Metroid Rebirth (Worm/Metroid)

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.1

Returning to Earth after any mission was both something I looked forward to and something I dreaded. After the mission to ZDR, I was unsure whether it was wise to go back to the planet directly, but the Federation needed to be assured that the X Parasite was eradicated and the status of the EMMI. There was also the substantial bounty that Adam once again reminded me was not really worth what I went through on ZDR. Still, it would be enough to cover a retrofit of the ship and allow me to do some light shopping. I didn't need very much more clothing, but a few physical books would be a nice comfort on a long trip.

As I started to make the last jump to head toward Earth, a pulse went through my head, and my left arm started to glow. No, I would not drain my ship of its energy. I could keep control. I would keep control. For the safety of my ship and the Federation I would make sure that my control would not erode, at least in a populated area. I did need to see a doctor I could trust though. What happened there at the end, what was going on with me… I wasn't entirely sure I could trust Federation Scientists to not try and repeat what Raven Beak wanted. Fighting another clone of me was not something I wanted to do if I could avoid it.

Honestly, given the events of the past week, I could use a break. Adam knew it too. After we collected this bounty, we'd head somewhere that was unlikely to be attacked by any sort of Space Pirates, and I'd relax. By a beach or something. Maybe. For a bit.

At least until I needed more funds, anyway.

"Approaching Earth now," Adam's mechanical voice rang out through the cabin. There was a pause as he seemed to be processing something. "Anomaly detected. Brace yourself for potential turbulence, Lady."

I inserted my blaster into its holder and held tightly with my left arm as the ship started to rock. I quickly tapped away on the buttons I had access to as the ship rocked, initializing the stabilizers, but it took longer than intended for them to activate, and I grit my teeth. I restrained myself from just hitting the console. Then, as soon as the vibrations started, they stopped and I quickly started the diagnostic routines on the ship.

"The ship seems to have survived the anomaly intact, Samus," Adam said. "However, I would recommend having the stabilizers adjusted when we are at port. They should have been able to compensate for the anomaly's turbulence."

I rolled my eyes at the AI. I'd taken care of my ship long before Adam had been installed, and whenever the AI decided it was time to leave me, I'd continue to take care of my ship. I knew what needed to be done.

"Exiting FTL. Strange," Adam said, and I brought up the sensors. That didn't really make any sort of sense.

I double-checked the coordinates once more. The planet in front of us obviously was Earth, as it as supposed to be, but the Federation station that I'd planned on docking at was not in the planet's orbit. Actually, according to the sensors, there weren't many satellites around the planet at all, just some bits of space debris, some transmission satellites, used for reflecting signals down on the planet. I found an apparent telescope in orbit, and well… That was unusual.

"Samus, there appears to be a multi-winged humanoid being in orbit around this planet." So, Adam noticed when I did. As I expected. I didn't bother to answer him, as I knew he'd have more. "Local transmissions call it the 'Simurgh.'"

I pursed my lips under my helmet. That name triggered a memory that I'd rather have left buried and gone. Two more words associated with the Simurgh came to mind. Ziz. Endbringer. This particular one had a form of precognition and postcognition. I didn't know how she would react to our ship's approach, nor was I certain whether what I was about to do would work, but I activated the in-built cloaking device that my ship had. It was similar to the Phantom Cloak function of my armor, and once it activated completely, I made my way toward the planet below.

"Samus," Adam said. "This is Earth. Prior to the unification, before the Federation, but this does not appear to be the Earth that would eventually become the Federation Capital."

Well, that ruled out time travel as a way for me to have returned here. I guess that proved that the Earth I'd come to call home was an alternate to this one rather than in the future.

"I am plotting out a flight path that leads to what appears to be a safe haven to park the ship without issue. It is near one of the larger settlements in the United States, called Brockton Bay. Any objections, Lady?"

That specific city being chosen as what would house a safe haven? The odds of Adam picking that particular city were very small, but it was what he'd chosen. I didn't give any objections, as there were none worth voicing out loud. What I remembered of Brockton Bay told me that the city was more important to me than others would be. I could always go to another city if I wanted.

I glanced at the Simurgh on the viewscreen as we passed her. She had spun around so that she was facing the ship, staring directly at it. She clearly saw us somehow, focused as she was. However, she didn't take any action. I almost wanted to go out of my ship and give her a blast of my particle beam, but I focused on Adam's path.

There was one major problem I could see with ending up here, in the orbit of Earth Bet rather than the Federation, of all places? There was no way I was going to get that bounty now.

***************************************

Keeping the cloaking up, I descended on Earth Bet. My ship's stealth technology was likely far beyond anything that humanity of this time period had available to it, even with the advances provided by tinker technology. Adam continued his deep dive into current events and local ordinances. It probably didn't take him a long time to obtain all of the data as he was only limited by how fast the connection was, but the sheer amount of data would take some time to sort through, even for someone that thinks as fast as an AI.

The flight path that he had plotted took us over several cities that I had been to, at least in the time I had come from. It was interesting looking down on them from above, seeing what buildings had stood the test of time on our Earth, and seeing what other differences had shown up between the two. It kept me from worrying about what was coming, what I knew to be coming.

Brockton Bay was located in the state of New Hampshire of what was currently called the United States of America. While New Hampshire certainly existed on the Federation Earth, the city of Brockton Bay did not, to my knowledge. I wasn't entirely sure whether it had existed in the past, but I had never really had cause to look, given how little time I tended to spend on planet.

Brockton Bay here, had once been a shipping city with an oil rig out on the water. But eventually, the oil well dried up, and thanks to a combination of shipping disruptions due to Endbringer and labor disgruntlement, so did the shipping industry here. Now, the city's primary draw was tourism and the volume of powered individuals known as Capes. I glanced at the viewer that Adam typically displayed himself on, and I cocked an eyebrow. All of this was familiar to me, but Adam didn't know that. This was a part of my past that my parents never even got to know. Not that it was their fault or mine.

The real question I had was why Adam chose this city of all cities. It couldn't simply be because of the Boat Graveyard, where I was setting the ship down at the moment, still cloaked. I was able to place the ship within one of the derelict ships in such a way that it would be accessible to me yet not visible by others unless they knew exactly what they were looking for.

No, Adam had to have another reason for choosing Brockton Bay, when other cities almost certainly had just as many places to hide a spaceship without issue. I cocked an eyebrow at the display unit. Perhaps it was less effective while wearing a helmet, but I knew that the AI could see my facial expression.

"You are curious why this city, specifically?" Adam asked. Then he continued without waiting for my nod. He knew me well enough. "The city has within it, one of these capes that will be able to safely get a look at your genetic profile. I know you are worried after what happened on ZDR and what nearly happened, had Quiet Robe not been there."

I frowned. I supposed it was not impossible that a cape would have that sort of power. They did seem to have many different abilities from what little I knew of them. The question would be whether I would trust this cape to keep what they saw confidential or not. I didn't know who they were or what they were capable of.

"Panacea, a member of the cape group, New Wave," Adam said, bringing a dossier up on screen. The girl was fifteen years old, and she wore a costume that was reminiscent of a medic. The dossier didn't list a psychological profile, but she was a fifteen-year-old girl. When I was fifteen… Old Bird had been training me for a bit, but that didn't mean that was any sort of normal for a human. As her power seemed to be used based upon touch, I would have to be careful if I ever encountered her. I was unsure how her power would treat my power armor, given that it too was a living thing.

I brought up the rest of the dossiers linked to her. New Wave, a family Cape Group, the Dallons and the Pelhams. Carol Dallon, Brandish, was related to Sarah Pelham, Lady Photon. They were married to open capes as well, and each had cape children. Laserdream and Shielder, Crystal and Eric Pelham, and Glory Girl and Panacea, Victoria and Amy Dallon. Amy was the odd one out as she appeared to be adopted.

Perhaps that was why her power differed from the rest of her family in such a striking way.

I dismissed the dossiers and brought up the fuel records. I'd been intending on doing a retrofit of the ship, using some of ZDR's bounty, but that was a pipe dream now. Instead, I needed to figure out how we were going to refuel. There was enough fuel to get us out to Saturn, at least, but beyond that would require more than we had available.

"It is possible that we could generate a converter to help with the refueling, Samus," Adam said. "But the bounties here seem to be confined to individuals located on planet. There are people with things known as "kill orders" that have bounties on the successful proof of destruction. The funds would allow us to purchase necessary components or to manufacture components that are necessary."

I nodded and glanced out the viewscreen. There were no lifeforms in the immediate vicinity, and I was starting to get a little hungry. While I had rations here on the ship, it would be an excuse to explore a little and stretch my legs, breathe in some non-generated oxygen.

"If you are planning on leaving the ship, I would suggest not wearing the Gravity Suit," Adam said. "You would attract attention in power armor. Wear casual clothing, if you can."

I nodded, and with a simple thought, I dismissed my armor. My hair fell loosely on my shoulders, and I grabbed my sidearm and went to get some casual clothing. Leaving the modified Zero Suit on, I slipped on some blue denim jeans and a white T-Shirt and red bomber jacket. I frowned as I pulled one of my bangs down. It had been a while since I'd dyed my hair, but it looked good this way. I placed a radio bud in my ear and nodded to Adam.

"There does not appear to be anything blocking radio transmissions on this Earth," Adam said. "I should be able to remain in contact with you at all times."

I smiled. That was one thing about ZDR that frustrated me. Additionally, Raven Beak posing as Adam had angered me. One more thing to lay at the dead Chozo's feet, beyond what he had tried to use me for.

"You do not currently have any local funds. Federation Credits are unlikely to be accepted in 2011 CE America. The weather outside is barely above freezing, but with your current outfit, you should be able to handle it without issue. Local ordinances do not frown on vigilantism, and there appears to be gang activity in town. However, nonlethal tactics are recommended when dealing with normal humans."

I could do nonlethal. That wasn't an issue.

