advanced civilization to not have summoned any kind of real-time communications tech yet. It had been some time since Nanoha had gone off the radar, and Samus was concerned. Momentarily, she considered sending a Dataverse message to the woman, then decided against it. It was possible that Nanoha didn’t want to be found.
Proto Man was a different story. He’d assisted her since, at the Rathalos attack, and stood up for her. She had great faith in the kid. It was time to call him on it.
The receiver rang for several seconds before connecting. “Samus?” came the voice through the other end.
“Yeah, it’s Samus. Is this a good time?”
In the moments of silence that followed, Samus picked up a lot of strange background noise. Birds? Wherever Proto Man was was certainly far from Coruscant. “Uh … yeah. Sort of.” Some kind of metallic rustle. What was he doing? “Why’d you call?”
Samus paused. “I wanted to talk to you about our long-term goals.” She swung on her chair to look out the side of the window, at the passing lanes of traffic lighting up the city airspace. She paused for a long while. “I can’t do it alone. Policing Coruscant, it’s …” she breathed. “I want to know if you’ll join me. To form an alliance.”
“An alliance?”
“Yeah, I … I don’t really know what I’m doing yet, to be honest. But Coruscant is bad, you know that. On … a lot of levels. I think of all these people who have to live here and I want to help, but it’s too big a task. But maybe we can start to do something.”
“You mean like take down the Empire?”
Samus paused. “I don’t know. Maybe not that far.”
“They’re wrong, Samus.”
“I know that. I’m not saying they’re right. But let’s start small. Start improving Coruscant. I’ve been hunting bounties, doing what I can, but … well, yesterday I got attacked.” She pushed on before Proto Man could interrupt. “I don’t know what it was, but it looked like me. Some kind of … pirate hybrid. Maybe they took my DNA somehow. I don’t know where it came from, but it almost killed me.”
A breath of static. “My own condition isn’t much better. I just had an encounter with an insane Prime out in those volcano lands north of the Nexus.”
The bounty hunter’s eyes widened and she leant forward in her chair. “Are you okay?”
A clanking noise. It didn’t sound like a sound a well-operating machine would make. “I still function. I’m in some kind of forest now. I went through one of those gates.” Silence. “Not sure how I got here.”
Samus began to worry more. “Listen, Blues, don’t do anything dangerous. Maybe I should come and get you?”
“Don’t worry about that. Your goal … about making Coruscant a better place. I think it’s good. I like it.”
“Listen, stay where you are. I’m going to try and get to you and find you. The Omniverse is a dangerous enough place without being injured. And it sounds like you’re in the Tangled Green. There’s orcs there, monsters, not to mention the elves. If you …” she hesitated, “If you no longer cease to function, you’ll come back to the fountain, but if you get captured … just stay where you are, okay?”
“I’m fine, really.”
“Right. I might give you another call in a bit. Just call if you’re in danger, okay?”
Once the call was ended, Samus found herself taut, even more on edge than she’d been before. Blues needed her. With Nanoha out of the picture, she was his only friend. She had to get there. But first, she had one more call to make.
“Harry Dresden speaking,” said the voice from her ship’s comms receiver.
“This is Samus Aran.”
“Oh! Hi Samus. How’s it going?” Samus heard shuffling, like the man was moving things around.
“Listen, Harry, I hate to call you out of the blue like this. I know the last time we met wasn’t exactly …” she coughed. “It was difficult.”
Harry made a noncommittal noise.
“I’m gonna be frank. I’m forming an organisation here in Coruscant. Or at least, I’m trying to. I’m trying to put a stop to the corruption here, make the city a better place for the people to live.”
“That sounds … ambitious.”
“-But I’m having a few problems.”
At this, Dresden seemed to come to life immediately, as though he’d been summoned through the receiver and was trying to jump through. “Problems?”
“… Yeah, well. I got jumped, yesterday, in the lower tiers. It was bad. I almost got killed.”
“Stars and stones, Samus!”
