It wasn't a particularly busy job, that John had. He manned the desk at one of the Federation's...
Another Day at the Bounty Office (Metroid)
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It wasn't a particularly busy job, that John had. He manned the desk at one of the Federation's bounty offices, hubs where bounty hunters could turn in a variety of contracts.
Mostly, his days tended to involve locking up the occasional parole violator and tossing them in one of the holding cells until they could be brought to an actual prison, providing his thumbprint to various completed contracts to authorize payment, or filing paperwork.
Occasionally, they'd have a big name Hunter show up, capital letters and all, and things might get a bit complicated, but that was a rare day indeed. It was an incredibly easy job that paid fairly well and left him with plenty of time between tasks, but someone had to do it.
The buzzer rang, and he looked up at the open doors, to see the tallest human woman that he could recall ever seeing, stride into the room. Despite the… remarkable blue bodysuit that she was wearing, he made sure to stare at her face. The product of years of working a job where ninety percent of the new people that he met could likely strangle him with his own spinal cord.
"I'd like to report a completed mission." Her voice was fairly flat, with a hint of boredom.
He looked at her. "If you have the forms, you could just do that digitally…"
"There were unexpected expenses." That would explain her coming in person, he supposed.
He sighed. "Give me the mission summary and I'll see what I can do for you." Truthfully, he didn't expect much (even if he'd try a bit harder in this case). The Federation tended to pay generously, even including a respectable expense account in some cases, so anyone requesting more credits was likely either attempting pull something, or had gone far beyond mission parameters.
Either way, complicated.
He grabbed the datapad as it moved under the forcefield above his desk, glancing at the mission payment.
One hundred thousand credits, with a four hundred thousand bonus already authorized? That was more than he made in a year. He moved his gaze from the payment to the mission parameters. Search, rescue, and investigation, with a possible addendum to complete the mission that the original Federation patrol had been sent on. A mission involved hunting down a possible Space Pirate base.
Well, that explained why there would be that large of a bonus, though he noted that there were no survivors listed. Damn shame.
He looked down at the requested payment, and sputtered. "Two million credits? What the hell are you- what could possibly justify quadrupling your fee!"
"My ship received heavy damage upon landing on the planet. While it was capable of repairing itself, I need to replace my stocks of exotic materials." She sounded… more bored and vaguely irritated, than most of the people that he dealt with. As if demanding two million credits was something she did frequently, though he rather doubted that.
He sighed. "Just because you managed to get your ship damaged, doesn't justify filing for additional expenses. You need to prove that you did something that the Federation would be willing to pay for. A space pirate outpost isn't worth two million credits."
"There were extenuating circumstances on the planet. Is there a node where I can upload the mission data?"
John shook his head in exasperation, and pointed to the side. "Over there."
She glanced to the side. "That is a public terminal. Do you have something more secure? I believe that most of this data will be classified once it reached Federation High Command."
"Alright then." He wasn't too surprised as he pulled out a small box from behind his desk. Most of the high level bounty hunters classified data that seemed even remotely sensitive, on the basis that it was better to be safe than to have their pay cut.
There was a small flash of light as the woman… stuck her finger into the input.
Is she some sort of cyborg under that… bodysuit of hers? Or was it a function of the suit?
He glanced at his own terminal- 34%? Considering just how fast that uplink was supposed to be, she had to have had an awful lot of data in that report. Was she trying to use the fact that she had catalogued new species on a lifebearing planet as an excuse to demand more pay?
Some Hunters tried that, but even with fairly detailed scans, he'd never known the Federation to pay more than ten thousand credits for those files.
There was a slight chime as the upload finished.
"I'll need to talk to my supervisor for this, please stand by." As she nodded he got up, and entered the door behind him. Let her deal with… whatever this was.
"Hey, Sal!" He said as he entered her office.
The woman looked up from her glasses (he'd always assumed that it was just an affectation, but apparently she had a HUD hooked up into it, and a crude scanner attached.)
"Yes?"
"Someone has come requesting quadruple her agreed upon payment, and says that her classified documents warrant the additional credits."