"If you must fight a cape, measure your response based upon what they can handle. I will attempt to inform you before that happens. Now, please explore Brockton Bay at your leisure. Any objections, Lady?"

I shook my head, and I exited the ship. It was trivial to jump from wreckage to wreckage, ending with me on the shore. I may have touched the surface of the water once, but my sidearm's whip grapnel managed to help me stay dry. Which was good because I did not want to try going into freezing water here. More derelict ships and warehouses to go with them were located nearby on the shore. It was sad, looking at this. It reminded me of some of the ruins on planets I'd been on before, except here it was by choice. People abandoned these areas.

I doubted I would find any Chozo statues here or direct upgrades for my suit.

"The Boardwalk has restaurants and is only four kilometers south of your location," Adam said over the radio. "There is a market in between, but local network reviews don't have many restaurants listed there."

I tapped my microphone in acknowledgement, and I started on my way. Being here in Brockton Bay was nostalgic in a way that I hadn't really expected. That it was 2011 was worrisome, as that would indicate… certain implications that I wasn't sure I wanted to think about at the moment. Instead, I focused on the travel. There was no need to run, as despite the cold, I was handling it okay with just the casual clothing I had on and the insulation that my Zero Suit provided.

It took me maybe half an hour to get near the Boardwalk, when I heard a scream for help. Instincts long-honed by my bounty hunting kicked into gear. I ran toward the scream, down into an alleyway. The alley was between two businesses and had a blue item that I assumed was a large trash receptacle, a dumpster. Next to the dumpster, a dark-skinned woman dressed in an admittedly nice blue winter blouse and black skirt combination cowered away from a man brandishing a knife. The man had a shaved head with a tilted manji tattoo just above his ear, taking up half the side of his head.

That he was menacing the woman was good enough for me, and before he could act with that knife, I stepped up behind him, grabbing his arm and lifting. The man was a good six inches shorter than me, and I'm sure I looked even taller as I lifted him off the ground.

"What the fuck?" asked the man.

Such language. I glanced at the open trash receptacle. While it would be far too easy to just drain the man of his energy, Adam had indicated that lethal tactics were less likely to be seen as acceptable here. There were laws, after all. I breathed out a sigh, and in a fluid motion, snagged the man's wallet from his pants and tossed him in the dumpster. Head first. I didn't toss too hard, and perhaps a little bit of head trauma would teach him to respect women. I doubted it, but since I didn't hear any bones snap, just him sagging into the dumpster, I nodded.

I turned to the woman and offered her a hand up. She took it, and after I pulled her to her feet, she smiled at me. "Thank you, miss."

I returned the smile, nodding.

"Are you a cape?" she asked.

Well, in the most technical sense, I really wasn't. I was a bounty hunter. Sure, I'd worn capes before. Certain dares should never be repeated. But I'd never been referred to as one.

"You should probably be wearing a mask if you are. Not everyone needs to be like New Wave."

Well, I supposed if I was planning on acting in capacity as one, my armor could count as a costume or mask. It did conceal my identity to those who didn't know who I was. I mean, I'd been mistaken for a man before by people who didn't know.

I shook my head, and I tapped the wallet, looking at the woman.

"No, he didn't take anything of mine," she said. "Not that I'd have anything to give that racist fuck, anyway. I'm a college student."

I opened the wallet, and I pulled out the cash. It really was strange holding paper money again after dealing with credits for so long. My stomach chose that moment to growl. It had been some time since I'd had a proper meal.

"Oh, jeeze… are you new in town?" she asked, and at my nod, she continued, "then let me show you one of the best places to eat around here on a budget, Fugly Bob's. It's over on the Boardwalk, a couple blocks away. It's the least I can do after what you did."

I smiled, and gestured to her.

"Are you able to talk at all? What's your name?"

"Samus," I said. "And I can talk."

"You just choose not to?"

I nodded. If there wasn't anything worth saying, there wasn't anything to say.

"Well, I'm Millie, and thanks again. I don't want to think what that asshole was going to try," she said, and together we headed out of the alleyway. I quickly found out that Millie was a student at Brockton's local university, a graduate student in English, at that. She mentioned that she had actually considered changing majors at one point in undergrad after one of her best teachers passed on, but she persevered to honor the teacher. I could respect that. I did much the same for Old Bird.

Fugly Bob's didn't really match up to the first part of its name. It really wasn't technically on the Boardwalk, but it bordered it enough that Millie claimed it was. It was half fast-food restaurant, half shack, and this time of year, the outdoor seating didn't really seem available. This time of day, the dining room wasn't overly full, and I got the bright idea to order the Challenger. Apparently if you could finish it, you didn't have to pay.

"I'm not sure how you're going to finish that Samus," said Millie. "I mean, I get that you're a tall woman, but there's no way…"

I grinned. She'd see. Then the door to the restaurant opened, and in walked a red-haired girl around fifteen years old. She was accompanied by a similarly aged black girl and another, smaller girl that might have been a tad younger than they were. All three girls were dressed in fashionable clothing appropriate for the weather. They were animatedly talking with one another, about this or that. It really didn't matter. The issue was the redhead looked familiar to me. She didn't really seem like anyone I knew from the Federation Earth. I just couldn't place where I knew her from.

She caught a glimpse at me too, noticing how I was looking at her. She nudged her friends, and before going to order her food, she came over to me. "Is there a problem?"

I shook my head.

"There a reason you're staring at my friend?" asked the black girl. She clearly was being a little protective. Which, honestly, was probably a good thing.

"Familiarity," I said softly.

"Wait…" she looked closely at me, and she held up her fingers, making circles with her index finger and thumbs. "… no way. Taylor? Taylor Hebert?"

"I thought you said your name was Samus…" Millie said, but I held up a hand.

I did know this girl. "Hello, Emma."

After twenty-six years, I was back, and less than two years had passed. My parents had tried to convince me I was dreaming. Maybe I had been, but Emma being here proved there was more to it than that. Maybe… Maybe I did have one living parent.

Maybe I'd get to see a father I hadn't killed.

 

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.2

Emma Barnes. She had been Taylor Hebert's best friend, my best friend. She was the redheaded girl I'd seen in my dreams when I was little, after meeting with Old Bird, and she was the one that Gray Voice told me likely didn't exist. At least, there hadn't exactly been a redhead among the colonists of K-2L. Not one my own age, anyway. Emma didn't look all that different from how I remembered her. She'd developed some, and she probably would look pretty good as she got older. I probably would have been jealous of her if she'd been on Zebes as I grew up.

The girls with her, I assumed were friends from her school. They certainly weren't anyone who had appeared in my dreams, my memories from before leaving Bet. No, I certainly hadn't met either of her friends. Especially not the protective black girl.

"Ems, you sure about this? You remember the last time you thought someone was her," said the black girl.

"She knew my name," Emma said. "You are her, right?"

"Hebert?" Millie asked, looking at me. She frowned. "You do look a little like she did. Are you the professor's cousin or something? It was so sad when she died."

I shook my head. Professor Annette Hebert was… had been… my mother, the same way that Virginia Aran was, and unfortunately both were long dead. Well, long dead to me. It had been three years since her death here.

"She's Taylor Hebert," Emma said. "Aunt Annette's daughter."

"Ems, I thought you said your friend was your age," said the darkhaired girl.

I held up a hand, letting out a small sigh. I needed to clarify some things. "It's complicated."

"Samus," Adam's voice came over my earbud. "I have done some research into this Taylor Hebert that Emma mentioned. She bears some resemblance to how you looked when you joined the Federation Police. However, judging from the age she was when she went missing…"

I tapped the earbud, cutting Adam off. I didn't want to have to try and explain things to him in addition to the girls in front of me, and I hadn't even had my meal yet.

"What do you mean complicated?" asked the smaller girl. "Are you Taylor Hebert, or aren't you? And if you are, why do you look so old?"

"She doesn't look that old," said Millie. "She can't be much older than twenty."

I snorted. "Twenty-six, actually. Millie, that thing you asked me?"

"Damn, girl," Millie said. "I meant what I said, but damn. And what thing? Wait… oh, that thing. This is related to that?"

"Something like it," I said. This was why I didn't really stay around people that much. Millie, at least, was content to do the talking, but there were times when I would have to speak up around people. With Old Bird and Gray Voice, I didn't really have to talk much. My body language did most of the talking for me, but among humans?

"I told you she had to be alive," Emma said. "They never found a body, and…"

Suddenly Emma was at my side, wrapping her arms around me. While no tears were dripping down the side of her face, she had something going on. The emotional upswell in the girl who had once been my best friend was staggering. I returned the hug with one arm, and with my right, I lightly patted her on the back of the head. Friendship was something to be treasured, after all. Despite all the changes that I'd been through the past couple years, that was a lesson that stuck with me. Even when certain beings spat it back in my face.

"I'm back, yes…" I stood up so that she could have an easier time hugging me, and I realized then that I was much taller than her. She had to be maybe 5'4", making me nearly a foot taller than her. Her friend was a little taller, but I still dwarfed her by about two thirds a foot.

"Madison, could you go place an order for Ems and me?" asked Emma's other friend.

"You sure, Sophia?" Madison asked.

"Yeah. Emma and I need to have a talk with this one." Sophia seemed to be trying to make herself taller.

"I'll be back for my Challenger, Millie," I said.

"Sure thing, Sa-Ta… what should I call you?" Millie asked.

"Samus is fine," I said.

"Okay, Samus," Millie said.

I glanced to Sophia. Though Emma was still hugging me, the two of us met gazes. The girl was sizing me up, like how I'd seen some of the Federation recruits do. There was a severe lack of trust on her face, and honestly, I couldn't blame her. I'm still not sure how Emma managed to recognize me. I was both taller and older than I should have been. My hair… well, I hadn't dyed it recently, so it wasn't the complete blonde I wore it in to honor my mother, but the highlights were there.

The Sophia girl looked athletic, like she worked out or did some sort of sports or something, but she was clearly high school age. She looked like she was torn between tearing Emma away from me or just trying to fight me for her. I needed to shut that down. There was no way I was going to be just beating on some high school girl for being protective of her friend. "Shall we talk outside?"