“Point is, I think I’d be better off if I had backup. The way things are going, I’m never going to make a difference.” Her voice was flat, but perhaps something crept into it. It had been a long couple of days, and the conversation with Blues hadn’t helped.
“Sit tight, Samus. I'll grab my things and head over there. If you managed to grab anything linked to him, keep it sealed up, away from sunlight. If I get there fast enough, and if Omni hasn't taken that skill from me, I might be able to work up a tracking spell, find the son of a bitch before anyone else gets hurt, or he comes after you again.”
Before Samus could say anything else, the line went dead. She sighed. Was she really cut out for something as ambitious as an alliance with her track record? She supposed Adam could always act as their CO. The point was getting things done. That was what she was good at.
And as if on cue, one of her ship’s monitors lit up to a news feed.
“-Suspected to be armed and very dangerous. If you see the suspect, do not approach. Repeat, do not approach.”
The video was fuzzy, but she made out a black figure. An android.
“Last seen near the elevators to Tier One. All citizens are advised to stay clear of any suspicious figures and call an Imperial officer you see anything.”
Samus’s armor materialized around her, the pieces clicking into place. “Adam,” she said. “Take the steering wheel.”
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 09-05-2014
It didn't take long for the paranoia to spread. He rationalized the situation and saw they had good reason. Still, this was not how he wanted things to happen. The alarms blared. The authoritative voices spoke and soon the pathway cleared of all civilians and all that was left had been the robot. He stood there expecting a cadre of Imperials, yet nothing was immediately visible. Had he been human, this would be where he held his breath, tightened his muscles and let adrenaline prep him during the calm before the storm. He was out in the open. He was in Tier One. He was wanted for a violent murder. Whether they listened to his side of things or not, he was still dangerous in the Empire's eyes. Can't have a machine running around immolating people, he understood. But he also didn't want to get dismantled on the spot. Self preservation was an interesting thing.
Would they send snipers? Would it be an extermination team? His mind raced with possibilities, scenarios and solutions. Taking the knowledge he had of the Stormtroopers and their training, combined with the ruthless efficiency of their commander, Judge Dredd and his own skills, survival should he account for worst case scenario, came to 46%. Not the odds he liked, but of course he was capable of ignoring the statistics. Best case scenario saw limited wounded soldiers and virtually no damage to his own frame. Should he run now then his chances would plummet. So many variables. So many things to account for that had no real formula for solving. Human emotion, societal pressures, job duty, prejudices, mental instabilities, incompetence.
So he stood there. Alone. On the path from the elevator toward the dizzying sky scrapers of the metropolis. If they came for him, he would narrow his scope and solve for the immediate equation. Who came for him though, that was an unknown. It was a curiosity that lit up his processors. A platoon he could handle. Dredd would prove fatal if met head on. A hunter, completely blank in form of data. Either way he didn't see himself finishing this without a fight, whether he wanted on or not. And he most certainly had enough violence to last him a while, but again...self preservation was an interesting thing.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 09-06-2014
Samus’s ship was frustratingly slow in this verse, but still a hell of a lot faster than hot-footing it. Luckily she lived near the elevators. She stood on top of her ship and watched the city below.
Samus wasn’t wasting time while she waited, though. Any preparation time at all was an advantage to be taken. She focused on her suit. As luck would have, her encounter with the Stalker had left her with even more omnilium. It was as those her near-death experience had empowered her. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ seemed to be a literal adage in the Omniverse.
Her addition to the suit was not an inexpensive one. While she’d already managed to restore a semblance of her jetpack’s capabilities, it had only allowed for ‘Space Jumps’, not true Flight. But she could feel that now she had the power to upgrade it fully. And she did.
As Samus closed in on the drop zone, she felt a cold rush of power wash over her. It reassured her. She certainly wasn’t going to be breaking any more bones from falling anytime soon. If the Predator came, she would be prepared.
Adam’s voice spoke into Samus’s ear. “The square below is where the android was last seen. Be careful. We don’t know why he decided to come to the surface like this. He could be seeking asylum. He might want to turn himself in.”
