A New Hope Nier

With two more Chozo artifacts that bore the Chozo keys retrieved from the Space Pirates in the Phazon Mines region by the Androids of YoRHa, Samus and I went to the ice region to get the Sun key. The Sun portion of the key was buried deep in a Chozo temple that had a weird puzzle that required that we focus the weak sunlight through some mirrors to aim at a Chozo statue to melt the pillar of ice in its hands.

Once the pillar of ice melted, Samus was able to get into her Powerball form, and with the weight of her Powerball form, it seemingly triggered the statues mechanisms so a stone pillar retracted opening a small hole for her ball form to roll into the hidden portion to get that portion of the key.

"How does your body not get squished in that ball form?" I asked honestly baffled seeing the ball form hop into the air and unfold allowing Samus's six-plus foot form to stand back up her armored-heeled feet.

Samus only responded dryly. "Spatial compression... Don't overthink it, I still weigh the same though oddly." She muttered at the end which just honestly confused me even more!

Either way with YoRHa's help we already got a quarter of the seal's keys, we continued our journey in the bitterly cold ice area of Tallon IV, clearing out some more Space Pirates that had come back to reclaim the research base Samus had previously cleared out.

But of course, after we cleared out that section and went deeper into the ice area to find the source signal to another artifact we came into a previously unexplored by Samus section, due to the place being locked behind a door that required the ice beam upgrade she didn't have previously.

And behind it was something that clearly upset her a bit as she froze at seeing dozens of Metroids behind stasis fields. "Be careful of the Metroids, they are immune to energy weapons." She said in a monotone as we went through and killed the Space Pirates that were doing research on the effects that Phazon had on Metroids which were infamous for wiping out many hyper-advanced species due to their many abilities despite their also low intelligence.

After killing the last space pirates I cursed as the room's lights flickered and the blue reinforced glass walls that were powered by some hardlight technology loudly shattered allowing all the metroids to go free with Samus cursing. "That Space Pirate was the commander and had a dead man's switch... If you have ice or solid weaponry use those as Metroids are highly sensitive to low temperatures." She said quickly as a couple of dozen Metroids started flying towards us.

Metroids were like Xenomorphs in that they were highly specialized hunters that could quickly mutate to grow to become far more dangerous than their base forms. Even in their base form, they could turn invisible by absorbing the light around them, they had powerful three teeth or pincers at the bottom of their mushroom-like floating heads that allowed them to suck the lifeforce from their targets regardless of armor or even weird spatial technology and even magic apparently as one got on my arm that I moved to stop it from landing on my head.

I could feel it absorbing, not only my magic but even my physical and even Aura! And the fact that the Metroid was growing larger and stronger in its grip on me as it absorbed from myself. It was proof of how dangerous these bastards were. So I called upon my magic and conjured a terrible freezing storm around myself, allowing Samus and the androids to quickly deal with them while I stabbed a knife into the glowing three-pronged brain of the Metroid latched onto my arm. And then I poured some lightning that arced between the serrated edge of the blade that was buried within the Metroid form leading it to finally fucking let go of my arm.

With all the Metroids dead, I looked over to Samus but due to her helmet I couldn't really see her expression and at this time I didn't really know how Samus felt about Metroids as at this time. She hadn't gone through the events of Metroid Zero Misson and had been infected with the X-Parasite which made her DNA need to be made into half Metroid just for her to survive.

So I asked evenly. "You alright Samus?"

And as 2B and A2 lagged a bit behind to give us obviously some space to speak about 'human' issues. Samus didn't respond for a good minute before she finally began to speak. "I am fine... Seeing Metroids is always disconcerting for me, due to knowing them to be the Chozo's last great creation before they died out or fled the galaxy." She finished before shrugging as she continued. "I bear the creatures no particular ill will honestly, but they are a predatorial species that have killed many over the years... Either way, let's continue." She said with her mind clearly on mission mode and putting those thoughts behind her.

But I was glad seeing over the last couple of days of us traveling together and fighting, she was starting to open up to me. And also accepting 2B and the other androids.

"After you help me with killing the Phazon on this planet. What are your plans?" Samus asked out of the blue and I paused as I wondered how I should go about this before I eventually shrugged and spoke wryly.

"I go to the next world and see what's going on there and help people against terrible local monsters both sentient and not," I answered with some ironic humor in my voice. As all worlds basically of significant technology, power, or even magic had some fucky evil empire or some kind of monsters causing issues.

And at my answer, Samus hummed in thought, as she herself lived much the same life in going around being a do-gooder 'bounty hunter' that only went after the worst of the worst here in this galaxy.

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