"Sure thing, Samus," Sophia said, emphasizing my name. Probably to reiterate to Emma that I wasn't Taylor Hebert. In some ways, she was right. I didn't remember everything from before I came to K-2L, and honestly, I barely remembered Brockton Bay. I had been younger, and then everything happened.

Everything.

Gently, I separated from Emma, and the three of us stepped outside the restaurant. We walked around the corner to an area that I deemed fairly isolated, where we could talk without much issue. The beach was clearly visible, but at the current temperatures, there weren't many people out and about. For a few seconds, I listened to the sounds of the waves as they hit the shore, cracking small bits of ice that had formed.

Then another sound got my attention, the cocking and preparing of a string-based weapon. A crossbow, almost certainly. As I turned, I saw Sophia aiming one at me. Curious, I didn't really think she was able to hold one in her bag. Clearly, I was wrong. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you sure as shit aren't going to hurt Ems."

"I told you already, Sophia, she's Taylor," Emma said. "She's got the hair… her eyes are a little different, and she's taller, but she's Taylor. She recognized me even! After I recognized her."

"Yeah, and that's what you said about the last five girls," Sophia said. "Emma, you have to get over this. You're a survivor, and you can't keep getting stuck on that sort of thing."

I narrowed my eyes. "What happened?"

"None of your business, bitch," Sophia said. "I told you. I don't want you hurting Ems. Now, who the hell are you?"

I looked at the crossbow. The bolt on there seemed a little different than a normal one. It had a small vial attached to the tip, which was hollowed out.

"Yeah. I'll shoot you if you don't talk," Sophia said. "Who are you? That girl in there called you Samus. That doesn't sound like Taylor to me."

"I was Taylor Hebert," I said. The clicking in my ear let me know that Adam was listening in. The AI likely was going over all the files relating to my disappearance if he hadn't already, and then he was probably anticipating other things that I would ask him later. I knew how Adam thought. "But I've gone by Samus Aran for twenty-six years."

"Where… how?" Emma asked.

I shrugged. "Dimensional craziness? I can't explain the mechanics of it, as I don't understand myself."

I also didn't really like to talk as much as I was, but Emma deserved something. I also very much didn't want to have to deal with taking down one of her friends. There was no OpSec to worry about here.

"Yeah, bullshit," Sophia said. "Ems. There's a way to prove it. Ask her something that you know that some random person wouldn't. I'm not going to let you get taken in by a Stranger."

Emma shook her head. "It's definitely Taylor. I know it." Her voice quavered a little. "Taylor. Samus. Whatever, you're you… what was the nickname your parents used for you?"

I closed my eyes. This was something that I needed to remember. My parents. Emma wasn't referring to Raven Beak, who… well, I never really saw him as a father anyway. She wasn't referring to Adam, who called me Lady. Who still called me Lady. Nor did she mean Gray Voice or Old Bird, who occasionally called me Little Bird. I couldn't remember what my parents called me other than Samus before they died… but she was referring to before then. To Annette and Danny Hebert. What did they call me? In a way, it was similar to what Gray Voice and Old Bird referred to me as… but more specific.

"Little Owl. They called me Little Owl. Not so little now, am I?" I asked with a small smirk.

Emma smiled. "Yes, I knew it! Told you, Sophia. Put down the crossbow."

"Not specific enough," Sophia said. "A Stranger could probably deduce that sort of thing, or maybe she's the one who took Taylor to begin with…"

Sophia's trigger finger seemed to be twitching. I don't think this was intentional, but she fired her crossbow. Quickly, I stepped to the left, and I snagged the bolt out of the air. I closed the distance between us, hit the crossbow up, breaking it from her grip, and I pulled her arms around her back, using some of the CQC that I'd used when I was a part of the Federation police.

Her hands slipped from my grasp like I was holding nothing but air for a second, and then she attempted to slam her head into my chin. I threw her crossbow to the side, letting it clatter to the ground, and I backed off from her, assuming a loose stance.

"Sophia, stop!" Emma said. "It's Taylor. I know it is."

"You're a cape," Sophia said. "Maybe not a Stranger, but you're something. Emma, she could be lying to you."

"You're parahuman," I countered. It was the only way she could have slipped my grip. I didn't have any cuffs on me. "I'm not lying about who I am, Sophia. I get that you're trying to protect your friend. But she was my friend first."

Sophia frowned, looking me over again. This time, her eye was a bit more appraising than before. "What the fuck are you?"

"Bounty hunter," I said bluntly. Not that I really expected her to believe me. There was no real point in hiding this fact from her, given I had some idea of what she was capable of. "In space."

"Bullshit," Sophia said. There it was. The disbelief.

"I don't care what you think," I said. "Attack me again, and you'll be unconscious on the floor. Emma's friend or not."

"Taylor, what?" Emma asked. "Sophia, you don't need to do anything. She's strong. You can see it right? She's a survivor, like us."

There was that word again. This time, from Emma. Something happened to her. What, specifically, I wasn't sure, but whatever it was, she put a lot of weight on that term. The reaction she'd had when Sophia said it, and when she said it, there was that reverence. I got the feeling that she needed some sort of therapy, and she hadn't gotten it yet.

"She's definitely strong," Sophia said, dropping out of her fighting stance. She went to pick up her crossbow, looking me over some more. "I don't think I need to call this in. You won't tell anyone about this, will you, Samus?"

"About what?" I asked. No real need to antagonize the girl further. She was just being protective of Emma. It was hardly the first time someone had attacked me over something innocuous. Plus, she was a teenager, and teens had all the hormones messing with their judgment. I did need to look more into parahumans though. I didn't remember much about them from when I last lived here.

Sophia nodded, and she relaxed a little more as she collapsed her crossbow and put it into her bag. "Ems… I still don't like this, but…"

"She's Taylor," Emma said. "I know she is. And… something did happen to her. There's Earth Aleph out there. Is it so crazy that she maybe ended up on another Earth?"

Earth, maybe not. The colony that I was raised on from… however old I was physically when I was adopted until I turned three? My time on Zebes? I thought that might have been a little bit crazier to explain. Still, there was an important question to ask. "Emma… is my father…?"

"Oh… right...!" Emma nodded quickly. "Uncle Danny needs to know you're back too. He's probably at work right now, but we should be able to call him. Sophia, you have his number, right?"

I tilted my head. Why would Sophia have his number? I did not expect my old best friend's new friend to even know who my father was, but she had his number?

"He broke his phone the other night," Sophia said. "I can maybe get patched through to him, but it's probably best to wait until he's off shift."

"Wasn't he… part of the Dockworkers Association?" I asked. That was something I clearly remembered. Dad worked at the docks. He always did that. It wasn't always lucrative for him, but it was the work he enjoyed.

"He changed jobs," Emma said. "A short while after you disappeared. He and Dad both helped Sophia get her current job."

I tapped my earpiece. Adam had to be looking into things. He just had to be. He supported me in most things that I did, and given that we were still in radio contact, without me needing to upload specific data, meant that he could update me in real time. "Are you ready to listen this time, Samus?"

I cleared my throat.

"Daniel Hebert has not been employed as the hiring manager of the Dockworker's Association for approximately fourteen months. His current employment is under a sort of classification that I am hesitant to crack, but judging from public records, approximately thirteen months ago, a new Protectorate hero debuted, Ratcatcher. He apparently has the ability to control rats with his mind. His physique and stature resemble the photographs I was able to obtain of Daniel Hebert online. I can only assume that this Sophia girl also works with the Protectorate."

"Protectorate," I said. "The new job?"

Emma blinked. "How did you…?"

"Bounty hunter," I said. "I am good at obtaining information."

"Who do you have on the other line?" Sophia asked, glancing to my ear.

"My partner," I said. "Adam. He's listening in on everything."

"Thank you, Lady," Adam said in my ear.

"Sounds perverted," Sophia said with a snort.

"Partner?" Emma asked. "You mean, like… you know?"

I raised an eyebrow at my friend.

"Wait… no," Emma said. "That doesn't make much sense. Where is he?"

"That's not something I can share at the moment," I said. "Maybe later."

My stomach chose to growl again.

Emma gaped at me for a second, but then she started to giggle. "Guess you're hungry."

I nodded, and I turned back toward Fugly Bob's. This had been far too much talking for my liking, but I was able to use some of Old Bird's philosophy a bit. Who knew? Maybe with Sophia it would actually stick. Especially since she seemed to know my father.

Gods, that was going to be an awkward reintroduction. "Surprise, Dad. You now have a twenty-six year old part Chozo, part Metroid daughter who has blown up four planets in the service of galactic peace and safety. Yes, I should only be fifteen, but general relativity and dimensional travel make strange bedfellows. What, I only look nineteen? See the Chozo and Metroid genetics."

Yeah, I doubted that was going to go over very well. Especially since I'd have to explain what the Chozo were, what Metroids were, and I really didn't want to have to go over my life's story. Maybe I could con Adam into doing it for me. Just give Dad a relevant dossier of me, and I wouldn't have to deal with the whole awkward conversation.

Things were plenty awkward with just Emma and her friend.

When we made it back into the restaurant, their other friend had joined Millie at the table. Madison was picking her brain about some college-related thing or another, but I got the feeling that they were both talking about the three of us. The confirmation came as we sat down and our orders were being placed on the table.

"So, Samus," Madison said. "Millie told me you stopped an Empire guy from doing something to her by throwing him into a dumpster."

"It was badass," Millie said. "One second, the skinhead fuck was about to shank me, the next, she just tosses him."

Sophia cocked an eyebrow.

"Told you, Sophia," Emma said smugly. "Taylor's always been strong. It's why I knew she had to be out there."

"So… what's going on with the Taylor and Samus thing?" Madison asked. "And why isn't she our age? I thought Taylor was supposed to be."

"It's complicated, Mads," Sophia said. "I don't even know all that shit. But evidence points to Emma being right this time. This time."