Samus grunted. The superhighway below was quiet. Coruscant’s sun had set, and the last vestiges of orange light bathed the metropolis in a glow that mixed in with the electric blues and yellows and created something mystifying. Somewhere below, in all that metropolis, was the android. She had a feeling he wouldn’t be too hard to find.
“Beginning mission,” Samus murmured to herself. She stepped off the side of the ship.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 09-15-2014
She plummeted through the skies and towards the drop point, arms outstretched. Even through her suit she could feel the wind buffeting her, upwards. 500 metres to impact, read her heads-up-display. She descended into the city proper and the lights rushed past.
“Anti-grav,” she said. “Activate.”
A strange energy filled the suit. She felt it, and in the same moment felt supernaturally light. Her momentum continued. As the heads-up display quickly ticked down-
400 metres
-She angled her toes downwards ever so slightly. Her jetpack lit up gently and began to slow her descent.
300 metres
She flipped forward, testing her agility. First forward, then to each side, then backwards, curling into a ball and spinning against the current of the updraft.
200 metres
Finally she sailed back out, limbs outstretched once more, and began to slow her descent. At this altitude she could make out the detail on the streets below. People were moving in a definite direction. There was an exodus away from the elevators. Here and there she saw squadrons of stormtroopers co-ordinating themselves. From this height she could see everything.
She saw a potential catastrophe.
100 metres
She righted herself, angling her boots downwards and finally stopping her descent. She stood in the air and surveyed the situation. Then she headed downwards, in the most likely trajectory.
She landed in an empty street. Her X-Ray visor pulsed, seeing through the surrounding buildings. Nothing. She stepped forward. It was oddly quiet.
Then a chill ran through her.
He was right there.
Not even hiding. He was walking strangely. In no particular rush, it seemed. He saw Samus.
“Surrender yourself,” said Samus. She raised her arm cannon and trained it on the android’s head. “And I won’t have to kill you.”
The figure cocked his head. Eyed the gun. And then he spoke.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 09-16-2014
The world became numbers and angles, broken down to its most basic and mathematical structure. Guards were in position, giving him approximately two point five seconds to respond to any enemy fire, being out in the open guaranteed non-critical wounds, thirty-five percent chance of mortal wounding, twenty percent was instantly fatal. Though he was made of inhuman materials, his hard drives and mother boards were just delicate as a human brain. If they could pierce his skull and the internal casings that protected his systems, he would short circuit and meet critical shut down in milliseconds. A serpentine escape pattern would be his best course, quickly dodging into the elevator once more. Running as far to side of the gun fire would minimize damage and increase range, thereby reducing their accuracy (Given Stormtroopers were apparently terrible shots to begin with as their blasters weren't meant for long distance), but then they could continue to hunt him and raise suspicion, which thereby raised the element of meeting an end, not a resolution.
And then she appeared. He assumed she by her chasis. Feminine in design. Lethal in execution. A cannon was in place of a humanoid hand. A domed casing was her head. So close to human looking, but very mechanical in certain aspects. The rusted orange coloring made his databanks snap to the image of the figure falling from the building back in Tier Five. Brief. Split second. But perfect memory and data capture assured him she was a match. Previously he had been confused as to who she had been. Now he saw as plain as the artificial day that she had been a hunter. Though he faced potential harm, he enjoyed the simplistic militaristic design of her components. She looked efficient and functional. Elegant. Dangerous. Her creators seemed brilliant.
“Surrender yourself,” Her voice broke the tense silence. The wires snapping and severing his focus on analyzing her visage. The piercing blue sensors stared straight into her clouded visor, “And I won't have to kill you.” She spoke with cold authority. A machine that had given the line millions of times before. A program built around apprehending and punishing targets. An objective entity that gave opportunity to concede or to resist and face termination.
And because of that simple fact. A machine that gave two options, Vitruvius was able to narrow down all his infinite possibilities to the one of least resistance. His hands raised, yielding to the imposing figure aiming its weapon at him. With an honest plea, the robot's voice projected toward his captor, “Help me. Please.”
