onemorebounty | Someone to Count On

He certainly did. He claimed I'd made an appointment, had me thinking I'd stumbled over something I would be arranging in the future, so I rolled with it. Feh, no chance of that now, if there ever was.

*Verity's commitment to a thorough check is appreciated. And now that Samus knows the heaving in her gut and the prickle of radiation in her hand are just phantoms, they're easier to ignore.*

The bunker where you recovered after last time. I've got it stocked enough for decent first aid, and if I need more than that it's still a good place to stabilize.

"Okay. You'll have to show me how to use your... PINpoint one of these days."

When she's done, she offers the device to Samus for review. Nothing particular was found, but she has a feeling Samus needs to double-check the results anyway.

"You're going to be fine, Samus. Physically, you are fine. Whatever that jerk did to your head, it won't last forever. I'll stay with you until then. Okay?"

I have to get you your own PINpoint one of these days. You'd be more trustworthy with free interdimensional travel than many who have it.

*That thoughtful gesture gets an appreciative smile, before Samus looks over the readout, checks it twice, and nods, a relieved smile breaking her worried frown.*

Good. Thank you. I hope I wasn't interrupting anything.

"Even after what happened last time?" She's not so sure about this.

But the smile is reassuring. "You're welcome. It was nothing important. Nothing that can't wait." Verity puts the device back where she found it before nodding to the water. "Let's go wading. It'll help take your mind off things."

Last time was my fault. You wouldn't have been there if I hadn't asked you to be, and you wouldn't have eaten anything if I hadn't invited you to. And even for all that, you handled yourself well.

*Samus nods in agreement at the suggestion of wading, and stretches before striding out toward the water.*

You like stories, right?

"I'm the one who broke the time machine." Which is at the heart of her hesitation to be given another.

She takes a moment to pull off her sandals before following Samus into the water. "Love. I love stories." They're one of the two things she truly loves.

You followed the directions you were given, right? You can't be blamed if they or the machine were flawed.

*Verity might be getting a little more out of wading than Samus at the moment--Verity's not in a vacsuit.*

Well, this isn't a very nice one, but it's long, if you want to hear it. The story of phazon.

There's something to be said for her old-timey fashions. Right now, that she can feel the water washing over her feet and the sand between her toes. But the air is clean and full of the tang of the sea for both of them, and that's something too.

"Let me guess: it gives you black veins and cataracts?"

*That wins a laugh.*

Eventually. It was trying to eat the universe. But that all comes later.

*Vacsuits definitely have their drawbacks. That said, Samus is still deep enough in the paranoid delusions not to surrender its protection.*

It's a radioactive mineral that seems to also be a distributed consciousness. It converted nearly an entire planet into itself, twisted the surface ecosystem, and developed animals that could fly into space, use it as a power source to create wormholes, and then crash into other planets, to infect them. One of those leviathans came down on Tallon IV, a world where my people lived.

She's sometimes able to pick up on enough context clues to piece these things together. The fact that Samus is laughing is a good sign. It's not a crazy-person laugh.

"Radioactive consciousness? Never good. How did you stop it?"

Of course Samus has stopped it. She wouldn't be telling this story so casually otherwise.

With time, effort, spilled blood, and more luck than I'm comfortable counting on. But I'll take the win.

*She swirls the water a little with her fingertips.*

I wasn't looking for it, when I found it. I was chasing the remnants of the Space Pirates. I'd blown up Zebes, the world they'd been using as a base, and they were scattered, desperate. Looking for any advantage they could find: a weapon, a hiding place... and what they found was an impossibly high energy reading, on a quiet little planet out past the Federation's turnward fringe. Tallon IV.

My people had contained the phazon as best they could--most of it was concentrated in the crater where it came down, and the shield holding it in was what the pirates found. But the first impact also scattered some over the world, and phazon corrupts--it turns everything around it into more of itself. It was poisoning the ecosystem, mutating the animals, even corrupting the post-mortal spirits of the Chozo who'd lived there.

Not that the pirates cared. All they saw was a promising energy source and, once they saw its effect on the ecosystem, a drug for soldier enhancement.

Well, this is a horrifying story.

"Oh my gods. They actually chose to inject that stuff into themselves? After it messed with ghosts? What kind of idiots are you talking about here?"

*She did say it wasn't a happy one.*

The desperate, stupid kind, who'll try anything to get ahead. But they didn't inject it into themselves, they shot it into their next generation of soldiers. Most either died or went crazy and died, but a few survived with favorable mutations and were put to work, and a handful showed a very positive response to it. The biggest one was nearly twenty feet tall, in a species that normally averages around six, its body had refined some of the phazon into a crust of armor on its carapace that was very difficult to crack, and it could eat the stuff to heal more quickly. Like, raw, just scrape a handful out of the rock and rub it on the wounds.