"That implies there were other times," Millie said, taking a bite of a fry. "So, Samus, what do you think about her mistaking other girls for you?"

I shrugged and took a bite of the Challenger. Oh, that was pretty good beef. It had been a good long while since I'd eaten any Earth-based animals at all, and there was just something tasty about this. Yes, I could just taste the sheer number of calories I was intaking, but given my physiology, I needed this. It was better to fill up on something like this than be tempted to drain energy from the power grid or worse, from people. I could keep my Metroid instincts in check, likely due to Gray Voice's genetics within me, as Raven Beak said, but it was easier if I was doing it on a full stomach.

"They looked like her, but they weren't," Emma said.

"Emma, that second girl was Hispanic; she didn't look anything like the picture you had of Taylor. Hell, Samus barely looks like her, but she looks more like that picture than any of the earlier girls you thought were her," Sophia said.

"Ems, I love you, but sometimes, you really should listen to Sophia," Madison said. "And maybe get a bit of help about Taylor."

"I had been," Emma said. "But Taylor's here now. I don't need it anymore."

"There's nothing wrong with getting therapy," Millie said. "It can help deal with grief, or any number of things. Everyone can benefit from it."

She gave me a significant look as I took… huh. Was that really the last bite of the Challenger? I thought it was supposed to be a big burger. As for Millie suggesting therapy for me… she didn't know me all that well, and she was an English grad student. Maybe it had something to do with her assumption about me being a cape. I didn't know if Millie knew any capes personally, or even what she based this assumption off. But it had to be coming from somewhere. I needed to know more about capes and cape culture.

Especially if Dad was one. And especially if Emma was good friends with one.

I shrugged again, wiping my face. "I've seen a therapist before. After… well, it's complicated. But there's nothing wrong with the profession. They do, mostly, genuinely want to help."

"But…" Emma murmured. "You're back now. And you're so strong. A survivor."

"Therapy helped me get that way," I said. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Taking out my frustrations on the deadly wildlife of a hostile planet certainly helped. Absorbing a number of X-Parasites also helped. But therapy would probably help me get my head on straight after what had happened. "And… well, training."

One of the waiters noticed that I was finished with my burger, and after verifying I'd actually managed to complete the thing on my own, he came over to take a picture of me for their wall. The camera was one of those instant-developing kinds, and I signed the photograph with the name I'd been using for a long while. I noted the variety of pictures on the wall, including some people in costumes. Capes. They were proud that the capes ate here.

They comped our meals, and I gave a brief yet vague overview of my training to the girls at the table. I did let them know that I had been law enforcement for a short while, but I'd left. Where, specifically, I didn't indicate. I would later when we weren't in a public area. We stepped outside the restaurant, but we were still milling about near the beach area.

"So, Samus, do you have a phone number or something?" Millie asked. "I think I'd like to hang out again, if we can."

I shook my head.

"Taylor never got a cell phone," Emma said. "Aunt Annette…"

Millie winced. "Oh, yeah, right. I heard about that."

"Give me your number," I said. "We'll work something out." As she wrote it down, I lowly murmured it so that Adam could add it to his memory banks. I was sure that we'd be able to set something up so that people could contact me while I was here. It probably would be trivial for his systems, even with the power as depleted as it was.

Sophia pulled out her cell phone and glanced at it with a frown. "Oh. Shit." Her face paled a little as the blood drained from it. "The ABB, Protectorate, and the Empire are having a three-way brawl in the Docks. We should probably get out of here and toward the Boardwalk in case it spills over."

"Who from the Protectorate?" Madison asked.

"Looks like Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Rat…catcher…." Sophia trailed off as I frowned. I knew she would do what it took to keep her friends safe.

"Keep an eye on them for me," I said, looking at Sophia as I summoned the Gravity Suit. As the armor formed around me, I heard gasps from all of them.

"I knew you were a cape," Millie crowed. "What's your cape name?"

"I'm not a cape," I said as I got ready to start running. "I'm a bounty hunter. If you can't call me Samus, call me that."

And then I kicked up my speed booster to get on my way. Hunter was as good a name as any, after all.

 

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.3

Normally when I rushed through areas, I blasted literally anything and everything in my way. I might not have always been able to open the ways that way, but there was something satisfying about blowing up obstacles. I blamed my newly known Mawkin genes. Of course, given what I'd seen when I was a part of the Federation Police, it could be that the love of explosions was more from the human part of me than anything else. Of course, most people in the Federation Police couldn't just shoulder-check their way through some walls either. My Speed Boost upgrade was probably one of my most fun ones, after all.

Unfortunately, in a populated area, such tactics were highly discouraged. Honestly, they were likely illegal, and the risk posed to innocent people was far from one that either Adam or I would deem acceptable. Instead, I kept to the streets, rushing at my full speed. I needed to get to this three-way brawl and reinforce the Protectorate. While the odds were they would be able to handle things on their own, my birth father was probably among them. If I could support him in any way, I would do so.

I had a city map overlay displayed on my visor, with the brawl's location highlighted in a blinking area so that I could plot a path through the city in a way that caused the least issues. Luckily, due to the weather, not many people were out and about, so I didn't have to dodge as I ran. But to be certain that I did the least harm, I carefully hopped, slid or spun around any obstacles that got in my way. I didn't want my father's first impression of the daughter he'd been missing for nearly two years to be someone who didn't actually care about property damage.

Of course, I cared more about the innocent lives in my way than the property, but I didn't want to break any laws. Other than the speed limit, but I was fairly certain that was for wheeled vehicles. I was going by foot.

"Lady, this course of action is inadvisable," Adam's voice came over the radio. "Exposing yourself to the local authorities and their enemies without proper preparation is reckless."

Many things I do are reckless, Adam. I didn't vocalize this as I was sure he'd be able to anticipate any answer I could give. This was my father. My living father. While he wasn't the same as Rodney or Gray Voice, he did occupy a spot in my memories that was… happy. I just wasn't sure how he'd react to me. Which was why I needed this first impression.

"Very well," Adam said. "I have examined reports of the brawl, and I have determined who the primary players will be. From the Empire 88, capes known as Alabaster, Hookwolf, Cricket, and Stormtiger are engaging alongside approximately twenty rank and file members. From the ABB, the only powered member is a cape known as Oni Lee. Their leader has chosen to sit this fight out for some reason. Oni Lee is accompanied by fifteen members of his gang. The Protectorate has Armsmaster, Ratcatcher, and Miss Militia currently engaged. Members of the PRT are on route to the fight."

That was less than I was expecting, to be perfectly honest. The Protectorate members were still outnumbered, but I had been expecting more from both the Empire and the ABB itself. Of course, I didn't know much about either organization. Maybe I had, once, but such memories were long forgotten in lieu of dealing with Space Pirates.

Thank the gods I wouldn't have to deal with Space Pirates here.

"I have taken the liberty of loading a dossier on each cape for your perusal," Adam said. "And while I have no authority to limit what you use in battle, the authorities here would likely frown on excessive force. Thus, I recommend switching to your nonlethal arsenal. This would mean no bombs, no missiles, and only the stunning mode on your power beam and charge beam. Any objections, Lady?"

He was right. Missiles and bombs would likely cause more collateral damage than damaging my opponents, and given the inherent lethality, I did not want to just outright kill someone in an area where killing your enemies was against the law. Most of the areas I operated in were not under the auspices of law enforcement, and killing the enemies just made sense. Here, however, I was to be aiding law enforcement.

Even if the opponents were distasteful, I couldn't just be judge, jury and executioner.

I gave a nod, indicating that I agreed with Adam. I adjusted my beam settings so that the stun was the active setting, and I even turned off Triple Beam while I was at it. There was no need to go in as hard as possible, yet. I turned down the voltage on my Screw Attack, and I made sure my grapple beam was in working order as it was one of the least lethal options I had available to me.

My morph bombs… the basic ones, anyway, were probably okay, but at the same time, they were impractical to use in most combat situations.

I'd only use the missiles if the situation called for it. Who knew if I'd be able to get a replenishment here anyway?

Finally, as I rounded the corner, I could hear the sounds of fighting, and I carefully avoided stepping on a rat that ran by me. I slowed down to a normal speed as I took in the battlefield, and I activated the Phantom Cloak. This area of the Docks was normally occupied by porters and trucks that would transport goods to the railyard to the north. The ground was covered in a thin sheen of ice that, had I not been wearing my armor, would have made it difficult to get any friction. Judging from what I saw of the rank and file, they were having a bit of that issue themselves.

I assumed that the Asian-looking members of the brawl must have been a part of the ABB, while the purely white members were a part of the Empire. I scanned the open dockyard, and I looked for the capes. I needed to identify targets so that I didn't just go in blinder than I already was. One of the capes on the side of the Empire was a young man with unnaturally smooth pure white skin along with white eyes and hair. He was about average height for a man.

"Alabaster," Adam said. "He can restore himself to a pristine condition. I am unable to find out precisely how long it takes for him to do this or the specific limitations of this ability. However, I do not doubt that you can deal with him."

He swatted one of the ABB members in the side, only to slide out of the way of a wakizashi from the other side of him. I focused on the person with the wakizashi. The man wore a black bodysuit with a bandoleer of knives and grenades on it and a grinning crimson demonic mask that had two green stripes down either side. The man threw something to the ground and in a burst of smoke, he disappeared.

"Oni Lee," Adam said. "He is a teleporter. You should be able to stun him."

I nodded slightly, looking around the rest of the field. Even now, I managed to recognize both Armsmaster and Miss Militia. As Taylor, I vaguely recalled having something with Armsmaster's emblem embroidered on it. Whatever it was, I had been a fan of them both. I didn't fully recall their powers, but judging from the green flash coming from around Miss Miliita's weaponry and the familiar technological look of Armsmaster's armor, I could guess.

"Armsmaster and Miss Militia, the former is a tinker. His primary weapon is the halberd in his hands which he built himself, per the information available. Miss Militia has the ability to summon weaponry. Apparently this includes any weaponry that is not considered tinkertech."

