"Once you are finished, feel free to keep or dispose of the new Metroid. It is not able to, nor will it need to absorb any more than one person's age in it's entire life, so it will be of no more use to us after Aran. ~~~Salirachi"

"Hm...a baby and a pet all in one job? I hope they're not expecting that to justify not paying me." Ralala chuckled, shaking her head.

She would keep the Metroid, she decided. The creepy little buggers could be kinda cute once you got used to them, and as long as she didn't have to worry about it sneaking into her room and turning her into a baby, too, she didn't see any reason not to keep it around. From what she'd heard, Samus had adopted a baby Metroid for a while, so maybe she'd like having one for a pet as she grew up again.

Ralala shook her head as a little light turned on in her ship.

Work before pleasure, T'Ching. You can map out Sammy's baby pictures once you've managed to zap her, let the Metroid do its thing, and gotten into a safe zone without being arrested, beaten up by the best bounty hunter in the business, or munched by your own secret weapon.

Ralala was intending to keep fully armored until the Metroid was full up, but that didn't excuse carelessness. She had no idea if the thing would drain her just because she was closer if it got out of that tube, but despite what she intended to do to Samus, Ralala did not relish the idea of having things turned around on her due to carelessness.

Ralala raised an eyebrow as she saw her landing site being swarmed by Federation Marines, before smirking to herself.

"So the Feddies wanna go a round with me? Well, I guess I got some time to kill. That'll get Sammy's attention if they haven't called her already..." She muttered, picking up her pace.

Amidst the federation troops, the gunship touched down, standing silent for a moment as if its pilot was ignoring the many guns trained on her ship.

Abruptly a hatch on the bottom cracked open, and an oily black smoke billowed out, messing up visability for those too close to the ship and slowly expanding. Ralala liked opening up with something to obscure distance vision; it made those pesky snipers useless until she had the time to deal with them.

In the smoggy murk of Ralala's smoke bomb blast, a large violet triangle of light blazed into existance, and the federation troops closest to the ship saw Ralala, reslendent in her crimson armor and the purple lights attached to it, step onto the field. She'd been modifying her body armor; at this point, it almost resembled a perversion of Samus Aran's Chozo power suit, albiet with a lot more ornamental but still very deadly blades and angles to it. Ralala glanced around, scanning her opponents; her vision was completely fine in this murk, thanks to her visor.

"My, my, there's a lot of you...but I'm afraid the party I'm throwing is invite-only, boys. You're gonna have to leave." She taunted.

Verickt had, unfortunately, been one of the first of the Marines to be engulfed in the oily black smoke which Ralala's ship had exerted. He cursed under his breath... This would make things harder... Slowly, he reached up, and tapped his visor, activating the infrared feature. Slowly, the outlines of each marines heat signature came into view, as well as that of T'Ching. Wasting no time, he raised his arm cannon towards Ralala, and began to charge for a power shot. As the charge completed, he went wide eyed, life flashing before his eyes. The last thing he had seen was a bright flash as a missile sent him flying and colliding into a nearby wall, and several of his marine comrades dropping as the Mercenary began her work. His helmet dropped beside his now lifeless corpse, revealing the dark skin of his face.

The inside of his now cracked visor flashed one last message...

Verickt, Kendal R.
Confirmed KIA


Meanwhile...

Samus Aran sat in the cockpit of her gunship, traveling as fast as possible towards a distress signal coming from a relatively new Federation Base. Something was hitting them hard, it seemed... She kept her eyes locked on the ships navigation system as the distance and time before she reached her destination kept on decreasing... She only hoped there would be some survivors when she finally got there...

Ralala was actually laughing a little as she danced through fire from the federation troops, returning blistering missile salvos or the occasional deadly blast of plasma. Her arm canon and armor had been designed with the interest of maximizing destructive power and speed; it was weaker defensively than Samus's power suit, but it could mow down even a large force like this one with incredible ease.

"Really?" She called to the assembled troops, letting off her suit's signature rapid-fire missile burst. "Is that the best you've got?!"