*She gives an annoyed sigh.*

The heavy bastard fell on me when he died, too. All that bio-refined phazon bonded to my suit. On the up side, it gave considerable protection against pretty much everything. On the down side, I wasn't as desperate or stupid as the pirates.

No. No, she didn't. But it's what she needs to talk about, so Verity will listen.

"And it started to poison you?"

Not then--it would have, if I'd kept it. But it also meant I was protected enough to go down into the impact crater. Something had gotten away from the pirates, something that thrived on phazon even more than their best pirate. It'd gotten through the shield, no idea how, but I was fairly certain that if it gorged itself on the crater, there'd be no stopping it when it came out. So I went in, and killed it--or thought I killed it. In the end, it sucked the phazon shell off my suit and seemed to die, exploded at least, and I got out of there.

*She smiles briefly--it was a good victory, while it lasted.*

I went hunting pirates again, but my leads had gone cold. Chasing one of them is what brought me to the Nexus. It was years for me and months for my Facet before I was able to get back.

Edited 2015-09-03 05:01 (UTC)

"Sounds like it was kinda good luck you had it, in that case." She gives a little smile and kicks at a wave, angled so it doesn't splash up on Samus. Now is not the time to make her think she's under any kind of attack.

"You were here for years? I thought the PINpoints could take you anywhere."

*She chuckles.*

Like I said, more luck than I like to rely on. And a PINpoint can take you anywhere if you know the coordinates. I got here from my Facet via a teleporter "accident" designed to kill me. Also, I arrived a little before PINpoints had been invented, or at least released.

Anyway, when I got back to my Facet, I found out I was being blamed for attacking a squad of Federation marines on planet Aether, another one on the Federation fringe. They'd been investigating a Space Pirate mining operation of some kind of high-energy mineral, and made a rather damning holocording of someone in armor very like mine, but black like it had been when the phazon was bonded to it, killing the whole team. I needed to go clear my name, among other things.

She hmms thoughtfully, then looks over at Samus. "Didn't tell them about this place I'm guessing. Did you manage to clear your name?"

I really don't want to see the Galactic Federation or one of the corporates leveraging this place to the extent I know they could and would. I like my Facet, I don't want greedy morons to break it like a stock-picking algorithm. And yes.

*It's another brief flash of triumph in her smile.*

Aether is the world claimed by the Luminoth, allies of the Chozo. Moth-people who eat light. They hadn't been able to contain their phazon impact, and it'd been poisoning their whole world. The impact created a subspace echo of their planet, even, that was slowly stealing substance and reality from the original. The indigenous life of Dark Aether were trying to kill the Luminoth, the Space Pirates were mining phazon, the wildlife was trying to kill everything, and the creature that sucked the phazon off of me on Tallon IV had apparently grown into the imprint of my suit, and was hunting the phazon deposits for itself. A great, tangled mess, but I managed to kill everyone who needed to die, including Dark Aether itself, and Aether's recovering nicely. I also thought I'd killed my dark twin.

"That's why I haven't either. The idea of something like Roxxon getting here..." She shivers at the thought. Literally.

"And then you were home in time for brunch, right?" She's teasing, trying to be light-hearted about it.

Good call. I usually leave it to other people to decide, in their own Facet, but I'm perfectly willing to say it's a good call after the fact.

*The teasing gets a flash of a grin.*

I was, actually. Well, dinner. Anyway, I thought that was it. Again. I hunted other bounties, and got roped in on a high-secrecy job delivering antivirus software to some sensitive computers that'd gone offline. Apparently, the pirates had hit a Federation battleship on a training run with a crew of trainees, gutted the vessel, and stole the Aurora Unit--their node in that network of sensitive computers. They'd used it to infect the entire network, and get the Aurora Units everywhere to start generating phazon. Some other Hunters and I were supposed to go in and upload a countermeasure, but our meeting was cut short by a pirate fleet attacking as cover for a leviathan splashdown.

Cue us, fighting our way through pirates on the ground to get the planetary defenses up and running. And cue my dark twin swooping in at the last second and hitting us all with some kind of phazon beam.

*Her voice grows suddenly hollow. This is one of the hard parts.*

It infected all four of us. I was in a coma for a month, and when I woke up, my body was producing enough phazon to power my suit.

Verity won't rush her. She rests a hand on Samus' arm, and there's a hug waiting if it's wanted, but there's no rush. They can stand there until the tides die for all she cares. She can be patient, sometimes, for the right reasons.

*The touch gets a grateful look; there's a fine tremor running through the taller woman, hard to see but unmistakable at a touch. A hug would not be unwelcome.*

Then she can have one of Verity's well-intentioned but not very practiced hugs. And hopefully the LOL isn't contagious.

*With hugs, intentions count for a great deal. Samus' hold is tight, and lasts for some time before she makes herself relax.*

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