The gun in Miss Militia's hands shifted into a shotgun, and she shot a beanbag into the chest of a man dressed in loose-fitting pants with chains over his chest, wearing a white and pale blue tiger mask. The air in front of him rippled, sending the beanbag off course.

"Stormtiger," Adam said. "An aerokinetic. Samus, you should be ca—"

Adam's feed became garbled as a wave of sonic energy passed over me, blurring my sensors. The Phantom Cloak still held, but a thin blonde woman with a buzz cut and metal cage as a mask leapt at me with a kama in each hand. I dropped my cloak and spun around, whipping out at her with the grapple beam. I spotted some scarring visible on her bare skin.

She dropped to the ground, allowing the beam to go over her. In a modulated voice, she sneered. "Naughty naughty stranger. Come on, you slant-eyed fuck!"

I swiftly pulled the beam back in in time for her to slash at me with the kama again. I brought my cannon up to block, and with my free hand, I shoved her away. I blasted her with a quick charged shot, but she flipped herself backward. The racist woman pushed off the ground with one hand, and I shot some simple blasts at her. She twisted out of the way of the first three, but as she landed, the fourth struck her shoulder, and the fifth struck the metal cage around her face.

Stun beam blasts are similar in voltage to a taser, and when I used them as a part of the Federation Police, I would make sure to strike areas that would cause disabling spasms. Most of those I had to shoot at tried to dodge the blasts. Few were as good at it as this human.

A loud high-pitched sound echoed around me, scrambling my visuals again. My visor's HUD blurred my vision, and I pressed a few buttons within my blaster to try and fix it. I closed my eyes. The racist woman may have been fast, but she was no Mawkin warrior. I could deal with her, without my sound. Without my sight.

The air shifted slight. There!

I grabbed the kama's blade, mid-swing, and I tugged on it, pulling the woman close to me. Then I wrapped my grapple beam around her body, and I threw her toward one of the Empire rank and file nearby, without letting go of the kama. I tossed the blade to the side, opening my eyes. As the woman started to get up, I leveled my blaster at her and shot two stun beams at her, blasting her right leg and then her left. As I watched the twitching of her legs, I nodded. She wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.

"That was Cricket, Lady," Adam's voice returned. "An Acoustokinetic. Clearly her sound usage had some disruption on our systems."

"Cricket!" An angry male voice called. I looked over toward where it came from, and I saw the flash of metal blades, striking on… what appeared to be a literal pile of rats. More rats continued to run into the pile, surrounding a man with those very blades sticking out of his flesh. "Get these rodents away from me, Ratcatcher! Fight me like a man!"

"I am," said a voice, melding with the chittering of the rats, and a man dressed in a form-fitting gray costume stepped from within. He had literal rodent ears on his head, and he wore a domino mask fitted with some sort of lenses. Did his costume come with its own pre-buitl six-pack? Because it looked like it was layered over a bit of belly fat, but even ignoring that, there was the tail on the costume as well, along with a rodent emblem on his chest. In his hand, he held a black baseball bat, which he swung at the shirtless blond man wearing a silver wolf mask.

The man brought up a bladed arm to block the bat, which clanged against it.

"Those are Hookwolf and Ratcatcher, Samus. Hookwolf has an ability to turn into blades, and Ratcatcher can control rats in a similar way to the way the Thoha controlled the Metroids, according to Raven Beak."

I aimed and charged a shot. I needed to time this right. Ratcatcher continued his bat-based assault against Hookwolf, and with each successive block, sparks flew between the bat and the blades. Ratcatcher was doing a good job of distracting Hookwolf for the moment.

I fired, but at the moment I did so, Oni Lee suddenly appeared in front of my blast. "Omae!"

Then, my blast struck him, and it continued on through him, leaving a perfectly burnt hole in his chest. Wait. What? That didn't make sense. I had set my arm cannon to be firing the stun beams, not anything stronger than that.

Then I heard it, the sound of something falling to the ground at my feet. I reached down to pick it up. It was some sort of grenade. I couldn't tell exactly what kind, but I knew that I didn't have much time. There were too many people around, so I did my best to cover it up with my armor. As the grenade exploded, my armor containing the explosion, Oni Lee's body somehow turned into ash, collapsing to the ground in a pile of ashen dust.

That… wasn't from my charged stun shot, after all.

"Samus, when Oni Lee teleports, he leaves a body behind that swiftly is eradicated afterward," Adam said, explaining what I saw.

I nodded, and then I saw Hookwolf start to turn more of his body into blades. I checked my energy reserves. I still had a decent amount left. The combination of what Cricket did and the explosion had knocked me down some energy, more than expected, given what they did, but the remainder would be enough to handle the rest of this fight. I'd worry about why that happened when there wasn't a murderblender to deal with.


I jumped toward Hookwolf and the man I assumed was my father. Approaching with the Screw Attack seemed like this was in my best interest, and as I got closer, Hookwolf swiftly took the shape that gave him his name.

I slammed my electrified body into the metal lupine abomination, pushing it to the side, sprawling. After landing, I nodded to Ratcatcher and leveled my arm cannon at Hookwolf, starting the charge sequence. His form vaguely reminded me of some of the Space Pirates that I had faced in the past, except they weren't literally swarming masses of hooks and blades. The only thing on the abomination that remained even slightly human were the eyes, which consistently were obscured by some shifting of the hooks.

"The information on Hookwolf indicates that a part of him remains human even when in that changed state," Adam said. "While he does not have a kill order on file, he does have a standing sentence for the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, colloquially known as the Birdcage. Life without parole."

The Birdcage. I wondered if it was too late to get that name changed. It was almost insulting.

"Who are you?" Ratcatcher asked.

"Hunter," I said. "Here to help."

I didn't get the chance to say much more as Hookwolf charged. I quickly activated my Flash Shift, shifting over to Ratcatcher, placing my hand on his shoulder, and shifting further back as Hookwolf attempted to slash both of us with his blades. When we landed, I released my charge shot in a broadside at Hookwolf.

The shot glanced off the shifting hooks, electrifying them for a second, but I didn't think it did much damage to him. Pursing my lips under my helmet, I glanced to Ratcatcher once more. He'd taken the Flash Shift well enough, stabilizing himself with his bat. He made gestures with his hands, and a swarm of rats overtook Hookwolf's body. The first of the rats were impaled on the hooks, swiftly chopped into pieces, but they kept coming, climbing over each other's bodies, each one attempting to burrow into the hooks.

"He's pretty much solid hooks, but if you can find his core, you can stun him!" Ratcatcher said in explanation as he focused on Hookwolf more. He shifted his stance, and even more rats piled on.

I assumed, based upon how he was having the rats basically commit suicide by hooks as they moved onto Hookwolf's body, he wasn't particularly attached to any of those rats, and I made my decision. I swapped to my Ice Missiles. If it took energy for him to maintain this form, the cold from the Ice Missiles would drain some of it, ideally without him dying. But with such a sentence to the BPCC, (I refused to call it a Birdcage) his death would not entirely be a bad thing.

I fired an initial barrage of three missiles into his body. As the missiles exploded on impact, hooks and rat guts were blown off the mass in icy chunks, but the lupine abomination kept moving in a metallic roar. I smirked, ready to fire off more.

Eyes focusing on me, Hookwolf charged, leaping out. I slid under his jump and fired two more missiles into his back. He landed on another pile of rats which leaped at newly exposed yet frozen over hooks. He generated new hooks, slashing at his frozen areas and the rats, and charged at me again.

Another Flash Shift backward, another two missiles. I knew I wasn't hitting his core, but with each set of hooks off, more of the body was exposed. But he generated more hooks, even with that. I wasn't regenerating many missiles from each blast, meaning I'd have to return to the ship for a top-up before my next outing. That said, most of the time I probably wasn't even going to bother using missiles against my targets, unless I knew they could take it. That the missiles weren't hitting the core and I knew I had a limit meant that I needed to find a way around this.

"Adam," I murmured, activating a scan of Hookwolf. "Are the hooks inorganic enough for the Wave Beam to bypass them?"

I did a Screw Attack into Hookwolf's body, burning some more hooks off of him, ending with a sharp kick, sending him scuttling along the pavement. He'd been able to damage the suit through the Screw Attack, eating some more of my suit's energy. Luckily, I still had more than half my tanks full, and I was able to keep my eye on him until the scan completed.

Thanks, in no small part, to Ratcatcher.

Ratcatcher's rats had swarmed him again, this time carrying what looked like some sort of rope, albeit made of rats. The rats were carrying other rats attached to each other's bodies, holding Hookwolf down as best they could. Of course, they were still rats, but enough of them were enough of an annoyance to the bladed wolf.

"The hooks appear to be some sort of iron-based alloy without organic matter in them," Adam said, allowing me to focus on the fight rather than the scan readout. "The organic core has been located. Setting it to track on your HUD. Lady, you have not combined the Stun Beam and Wave Beam before, but there is a first time for everything. Take him down. Any objections, Lady?"

I smirked, charging my charge shot and activating the Wave Beam upgrade while running at Hookwolf.

He reared back to swing at me. I smacked his claw away, following with a kick. When he was far enough away, I blasted his core with a Charged Stun Beam, passing through his metallic armor. The first shot hit his core, and he actually flinched. He charged at me again, and I flipped over him, firing missiles at his hooked body the whole while. Each blast knocked more hooks off the core. As he turned around, I charged another Stun Beam blast, and when he got close in, I fired, point blank into the core.

Hookwolf shook, and hooks fell from him, some absorbing into the core proper. With the core now exposed, more rats climbed on, but they were holding something this time, a small piece of technology, passed between the rats. One rat placed it on the core, pressing something on the tech. Electricity arced along the core, and Hookwolf collapsed, the remaining hooks on him slowly absorbing into the core as he shifted back into a human body.

