Return to Coruscant [Exemplary]

[Samus Aran]

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.”