Sally raised an eyebrow. "Really?" She tapped at the side of her glasses as she glanced at the datapad at John's side, and her eyes widened.
"Is that- hold on." She got up and marched to the entrance, brushing past John as she went.
She opened the door to the entrance, glanced inside, then moved back and slammed the door. "That's Samus."
John raised an eyebrow. "The Samus?" Really? "You actually believe that crap?"
"Yes- well, some of it." Sal shook her head. "I mean, there has to be some basis to the rumors, right? What the hell did you think when you took her paperwork and saw the name at the top?"
John shrugged at that. "I figured it was a big galaxy, there had to be someone who had that name. Or maybe it was an alias of some kind. Either way, I didn't care enough to ask. Besides, those rumors are the sort of thing lazy freight pilots use to get free drinks. Even if she was" here he made air quotes, "the Samus, I'd wager that less than a tenth of the things she's done were actually true."
Sally grinned at that. "A wager?" Oh no. "One week's pay says that High Command authorizes her raise and that this isn't an exaggeration."
John winced. Sally was… far too free with her money. "You get paid more than I do."
"That just means that the odds are in my favor."
John sighed. "Deal." He could use some new boots, after all, and it was her own fault for believing spacer rumors…
And now all he needed to wait for command to look over the paperwork.
His boss smiled at him. "This shouldn't take too long, the moment her account was registered the files were flagged as a top priority message."
That… was something he'd have liked to know.
In the meantime, he scanned the message again.
There was an odd set of symbols that gave him a headache just looking at them, on the datapad. He looked it over. "Local signature?" It was one of the types of evidence admitted to see whether the mission was actually done, but he didn't recognize the script, and part of his training involved being trained to, if not read, then at least be able to identify as many languages as possible.
He put it through the scanner, and raised his eyebrows as the script read as recognizable but untranslatable. Luminoth script, last recorded use was… an archeological dig site? Found in Chozo ruins?
He snorted. Maybe this "Samus" just thought that they wouldn't look into it if it looked exotic enough. Clearly, she had underestimated the efficiency of the Federation Bureaucracy in its drive to file and categorize absolutely everything.
Regardless, the money was likely as good as his.
He opened the door to the room, and his eyes widened slightly.
There were three people there, none of whom he recognized.
One was an old man, handcuffed and reeking of cheap booze, who was currently on the opposite side of the room, (and looked as though he would really rather be a lot farther) of the second, some heavily armored man in orange, yellow, with a large green armcannon, who was sitting in chair as if nothing was strange about the whole situation, though he couldn't see the man's face under the faceplate.
The third, covered in fairly standard looking surplus Federation trooper armor with a cheap set of nonlethal equipment looked also looked like he would rather not be in between the two, but was trying to shield the handcuffed man from the armored man.
There was probably a story behind all of this.
John didn't care.
"Where is Samus?" He glanced around the room. He'd be kind of pissed if she had just run off, even if she did suspect that she was about to be called out for falsifying information.
The armored man got up, and John was about to tell him to wait his turn, when he removed his hel- when she removed her helmet, as "Samus" walked to the desk.
He decided not to ask when or how she had changed.
"Have they processed the files yet?" She asked. And… she sounded bored rather than concerned, but now there was a vaguely metallic, probably unintentionally threatening aspect to the tone.
"Not yet, it's out of my hands, judging by the density of classified files in the report. Still, judging by the priority level, you should at least have a preliminary response within a day."
She nodded, and walked back to her seat.
The other person was processed quickly enough, apparently the drunk man was a parole violator, originally arrested for peddling a truly remarkable number of drugs, and the thousand credits were transferred to the bounty hunter's account.
All quick and simple.
He glanced over at the armored Hunter.
She was sitting there, staring blankly ahead with her helmet on, and he couldn't tell what she was doing.
Reading something, watching the news, listening to music, going through an image gallery of people that she had brutally murdered for being too nosy- he shook his head. He was almost starting to believe it, for a second.
He continued sitting there, waiting, with only the slightest hand movements indicating that she was even alive under that suit.