"Thank you for the assist, Hunter," Ratcatcher said, and he took a step toward me. Then Oni Lee was suddenly behind him, wakizashi in hand.

I didn't dare wait. I just Flash Shifted over, threw Ratcatcher behind me, and I took the blow right in an area of my armor that Hookwolf had weakened. I grunted as the blade penetrated a bit further than it normally would have, but I snap-kicked Oni Lee away.

The attempt to follow up with a blast was met with Oni Lee turning to dust again, leaving the knife buried in my side.

I glanced around the battlefield. Alabaster had retreated, taking several of the Empire rank and file with him. Stormtiger laid on the ground covered in some sort of hardened foam, near some more of the unconscious Empire rank and file. Cricket was being zip-tied by… some rats? Several ABB members had been stripped of their weapons and were also being zip-tied.

Armsmaster and Miss Militia came over to where we were. He had a little bit of blood dripping down the side of his beard, and she had a black eye. Armsmaster walked over to Hookwolf and prodded him with the halberd's haft. I saw him shift his grip, and a needle slipped out the bottom of the weapon and injected something into Hookwolf's prone body.

"Tranquilizer," Armsmaster explained. "We don't want him getting up and causing trouble again during transit."

I reached down with my free hand and pulled the wakizashi from my armor, and seconds after it was free of my body, it collapsed into ash, much like Oni Lee's body. Gods, that thing actually stung. My armor had taken the brunt of the stab, but the tip had dug right into my hip. I don't think it broke flesh, but it still stung a little more than it should have.

The armor healed over seconds after I pulled out the sword, and I turned toward the so-called heroes as Armsmaster leveled his halberd at me, and Miss Militia cautiously aimed an assault rifle.

"Hunter helped out with Hookwolf and Cricket," Ratcatcher said. "She's not an enemy."

I shook my head, keeping my arm cannon pointed at the ground. I didn't want to antagonize either of them.

Armsmaster grimaced. "You're not the first to hold that name. The last I know of was a villain taken out by Behemoth two and a half years ago. I'm not sure if anyone currently has that designation."

"According to my research, there was a minor hero in Northern California that used the name, Lady," said Adam. "But he was caught in an attack by something called the Slaughterhouse Nine. Nobody currently uses the name."

"I chose it," I said.

"Did you make that armor yourself?" Armsmaster asked, looking at me.

I shook my head. I hadn't. I'd just been trained on how to use it since I was much younger, and it grew with me. I swear, the disappointment on that man's face was palpable.

"Would you be willing to come to Headquarters for a statement?" Miss Militia asked. "I'd very much like to know why you were out here today."

I wasn't opposed to going and answering some of their questions, but this was something I could answer right now. I pointed at Ratcatcher with my free hand. "I came here for him. In case he needed help."

Assuming he was my father, there was no way I'd let anything happen to him. I wasn't going to go through that again when I'd only just found him.

"Why him?" Armsmaster asked.

I glanced around us. The Empire members were being loaded into a van, and so were the ABB. The capes were being loaded separately from the rank and file, but they were still being loaded.

"Because…" I removed my helmet. "He might be my father…"

Ratcatcher blinked, doing a double-take at me. "T-Taylor?"

 

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.4

He'd called me Taylor. Ratcatcher had called me Taylor, as Emma had, and it just confirmed things for me. My father, my birth father was alive. I actually had a living parent. A parent that I, through circumstance or purpose, had not caused the death of. Annette Hebert, sadly, was dead, and what little I remembered of those circumstances could be blamed on actions I took. I remembered calling her. Viginia and Rodney Aran, twenty-three years ago, had been killed. Mom… because of me. Dad… because of someone dead. Well… that Dad. Old Bird and Gray Voice were dead and gone as well, both to similar situations. The discovery of Raven Beak… If he had been saner, I might not have needed to kill him. He'd given me no choice, as he was too far gone. I needed to end things once and for all. While my AI partner was based off of Adam Malkovich, the human Adam…

Any objections, Lady?

Unshielded bodies didn't survive Power Bombs.

"Taylor, but… how?" Ratca---Dad asked. He looked me over, focusing on my face, studying it like some sculpture or textbook, almost as if he were trying to memorize it or look for some flaw. "What happened to you?"

I pursed my lips. Explaining things to him was going to be difficult enough. It really would have been even if we weren't surrounded by people being loaded into vans. Perhaps it was lucky then, that Armsmaster and Miss Militia were there.

"Ratcatcher, this is not the time nor the place," Armsmaster said, placing an armored glove on his… on my father's shoulder. I was reasonably certain that Dad hadn't had powers when I had left for the camp, but again, it had been twenty-six years for me. Armsmaster looked me in the eye. "Hunter, I would suggest replacing your helmet. Are you willing to come back to Headquarters with us? We will need to take a statement."

I nodded, offering him a grateful smile. It wasn't that I didn't want to tell Dad what had happened, at least as far as I understood it, it was that the story was long, arduous, and it wasn't really something that I wanted to say when there were this many prying ears. Plus, I really preferred not to say much at all when possible.

"You do know where HQ is, right?" asked Miss Militia. Her eyes narrowed a bit as she looked me over. I was sure that it was curiosity in those eyes, not paranoia, but when she glanced to Ratcatcher, shifted my assessment to concern. My father was her teammate, and she cared about him. It was good that he had some friends at work.

Even if he was putting himself in danger the way he did here.

Miss Militia must have taken my silence as confirmation because she continued. "You don't happen to have a vehicle yourself, do you?"

"Not with me," I said as I slid my helmet back over my head, making sure my hair fit in properly. The ship was parked in the boat graveyard, after all.

"I can drive the both of us," Dad said. "I have the… ergh… Ratmobile."

Armsmaster shook his head. "I doubt that she would be comfortable. I'll set up my sidecar and she can ride with me."

Miss Militia nodded, pitching her voice lower as she stepped up to my father. "After she gets cleared, Danny. That's when we'll leave you alone with her. She might have helped, but…"

Dad nodded, but he didn't look happy. He looked at me in my armor. "Ta—Hunter, are you comfortable riding in his sidecar?"

Honestly, I probably would have preferred to just run, utilizing my Speed Boost the way that I had when I got to this area of town, but riding sidecar with Armsmaster wasn't a terrible prospect. Given that he and Miss Militia wanted to "clear me" before allowing me to sit down with my father, it made sense. Additionally, there probably were some security checks to get into the HQ that riding with a Protectorate member would help me bypass.

I gave a nod to my father. I'd ride sidecar with Armsmaster. The cape led me over to his motorcycle, and I watched as he managed to coax a sidecar out of the bike. I'll admit that I hadn't taken a close look at many of the vehicles here in Brockton Bay. Combustion engines were wasteful inefficient things that caused absurd amounts of pollution, after all, but there was something intriguing about the motorcycle. It looked like Armsmaster had taken a standard sleek model and made some personal modifications to it, including the hide-a-car. I was curious about the specifics on how that worked.

Morph Ball technology was not something that this Earth had, after all.

Once he finished the setup, he gestured for me to take the sidecar. I gladly took a seat, crossing my legs as I leaned back in the sidecar.

"Do you have a radio in that helmet of yours?" Armsmaster asked.

I nodded.

"I'm going to attempt to send you a frequency, let's synchronize to that one so that we can communicate while we're in motion," he said, and then, after he adjusted a couple settings on his helmet, I saw where his transmission was. Somehow it was located in the terahertz range, far beyond what I was certain this era was capable of, but it was not beyond what I was capable of.

I adjusted to the frequency on the fly, and I sent a reminder to Adam to do the same. I wanted him able to pay attention to everything that was going on, after all. However, with Armsmaster talking on the same frequency, Adam couldn't just talk to me. Not before we knew his feelings on AI, anyway. Dad and Adam would probably have their talk much later. That was a conversation that I was… nervous about. Adam was based off of someone that I considered a father figure, and Danny Hebert was my birth father.

"Testing, Hunter are you able to read me?"

I gave him a thumbs-up, intentionally stifling my concern. That conversation would happen one way or another, and there was little I could do about it without just leaving the planet. I wasn't ready to do that just yet.

"Assuming you're able to hear me, can you respond to me verbally?" Armsmaster asked as he started up the motorcycle.

"Loud and clear," I said, giving another thumbs up.

"Good," Armsmaster said, and he took to the road, dragging me in tow. "Now, Hunter, there's a few things that I wanted to ask you. Some will have to do with your armor, and some will have to do with your relationship to Ratcatcher. This channel is secure, so you won't have to worry about anyone overhearing that shouldn't."

I smiled, nodding. "Are you recording?"

"Only in the barest sense," Armsmaster said. He must have sensed my confusion at his wording because he continued. "I record every time I go out in action so that I can review the footage to see if there's something that I missed or how I might improve in combat. Any information that can be used against fellow heroes is tagged for deletion, but any evidence for villain activity is forwarded to the appropriate authorities."

Not too dissimilar from what I did when I uploaded my own data to my ship. Admittedly, now I had an AI to help me analyze that data, identify enemy weaknesses, etc. Combined with the occasional map downloads I was able to get, I was often able to figure out better ways I could have handled things or figure out where to go if I were to get lost. While originally, I did all of this myself, Adam sped things up significantly. I sincerely doubted that Armsmaster had his own AI partner to look over the data with.

I gestured for Armsmaster to continue. A benefit to wearing the gravity armor was that I didn't have to worry about gripping the sidecar while we were in motion.

"I take it you're ready for the questions then," he said. After I nodded, he continued. "You said you didn't build that armor. Can you elaborate?"

I could elaborate, but I doubted that without proof, Armsmaster would completely believe me. My proof primarily would be my ship and Adam. If I had them run my DNA, the proof would be there as well, but I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted any agency to get any significant amount of my DNA. Especially after ZDR. I did need some sort of analysis done on it, but trust regarding anything Metroid was something I had a short supply of. Especially after what we found on the BOTTLESHIP.