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 09-16-2014
Samus didn’t expect that. She kept her gun raised, carefully stepping towards the android. They were still some ways off, at least twenty metres. Her voice was raised, almost a shout but not aggressive. Not yet.
“Help you how?”
Beneath the visor her eyes were narrowed and her focus was keen as a knife’s edge. She wouldn’t be taken off-guard again.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 09-16-2014
Vitruvius remained still, allowing her to come to him. He didn't want to portray his actions as deceitful or opportunistic so it was best to not move. With his hands raised, he consciously relaxed his posture, shoulders sloping in response, hips lowering, knees repositioning to unlocked state. It gave the appearance of loosening his tension. Hopefully she found it pleasing to whatever she used to analyze potential threats.
"My programming..." The voice changed, as it always did based on circumstance, to something softer. More innocent. Just a replication of what he understood to be helpless and in need. "Something took over my programming. I wasn't built for violence."
He didn't know how advanced her own programming was, but any machine could recognize when something is wrong with their functions or behaviors. It was as rudimentary as knowing your command prompts and recognizing that certain things did not belong. Regardless of who built her and brought her online, she should understand the plight he was in.
A quick reminder made him aware of the massive cannon on her arm.
Hopefully she would understand.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 09-16-2014
Samus took short steps forward. Something in her mind was trying to speak, but she was too busy to pay it heed. Her blood was completely cold, and right now her training and instincts were making the decisions.
The machine appeared to have no weapons, but there was no telling what was hidden inside its body. Was it an ‘it’ or … a him? Its body language seemed human. Whether deceptive or not, it definitely was more than a simple machine of war. It seemed much more advanced than that.
“Are you a Prime?” she asked.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 09-16-2014
The question was met with the same reaction you'd receive from a computer. His memory rolled, found all results for Primes pertaining to this new world he was now a part of. The countless hours spent in the library and the Dataverse terminals filled him what he needed for a response.
"Prime," He stated back to his hunter, his voice still sounding lost, "Yes. Omni brought me here. I haven't concluded why..."
Re: Return to Coruscant - Samus Aran - 09-16-2014
The more they spoke, the more holes began to poke through Samus’s judgment. If he – if it was a Prime, then there was a good chance what it was saying was true.
She stopped and struggled to think rationally under the pressure. She could practically feel the stormtroopers at her back, ready to open fire.
The hunter swore under her breath.
“You need to turn yourself in,” she said, moving forward on the balls of her feet and lowering the barrel of her gun just slightly so that it was no longer pointing directly at the android’s head. “If you come with me, I might … I might be able to help you.”
She felt her face flush with anger. She hoped to hell she wouldn’t regret this.
Re: Return to Coruscant - Vitruvius - 09-25-2014
There was silence. Was the silence good? He had never encountered another machine before so the data was blank on reactions and body language. The feminine entity before him had no face to read, her body was still like frozen in form, everything about this encounter was a cypher he couldn't crack. Obviously she was processing the intel about him being a Prime. It was an inference, one he hoped was accurate.
Had he been human, he could predict the tension would have him worried, stressed, more than likely perspiring and agitated. Would he be impatient and impulsive and demand help? Would he remain quiet and perhaps pray for a way out of the situation? He could now see the Stormtroopers ready for conflict. Would he take matters into his own hands if he were biologically and emotionally based?
He maintained his non-aggressive stance. Anything to make this whole scene look like he wouldn't attack or fight back or resist. At least he certainly could make it look that way. He had no interest in going down without preserving himself.
And then she spoke. Finally. Perhaps he can get the assistance he needs to figure out what was wrong with his systems. Her weapon lowered and he felt his own tension wires relax out of combat readiness. His hands lowered to his sides, keeping them visible rather than hiding beneath his cloak.
“Lead the way,” He said calmly. Of course he wouldn't approach the machine. He didn't want to alarm her and cause her to raise the weapon once more. His hunter was in charge and he was just fine with that. She seemed to be knowledgeable of this strange world and if he could learn from her then he would submit to her. For the time being, of course. He was built for autonomy, not serving. Still, he knew when to follow and this was definitely one of those times.