An extraordinarily long fifteen minutes later, he received a message on the datapad, and Sally walked into the room. "Payment has been authorized. It has already been transferred to your account."
Samus nodded, "Confirmed. Thank you." She left the building without another word.
John glanced down at his pad, saw the five at the front of the payment. "Ah, looks like I win the bet-" he froze.
Sally gave him a big grin. "You were saying?"
She had been paid five million credits. Five. Million. "They, they just stuck another zero at the end of her paycheck! Who does that?"
"Apparently, Federation High Command." Sally said.
John considered bringing up that technically, the bet said that Sally would only win if the payment was authorized, not raised again, but- "I mean, they just… what the hell happened on that planet!"
"There's a declassified mission report. " Sally said, tapping at her glasses as text began to scroll down them.
He looked at his datapad, skimming it.
Sally was always a quicker reader than him, though. "What the fuck?"
"Hm?" He asked.
"She blew up an evil… clone planet? What the fuck?"
John raised his eyebrows to their maximum level. "What?"
"I'm… trying to figure out the context of this, but, what the hell? She has an evil twin? Or… it created an- what?"
John glanced at the slate."This has to be bullshit. It's some sort of... cover story for a different job she did."
Sally glanced at him. "Would it really make you feel any better at all if the Federation was paying someone five million credits for something so incredibly black ops that this was an acceptable cover story?"
John opened his mouth to say yes, and then closed it. That... wouldn't... actually make him feel any better. He moved to continue reading, but a text box suddenly appeared over the screen.
This data has just been classified. Anything that you read before the classification is not to be spoken of. An appointment has been set up for you to discuss the security requirements for possessing classified data. –Admiral Dane
His eyes widened.
Sally glanced at him, and they stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. John spoke first. "So… that was Samus."
AN:
The classified data was mostly schematics or biological scans of some of the... odder creatures that she encountered, along with some video files of several of the fights she had been in. She didn't see much need to classify what had happened to the planet as a whole, and gave a rather dry summary of what had happened.
Basically, I did kind of like that one log where someone puts Samus in the same category as Santa Claus, and I wanted someone to have an encounter with her in a peaceful context.
Mostly, his days tended to involve locking up the occasional parole violator and tossing them in one of the holding cells until they could be brought to an actual prison, providing his thumbprint to various completed contracts to authorize payment, or filing paperwork.
Occasionally, they'd have a big name Hunter show up, capital letters and all, and things might get a bit complicated, but that was a rare day indeed. It was an incredibly easy job that paid fairly well and left him with plenty of time between tasks, but someone had to do it.
The buzzer rang, and he looked up at the open doors, to see the tallest human woman that he could recall ever seeing, stride into the room. Despite the… remarkable blue bodysuit that she was wearing, he made sure to stare at her face. The product of years of working a job where ninety percent of the new people that he met could likely strangle him with his own spinal cord.
"I'd like to report a completed mission." Her voice was fairly flat, with a hint of boredom.
He looked at her. "If you have the forms, you could just do that digitally…"
"There were unexpected expenses." That would explain her coming in person, he supposed.
He sighed. "Give me the mission summary and I'll see what I can do for you." Truthfully, he didn't expect much (even if he'd try a bit harder in this case). The Federation tended to pay generously, even including a respectable expense account in some cases, so anyone requesting more credits was likely either attempting pull something, or had gone far beyond mission parameters.
Either way, complicated.
He grabbed the datapad as it moved under the forcefield above his desk, glancing at the mission payment.
One hundred thousand credits, with a four hundred thousand bonus already authorized? That was more than he made in a year. He moved his gaze from the payment to the mission parameters. Search, rescue, and investigation, with a possible addendum to complete the mission that the original Federation patrol had been sent on. A mission involved hunting down a possible Space Pirate base.
Well, that explained why there would be that large of a bonus, though he noted that there were no survivors listed. Damn shame.
He looked down at the requested payment, and sputtered. "Two million credits? What the hell are you- what could possibly justify quadrupling your fee!"