A briefer elaboration would probably be good. "I was gifted the armor when I was younger by two people who trained me in how to use it. It has helped me survive many situations that I would not have survived without it."

I wondered what Old Bird and Gray Voice would say about this world. Earth Bet may have been where I originally came from, but Zebes is where I grew up. Of course, one still existed, and the other was now a collection of debris floating around a star.

"It's an impressive piece of technology," Armsmaster said. "I would be curious to meet the one who created it."

"You can't," I said curtly. My voice cracked ever so slightly as I closed my eyes. "They're dead. Have been for a few years now."

Armsmaster nodded and made a hard left down another street. He seemed to be heading toward some sort of blocked off authorization only area, but according to the city map that I had, the road led to a facility planted near the docks. The Protectorate HQ was located in an old oil rig out on the bay. As I glanced at the rig itself, information that Adam had flagged came up. Apparently, there were a few people online who called the PHQ "the Rig" because it was on an oil rig, but that certainly wasn't an official name for it at all. It had once been a functioning rig, but the oil dried up, and the Protectorate bought it rather than let the site be dismantled.

Smart of them, really. It was a nice, isolated area for them to have their heroes work. I wasn't sure how I felt that my father was one of them, but he did what he felt was right. As did I.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Armsmaster said. "Assuming you're who you claim to be, you appear to be much older than you should be, given that you were only gone for approximately fourteen months. How old are you, truly?"

"Twenty-six," I said. I supposed if I were to count my time as Taylor Hebert as a part of my age, I'd be older, by at least thirteen years, but I was 26 years old. I didn't think my birthday had come yet, so twenty-six it was.

"So, to you, twelve years passed wherever you ended up?" Armsmaster asked.

I shook my head. "Twenty-six."

"But that would make you... forty or older," he said. "You don't look forty though."

"Twenty-six," I said a bit more forcefully. He was going to get this. I did not want to get into a fight over age

"You don't even look that age," Armsmaster murmured. I figured he was more talking to himself at this point than me. "Of course, that's not the biggest thing. You revealed yourself in public, and there was the chance that you revealed Ratcatcher's identity as well. Luckily, he did retain his mask, so there's some plausible deniability regarding that. Your identity, however, or at least your face and given name are revealed."

I shrugged. If people could figure out how to track me down from my face alone, then they deserved the attention they would get. It would hardly be the first time that I'd had to deal with someone trying to harm me because of who I was. I'd literally just came from that, after all. Gods, Raven Beak… what had driven him so insane? Was it the extinction or near-extinction of the Chozo as a whole? Or had he somehow been that way even on Zebes and I just never noticed? Running into him again… I hadn't expected it. Quiet Robe's explanation of what was going on…losing the Chozo all over again broke my heart, but I'd had no choice.

He'd pretended to be Adam, deceived me, and then he prattled on about destiny. When I knew that it wasn't Adam, when it was him, I did what I needed to. Him pulling the family card was laughable, really, if it weren't so rage-inducing. He'd been different when I was younger on Zebes, but that could be me looking back with rose-colored glasses.

"I'm not worried about my name being revealed," I said. "I don't really use Taylor most of the time, and no last name was revealed either. So, they'd be looking for a woman in a power suit with the name of Taylor, not the name Samus."

"Samus, huh?" Armsmaster asked. "I'll edit that out of the footage. Assuming you are who Ratcatcher thinks you are, where did you go?"

"That's the tricky question," I said. "The simple answer is an alternate Earth, but that's not the full true answer."

I knew alternate Earths were well known in the Protectorate here. However, space travel was simply not possible for a few reasons here. One of which involved the Endbringer in orbit, and another was simply technology level.

"Do you have a name for this Earth?" Armsmaster asked.

"Not like Aleph or Bet," I said. "But the Galactic Federation has control of Earth. I worked for them, on occasion."

"As a Cape?" I could just hear the capitalization in his question. When we came to a stop at a corner near the water, I shook my head. His lips pursed, and he stroked that beard of his. "But you operated in that suit of yours."

I nodded. Well, this specific suit was the upgraded version of my base suit, which had changed after the incident on SR388, and while it was weaker against certain things, I was fairly certain my new suit was better for me.

Armsmaster started back up, and he started to drive the motorcycle onto what appeared to be a hardlight bridge that passed over the bay. I didn't think the technology existed on Earth Bet to make something like this, and I'll admit, if it weren't for my Gravity Suit I'd be a bit nervous. The weather outside was chilly, and the water below was bound to be even colder. A normal human would probably get hypothermia falling into something cold like that. Me? I was definitely not a normal human.

"Please elaborate as to how you operated then," Armsmaster said.

"Shouldn't I be telling this stuff to my father?" I asked.

He finished traversing the bridge, so that we were in some parking area on the decommissioned oil rig, and he turned to me. "I expect that you will, once we confirm you are who you say. You have features that resemble that of Ratcatcher's civilian identity, and you resemble pictures of his daughter that I've seen."

I nodded.

"However, Ratcatcher is a valued teammate of mine," Armsmaster said. "And as his team leader, his wellbeing is under my purview. If you are not his daughter, that's not something that we can arrest you for, given that as far as I know, you haven't done anything directly illegal. However, if you think that I will allow you to harm him, you would be mistaken."

I smiled under my helmet. It seemed that my father had managed to get in with a good job. A direct supervisor that cared this much about his subordinate was something special. I'd had that, once, when I was in a similar position.

"Perhaps I might be able to help alleviate some concerns," Adam said over the radio.

"What? Who is this?" Armsmaster asked.

"I am Adam, an AI that works with Samus Aran," Adam said. "I believe you have been calling her Hunter, and you believe that it is possible that she is the daughter of your teammate, Ratcatcher."

"An AI?" Armsmaster looked at my visor, and I nodded.

"Yes, based upon her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich," Adam said. "I advise her during her missions, but she is the one in charge. She acts as a freelance bounty hunter that primarily serves the interests of the Galactic Federation."

"I assume you have proof," Armsmaster said. I understood that sentiment. He didn't want to operate based upon either mine or Adam's say-so alone. I couldn't blame him.

"Are you able to receive data?" Adam asked.

"Yes," Armsmaster said.

"I will convert to a format that you should not have difficulty opening," Adam said. "Lady, are you willing to authorize some brief combat data being released from ZDR? Along with some Federation records?"

He swapped to a private channel, displaying the text upon my visor. "Nothing about your biological situation will be shared without your consent. My orders and authorization come specifically from you here. Any objections, Lady?"

"The combat data and records should be fine," I said.

"We may want to do a DNA comparison as well," Armsmaster said.

"Due to events beyond Samus's control, her DNA has been altered," Adam said. "She has had to undergo some genetic therapies as treatments for her to live."

Armsmaster tapped his chin before dismounting completely from the motorcycle. I followed him out. He smiled at me. "Please send the data, Adam."

"Sending now," Adam said. And then seconds later, he said… "It should be uploaded, Armsmaster."

He nodded. "Please follow me, Hunter."

Armsmaster led me into the Protectorate HQ proper. We initially passed through a motor pool, where Armsmaster placed the keys to his bike in a specific locker, and then he led me past a bullpen where a number of people were working at desks. They all seemed to be wearing business casual with the occasional shirt on them that said "PRT". Armsmaster led me down a hall to a small conference room that had comfortable-looking chairs, including some taller ones with reinforced padding.

"This is where we'll take your statement, Hunter," Armsmaster said. "These are the sturdiest chairs we have here in the building, so they should support you in your armor while also giving you room for your legs. I do have one last question though."

I nodded.

"How much height does the armor add to you?"

"Samus's armor adds approximately one foot to her height," Adam said. "When not in her armor, she is approximately six feet, three inches tall."

"Taller than Ratcatcher," Armsmaster said.

I shrugged. I had still been shorter than any of my Chozo parents. I was taller than many humans, but that hardly was anything new. I took a seat in one of the chairs, keeping my arm cannon level with the ground. I didn't want to look threatening in here.

Armsmaster nodded, and he stepped out of the room, leaving me alone. Well, alone other than Adam.

"He seems like a dedicated man," Adam said on a private channel. "He would be interesting to work alongside. The technology he incorporated into his halberd and his motorcycle are curious though."

I nodded. Combined with the technology that went into making the hardlight bridge, it was far more advanced than should have been possible at this time period. When the Earth of the Galactic Federation had been at this year, technology was not so nearly advanced, and I doubted that the Chozo had influenced any of the tech I'd seen so far here. However, from what I remembered about tinkers, their technology could end up far more advanced than what was capable here, but it was volatile. Reproducing the tech was next to impossible, and it required maintenance from the tinker.

"How are you, Lady?" Adam asked. "Are you indeed this Taylor Hebert that the Barnes girl seemed to think you were?"

"I… was," I said, my words coming out as a whisper. "I've been Samus Aran for so long, though. And now…"

Now, I wasn't even sure how much of me was still human. During my time on ZDR, the Metroid genetics had come to the forefront, and I… changed. I had changed back, thanks to absorbing the X parasite that had consumed Quiet Robe, but I still felt different. I could absorb all the energy that this rig had if I wanted.

In reality, going nonlethal on those capes had been a test for myself more than anything else. If I had gone in full power, I was reasonably certain that none of them would have survived. I needed to be able to hold back. There were still some curiosities about what had happened during it, though. I shouldn't have taken as much damage from the explosion and Cricket's actions as I did, and that Oni Lee had managed to stab through the armor… I wondered if my armor's material had changed some, given my changes. Given that the armor literally healed itself as I pulled the blade out… was it more biological than it had been before? Was my armor even more a part of me now that my Metroid genetics had surfaced? What did that make me?

"You are still who you were," Adam said. "No matter the changes you go through, as long as you hold true to your core values, you will remain. If you wish to get to know your father again, Lady, I will attempt to help you with that. Any objections, Lady?"

I smiled, shaking my head. It was strange receiving comfort from an AI, but Adam was more than just a computer. He was still my friend.