One by one, troopers fell to the power of Ralala's attacks. It seemed that the rumors had been true... This woman was single-handedly causing a marine massacre, one that hadn't been seen since Squad Bravo had crash-landed on Aether and been swarmed by what Samus Aran had called the Ing. It seemed as if they weren't even landing a single shot on this woman! Another group of marines fell as the missile burst impacted. All of a sudden, the blast shields on the windows of the Central Command Building of the base began to close.

"All units, I repeat, all units fall back and defend the Central Command Building." Rang the voice of the commanding officer of the base. Within a matter of seconds, the surviving marines began to race towards the slowly closing doors of the structure. Some were dragging or carrying marines who had only been wounded enough to render them immobile... Sure, this made them easy targets, but they couldn't just leave their comrades behind to die!

--

Samus gritted her teeth slightly. Each second that passed, she knew more and more marines were dying by the hand of whatever was attacking them. She brought her fist down with a loud "Thump!" and stared towards the window angrily. "Adam, can't this thing go any faster?!" She asked of her ships' AI.

"THE GUNSHIP IS CURRENTLY AT ITS MAXIMUM SPEED. " Replied the AI, the words appearing on the screen in front of Samus. The huntress frowned... They still had the equivalent of one hour on earth until they got there. By that time, they could all be dead, judging from the intel she had been sent...

"Hm...?" Ralala paused, observing what was going on as she placidly reloaded her weapons.

"Retreating like this...that certainly wasn't a move from the old feddies I trained with." She observed quietly, tapping her helmet. "What are you boys up to...?"

It could simply be taking men out of a fight they couldn't win to avoid spending lives needlessly, but the Federation as Ralala remembered it wasn't that nice. If they wanted men away from her, there was a reason. Best case scenario, they would huddled down and wait for Samus to arrive and save their bacon.

Worst case, they were aiming something nasty at Ralala now.

Ralala activated an energy sensor in her visor to try and see if she could spot any sort of blasters powering up, but she kept ready to move just in case they wanted to surprise her with something harder to scan, like missiles or turret guns.

A hiss could be heard as the blast doors sealed shut, all surviving Marines safely inside for now... "I'm assuming you have a plan, sir." Said the Second in command to the commanding officer of this base... The commanding officer himself was contemplating each of his strategies mentally...

'No, that wouldn't work... Maybe... That gives a bigger chance we could all end up dead...' He growled beneath the visor of his helmet, slamming his hand onto an empty section of the holo-projector of the room he was in. "God fucking dammit!" He shouted. Everything he thought of, every strategy the Feddies had created... None of them would work. Not against Ralala... He gritted his teeth, thinking for just a moment... Before something caught his attention. One of those little maintenance drones found anywhere there was a good amount of technology that would need repairs...

"...How many of those new recon drones do we have with us?" He asked, turning his attention to the second in command.

"Seven, sir... But what does that have to do with-"

"Get them all online and set them to fly circles in close proximity to T'Ching at top speed. Once that's done, get all available turrets set to fire on her as well. If I'm correct, this might just allow us to defeat her once and for all... If that doesn't work, we're getting the hell off this rock..."

Within a few moments, seven blips would appear on Ralala's radar as each of the recon drones was activated, and sent on their course to distract Ralala while the turrets would hopefully whittle away her energy supply until the final killing blow... Perhaps they could finish this before Samus would even get here!

Ralala smirked behind her visor.

"Recon drones? Really?" She chuckled a little, fiddling with her arm cannon.

This strategy wasn't too hard to figure out; send the drones in to keep her occupied while they got bigger guns pointed at her. It'd probably work great...if they had been reacting exclusively to Federation-based weapons.

Sammy wasn't the only one whose gun had more than one trick, and working with pirates had given her some prime illegal ammo to try out.

"Multi-lock activate." Ralala whispered, seven crosshairs appearing. One...two...three...shortly all seven drones were locked on as Ralala shifted her arm cannon's function.

"Nice try, boys." Ralala chuckled, taking aim and firing a large missile. In a moment, it partially exploded, blossoming into ten smaller missiles, each flying with guided precision.

One of Ralala's favorite new weapons; the cluster missile wasn't just a seeker, it was a seeker that could put down ten moving targets per shot. The missles were hellishly expensive and banned, but that was the funny thing about working with pirates.