"My ship received heavy damage upon landing on the planet. While it was capable of repairing itself, I need to replace my stocks of exotic materials." She sounded… more bored and vaguely irritated, than most of the people that he dealt with. As if demanding two million credits was something she did frequently, though he rather doubted that.
He sighed. "Just because you managed to get your ship damaged, doesn't justify filing for additional expenses. You need to prove that you did something that the Federation would be willing to pay for. A space pirate outpost isn't worth two million credits."
"There were extenuating circumstances on the planet. Is there a node where I can upload the mission data?"
John shook his head in exasperation, and pointed to the side. "Over there."
She glanced to the side. "That is a public terminal. Do you have something more secure? I believe that most of this data will be classified once it reached Federation High Command."
"Alright then." He wasn't too surprised as he pulled out a small box from behind his desk. Most of the high level bounty hunters classified data that seemed even remotely sensitive, on the basis that it was better to be safe than to have their pay cut.
There was a small flash of light as the woman… stuck her finger into the input.
Is she some sort of cyborg under that… bodysuit of hers? Or was it a function of the suit?
He glanced at his own terminal- 34%? Considering just how fast that uplink was supposed to be, she had to have had an awful lot of data in that report. Was she trying to use the fact that she had catalogued new species on a lifebearing planet as an excuse to demand more pay?
Some Hunters tried that, but even with fairly detailed scans, he'd never known the Federation to pay more than ten thousand credits for those files.
There was a slight chime as the upload finished.
"I'll need to talk to my supervisor for this, please stand by." As she nodded he got up, and entered the door behind him. Let her deal with… whatever this was.
"Hey, Sal!" He said as he entered her office.
The woman looked up from her glasses (he'd always assumed that it was just an affectation, but apparently she had a HUD hooked up into it, and a crude scanner attached.)
"Yes?"
"Someone has come requesting quadruple her agreed upon payment, and says that her classified documents warrant the additional credits."
Sally raised an eyebrow. "Really?" She tapped at the side of her glasses as she glanced at the datapad at John's side, and her eyes widened.
"Is that- hold on." She got up and marched to the entrance, brushing past John as she went.
She opened the door to the entrance, glanced inside, then moved back and slammed the door. "That's Samus."
John raised an eyebrow. "The Samus?" Really? "You actually believe that crap?"
"Yes- well, some of it." Sal shook her head. "I mean, there has to be some basis to the rumors, right? What the hell did you think when you took her paperwork and saw the name at the top?"
John shrugged at that. "I figured it was a big galaxy, there had to be someone who had that name. Or maybe it was an alias of some kind. Either way, I didn't care enough to ask. Besides, those rumors are the sort of thing lazy freight pilots use to get free drinks. Even if she was" here he made air quotes, "the Samus, I'd wager that less than a tenth of the things she's done were actually true."
Sally grinned at that. "A wager?" Oh no. "One week's pay says that High Command authorizes her raise and that this isn't an exaggeration."
John winced. Sally was… far too free with her money. "You get paid more than I do."
"That just means that the odds are in my favor."
John sighed. "Deal." He could use some new boots, after all, and it was her own fault for believing spacer rumors…
And now all he needed to wait for command to look over the paperwork.
His boss smiled at him. "This shouldn't take too long, the moment her account was registered the files were flagged as a top priority message."
That… was something he'd have liked to know.
In the meantime, he scanned the message again.
There was an odd set of symbols that gave him a headache just looking at them, on the datapad. He looked it over. "Local signature?" It was one of the types of evidence admitted to see whether the mission was actually done, but he didn't recognize the script, and part of his training involved being trained to, if not read, then at least be able to identify as many languages as possible.
He put it through the scanner, and raised his eyebrows as the script read as recognizable but untranslatable. Luminoth script, last recorded use was… an archeological dig site? Found in Chozo ruins?
He snorted. Maybe this "Samus" just thought that they wouldn't look into it if it looked exotic enough. Clearly, she had underestimated the efficiency of the Federation Bureaucracy in its drive to file and categorize absolutely everything.
