Fast Times

[Samus Aran]

Working on her own terms was always how Samus operated best. Working with the robot kid and the magical girl had been necessary, but not optimal. She was a bounty hunter, when it came down to it, and the job came with an element of competition. That was what made hunters the best, gave them their niche. There were some jobs governments couldn’t – or wouldn’t – do.

The heroine had been busy the last few weeks, and made quite a name for herself both in the upper and lower tiers. She’d noticed the pointing fingers and the cries of excitement when they saw her in the city above. And the sudden silences wherever she walked in the lower tiers. More than once, she’d been drawn on simply for being there. She’d killed several dozen criminals and apprehended many more. Some part of her felt remorse, but anyone intending to kill had to be prepared to die themselves.

She’d decided to leave Adam at her ship for the same reasons she worked alone. She didn’t need someone judging her actions, making every decision a drawn-out debate. Once she’d gotten over her initial happiness at having a familiar voice back, she’d started to remember how annoying the once-Commanding Officer was. If there was one thing she hated, it was being bossed around. He couldn’t help it – these kinds of things became ingrained, she was sure, to the point where he did it automatically – and he was easily the most tolerable person she’d ever taken orders from. But after that time, she felt even more resolute than ever that working her way up through the system was a fool’s game. It was make it on her own, or die trying. Luckily for Samus, she was immortal now.

Being a Prime had so many advantages in this world. It was no wonder that organisations like the Copper Eye existed. It was so easy for people like the Emperor to subjugate secondaries, people who wouldn’t even be in the Omniverse if not for the cruelty of Primes. Why tear people away from their homes and bring them to such a world? It was practically slavery. Samus wondered if the people of the top tier knew that on some level, and simply chose to ignore it.

Not everyone hated her in the lower tiers. She certainly didn’t hate them. Some of the locals had been brave enough to approach her, and for that they had been rewarded. Samus could do more than destroy – her new powers as a Prime meant that she could fix things, turn their scraps of salvaged omnilium into food and shelter. She could set a good example. She’d gone one step short of signing up for the F-Zero races. While they looked incredibly fun, and the prospect of earning some street cred with her piloting skills was tempting, they were also incredibly dangerous. She wasn’t worried about herself so much as all the people she’d kill.

It had been a long day, and Samus didn’t feel like going home just yet. And so she stepped out of an elevator onto the busy streets of Tier Three, heading to a place she’d been a couple of times before.

The barman’s face crinkled into a smile at her approach. “Long day, Samus?”

She chuckled dryly. “Yeah. The special three, please.” An orb of omnilium dripped from the tip of her finger onto the counter.

“Coming right up.”

The bar was somewhere between nice and run-down, a balance that made Samus feel far more comfortable than the ritzy restaurants that filled the top tier. It was set up almost like an ice cream parlour, with several machines humming gently away behind the counter, each spinning its own flavour of brightly-coloured juice. The tender went between three of them – green, red, blue – filling up a glass, before tapping the rim, causing the three colours to mix beautifully together. It reminded Samus of omnilium. She took the straw and inserted it into the bottom of her helmet, connecting it so that the straw in her helmet which let her drink water now filled up with the fruity cocktail. She drew deep and felt a scream of pleasure from her tired body as her bloodstream rushed with sugar.

The man behind the counter – his namebadge read ‘Otto’ – regarded her for a moment, as if to say something, before coming out with it. “You never take off your helmet, do you huh?”

Samus watched the juice mix float around in the glass. “… Sometimes.”

“Don’t mean to be prying or anything. Ain’t you immortal anyway, though?”

“Doesn’t mean I want to die. Or worse.”

“On Tier Three?”

“It happens.”

Otto shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, drying a glass absent-mindedly.

“I’ve been caught off guard before. Back when I was younger. Bunch of thugs tried to jump me without my suit.”

“Damn.” Otto’s eyes widened. “But you …?”

“I sent them all to the hospital. Still, I shouldn’t have been so careless. It could have been a lot worse.”

The barman nodded sagely. “Lotta superpowered-types in the Omniverse. Don’t see much myself besides on the news. To be honest, you’re the only Prime we get in here. Probably all the bars around here. It’s nice getting to talk to one.”

A smile crept across the hunter’s lips and she nodded. It occurred to her that despite this being her third visit, she had no idea of the man’s name. Surreptitiously, she peeked at the name badge, and stored it somewhere between the names of all the criminals she was still hunting and the varieties of fauna found on planet Zebes.

A television blared above the counter, and someone else at the counter pointed at it. “See that? Actual dragon. You’d never catch me going to Camelot.”

Samus turned to look at the screen and her blood ran cold. Momentarily, she’d mistaken it for someone – something else. She relaxed.

“You ever hunt one of those, Samus?” Otto asked.

The hunter was silent. “Yeah. Actually, monsters like that are my speciality.” It was true. For some reason, they terrified the average person. Samus found people a lot more scary. Creatures had patterns. They were straightforward. And they were strong, but so was she. There was something fun about fighting them. She freely admitted that fact. After all, there had to be more than one reason she’d been doing her job so long, and so well.

She looked up at the screen again. There was no intelligence in the monster’s face. Not like Ridley. Far less monstrous, but still, according to the news report, a danger. It had killed many people already. That was that, then. The hunter stood up. “Looks like I have my next job.”

“You serious?!” Otto blinked, thinking about his own question for a moment before continuing. “I thought you were loyal to Coruscant, or something.”

Samus said nothing to that. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” She grinned. “I still want to try the special eight.”

And with that, she was off.