Regardless, the money was likely as good as his.
He opened the door to the room, and his eyes widened slightly.
There were three people there, none of whom he recognized.
One was an old man, handcuffed and reeking of cheap booze, who was currently on the opposite side of the room, (and looked as though he would really rather be a lot farther) of the second, some heavily armored man in orange, yellow, with a large green armcannon, who was sitting in chair as if nothing was strange about the whole situation, though he couldn't see the man's face under the faceplate.
The third, covered in fairly standard looking surplus Federation trooper armor with a cheap set of nonlethal equipment looked also looked like he would rather not be in between the two, but was trying to shield the handcuffed man from the armored man.
There was probably a story behind all of this.
John didn't care.
"Where is Samus?" He glanced around the room. He'd be kind of pissed if she had just run off, even if she did suspect that she was about to be called out for falsifying information.
The armored man got up, and John was about to tell him to wait his turn, when he removed his hel- when she removed her helmet, as "Samus" walked to the desk.
He decided not to ask when or how she had changed.
"Have they processed the files yet?" She asked. And… she sounded bored rather than concerned, but now there was a vaguely metallic, probably unintentionally threatening aspect to the tone.
"Not yet, it's out of my hands, judging by the density of classified files in the report. Still, judging by the priority level, you should at least have a preliminary response within a day."
She nodded, and walked back to her seat.
The other person was processed quickly enough, apparently the drunk man was a parole violator, originally arrested for peddling a truly remarkable number of drugs, and the thousand credits were transferred to the bounty hunter's account.
All quick and simple.
He glanced over at the armored Hunter.
She was sitting there, staring blankly ahead with her helmet on, and he couldn't tell what she was doing.
Reading something, watching the news, listening to music, going through an image gallery of people that she had brutally murdered for being too nosy- he shook his head. He was almost starting to believe it, for a second.
He continued sitting there, waiting, with only the slightest hand movements indicating that she was even alive under that suit.
An extraordinarily long fifteen minutes later, he received a message on the datapad, and Sally walked into the room. "Payment has been authorized. It has already been transferred to your account."
Samus nodded, "Confirmed. Thank you." She left the building without another word.
John glanced down at his pad, saw the five at the front of the payment. "Ah, looks like I win the bet-" he froze.
Sally gave him a big grin. "You were saying?"
She had been paid five million credits. Five. Million. "They, they just stuck another zero at the end of her paycheck! Who does that?"
"Apparently, Federation High Command." Sally said.
John considered bringing up that technically, the bet said that Sally would only win if the payment was authorized, not raised again, but- "I mean, they just… what the hell happened on that planet!"
"There's a declassified mission report. " Sally said, tapping at her glasses as text began to scroll down them.
He looked at his datapad, skimming it.
Sally was always a quicker reader than him, though. "What the fuck?"
"Hm?" He asked.
"She blew up an evil… clone planet? What the fuck?"
John raised his eyebrows to their maximum level. "What?"
"I'm… trying to figure out the context of this, but, what the hell? She has an evil twin? Or… it created an- what?"
John glanced at the slate."This has to be bullshit. It's some sort of... cover story for a different job she did."
Sally glanced at him. "Would it really make you feel any better at all if the Federation was paying someone five million credits for something so incredibly black ops that this was an acceptable cover story?"
John opened his mouth to say yes, and then closed it. That... wouldn't... actually make him feel any better. He moved to continue reading, but a text box suddenly appeared over the screen.
This data has just been classified. Anything that you read before the classification is not to be spoken of. An appointment has been set up for you to discuss the security requirements for possessing classified data. –Admiral Dane
His eyes widened.
Sally glanced at him, and they stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. John spoke first. "So… that was Samus."
AN:
The classified data was mostly schematics or biological scans of some of the... odder creatures that she encountered, along with some video files of several of the fights she had been in. She didn't see much need to classify what had happened to the planet as a whole, and gave a rather dry summary of what had happened.
Basically, I did kind of like that one log where someone puts Samus in the same category as Santa Claus, and I wanted someone to have an encounter with her in a peaceful context.