The door opened again, and in walked… my father, dressed in sweatpants and a dark blue T-Shirt with PRT written in white block letters across his breast. He wore a pair of glasses, and his hair was a little messed up. On one of his shoulders sat a small rat that looked a bit more on the adorable side than the ones he had been using against Hookwolf.

Behind him, Miss Militia and Armsmaster walked in. All three had some serious looks on their faces, but I got the feeling that Dad was more nervous than stoic.

"Hunter…" Armsmaster began. "First off, let me start this off by thanking you again for your assistance against the Empire and ABB. If it weren't for you, we likely would not have been able to capture Hookwolf."

"I'm not sure I would have been able to get the stunner on his core once he was in full changer mode," Dad said.

"Secondly, I would like to say that if you would like to remove your helmet now, you can," Armsmaster said.

I nodded, and I took the helmet off, placing it on the conference table, facing them so that Adam could still see.

Dad smiled, looking me over. "You've grown up… a lot."

I nodded.

"Does this mean you've accepted me?" I asked, carefully picking my words, never looking away from my father.

"In my authority as the leader of the Protectorate ENE," Armsmaster said. "I am reasonably confident that you are not attempting to harm my subordinate. On behalf of our organization, I would like to be among the first to officially welcome you."

"You're home, Taylor," Dad said, and I could see tears starting to form in his eyes. "You're finally home…"

The pain being relieved by those words was palpable. I just…

I hoped that I wouldn't have to cause it again.

 

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.5

Giving a statement after any sort of combat incident was hardly anything new to me. I'd given plenty of debriefs during my time with the Federation Police and even some after becoming a Bounty Hunter. Of course, most of those were written reports which allowed me to say little at all. It was a new experience having my father be there as my statement was being taken, but, more or less, the mechanics were the same. I went over what led me to the area to begin with, mentioning that I had met with Emma Barnes, and her friends Sophia and Madison, the former of which mentioned that the fight was going on. I did not mention the altercation between Sophia and me since it wasn't relevant to the fight in question.

"What made you suspect that Ratcatcher was me?" Dad asked.

"Adam," I said. "Emma said you'd gotten a new job, and with Adam looking into the local Protectorate, we determined that, based upon timing and body shape, you were likely… you."

"Adam is the AI that Armsmaster spoke to?" Miss Militia asked.

I nodded, gesturing to my helmet on the table. "He's linked in at the moment, and my helmet does have speakers that he can use."

Dad nodded. It was a little strange, but the rat on his shoulder nodded with him. It must have been a part of how his power worked, given the control he'd demonstrated over the animals in the fight.

"I can provide combat footage from Samus's perspective," Adam said. "Assuming that she is all right with sharing the data. Would that be acceptable, Lady?"

"Transfer the footage," I said. "No objections, Adam."

"Even with the footage, and the explanation, for our reports, I'd like to get a full accounting of what you did," Miss Militia said.

I nodded, and between Adam and I, we gave a recounting of the fight, emphasizing that I kept to as nonlethal tactics as I could. While the Grapple Beam could be used in a lethal manner, the way that I had used it on Cricket was purely nonlethal, and then, combined with my use of the Stun Beam and lowered voltage on the Screw Attack, every weapon I'd used in the fight was carefully measured out to be something nonlethal. I only increased output on Hookwolf because he seemed to be resisting my nonlethal tactics. The Ice Missiles were meant to be a tactic to slow him down. They'd not performed quite as well as I'd expected, but it was possible that my desires to go nonlethal affected the explosive output of my missiles as well.

Miss Militia looked at my arm cannon after I'd finished my initial explanation. "That weapon there, is it tinkertech?"

I tilted my head slightly and looked down at the arm cannon of my Power Suit. It was Chozo technology, but that didn't mean that it was tinker technology. "Not… exactly. My Power Suit was not built by a tinker, and I am capable of maintaining it."

Miss Militia nodded, placing a knife on the table for a second and shifting her grip upon it. Then, in a flash of green, the knife was replaced by an exact duplicate of my arm cannon, only equipped on her arm. However, I could tell right away that the only capabilities of the version of the arm cannon she wore were the Stun Beam that I currently had equipped on my own. I knew that her power allowed her to copy weaponry, but I hadn't thought that it would allow her to just copy my weaponry. I was more than a little disturbed to see the arm cannon on her own arm, and I was nervous that if she could copy the Stun Beam, could she copy some of the stronger beams I had access to? Did she have access to the energies to use them? She aimed the arm cannon away from each of us, and then in the same flash of green, the cannon turned back into a knife. "You weren't lying."

I frowned, staring at Miss Militia for a second. Yes, I was grateful that she didn't try to shoot the cannon in the room with us here, but… just what were these powers that parahumans had? Armsmaster's tech was… beyond what should have been possible with what they had available here, Miss Militia could apparently copy my arm cannon, and my father controlled rats with his mind. It said something that my father's power was the one that fazed me the least among the Protectorate members here. I'd encountered people who could control small animals before, and while I'd faced enemies with better technology than I had available to me, their advancement at least made sense based upon the environment they were in or those they were able to steal it from.

Heck, the villainous capes made more sense to me than what I'd seen displayed by the Protectorate. They'd been just like some Space Pirate experiments, honestly.

"No."

"Where did you get your suit, then?" Armsmaster asked. "I know that you said it was a gift."

"It's a long story," I said. "But the short of it was that it was given to me to help me survive on another planet, and I trained in it."

"Wait, Taylor… another planet?" Dad asked. "And… why does your AI call you Samus?"

The confusion on my father's face made me feel sorry for what I was about to do. However, I did owe him this, at least. If he wanted to continue associating with me after the fact, I'd be happy to continue to do so, for as long as I was on Earth Bet. However, I really wasn't sure how long that would be. In this universe, it was possible that the Chozo were still alive, that Gray Voice and Old Bird were alive. Though, admittedly, Old Bird likely wasn't all that old yet. Assuming the time differential between the Earths applied, there may have still been a thriving Chozo civilization nearby. My name wouldn't mean much to them, though, but my genetics would. The fact that I spoke their language would.

"The name that I have had for the past twenty-six years has been Samus Aran, not Taylor Hebert," I said. "Named so by the couple who adopted me on K-2L, a Federation mining colony. Whatever took me away from here made me younger, Dad, and I grew up again."

"So, you grew up on another planet, this… K-2L… and you were given your suit?" Dad asked.

I waggled my hand.

"Lady's story is a long one," Adam said. "And biological father or not, until she decides to share it, it will remain classified."

Dad cocked an eyebrow, glancing at my helmet. "Protective of you, isn't it?"

"He," I said. "Adam is a he."

"Both your daughter and Adam have made clear that he is the mind upload of her former commanding officer," Armsmaster said. "According to the records that Adam sent me, Samus Aran, Taylor here, operated as a bounty hunter on behalf of the Galactic Federation government after leaving direct employ of their law enforcement. She operated as an equivalent of an independent cape after leaving the Protectorate."

Dad frowned. "That's… not something I wanted for you."

I shrugged and sighed, looking down at the helmet.

"Lady has done what she has felt was right on a number of occasions," said Adam. "And she has consistently proven that she has good judgement. Is she free to go?"

"Just a couple more questions, along with some possible paperwork," Miss Militia said. "What are your plans in Brockton Bay, Taylor… Samus… whichever you wish to be called…?"

"Refuel my ship, figure out why I'm here," I said. Then I looked at Dad. "Maybe get to know my father again, if he'll have me."

"Of course, I will," Dad said.

Miss Militia's eyes narrowed, glancing between him and me. I got the feeling that she was concerned, but she didn't want to outright voice it. I knew that feeling well enough. "Refuel your ship? How are you planning on doing that?"

I shrugged. I didn't want to try and explain the specific mechanics of how my ship worked to someone who didn't have the training on how to operate a Federation Gunship or do maintenance on one.

"We may be able to obtain fuel by skimming some of the local gas giants and running the atmosphere through a converter," Adam said. "Saturn and Uranus are especially viable sources and would not tax the ship's systems as much as Jupiter."

Dad just looked at me, then my helmet. Then he looked back at me again. "I'm not sure how you're going to be able to leave this planet, given the Simurgh, even assuming you do have a spaceship. Sphere tried, and now…"

Armsmaster cleared his throat. "I think we have enough for today. Hunter, it was a pleasure meeting you. If you'd like to leave with your father, you're welcome to do so, but… I would suggest meeting him somewhere outside of HQ so that you can meet up in civilian clothing rather than in costume."

"Oh, that's not an issue," I said, and I dismissed my armor completely, leaving me in the clothes I was wearing earlier over my Zero Suit. I lightly tapped the helmet on the table, and it, like the rest of my armor pieces, dissipated into motes of light, returning to the subspace pocket that my armor resided in when I wasn't using it. Immediately, I pulled the jacket tighter around me. It was chilly in the interview room, and I did not like dealing with the cold. I stood up so that I could stretch my legs.

Dad smiled, looking me over. "You look so much like your mother…"

I returned his smile and brushed some of my hair back. Lightly I started to pull my hair back into a ponytail, only to be reminded that my last hair tie had snapped on ZDR during the fight with Raven Beak. It wasn't entirely his fault, but I was willing to blame him anyway because so much of what had happened on that planet was his fault.

"Here," Miss Militia said, pulling a hair tie from a pouch on her vest. She offered it to me, and for the briefest of seconds, I touched her bare skin with my own. Her hands had familiar callouses on them, and I felt something beyond her skin, perhaps in her aura or something. Was that her power I felt? That my body wanted to…

I took the hair tie gratefully, and I tied my hair back. I didn't want it falling in my face as I traveled with my father.

"Come on," Dad said. "Tay—Samu—Tay—what should I call you?"

I placed my right hand on his shoulder, forcing down the Metroid urges. "Whatever you're comfortable with. I will attempt to answer to Taylor if that's what you want."

Dad smiled at me. "Let's get back to shore then." He looked over to Armsmaster and Miss Militia. "You two will handle things with…"

"I'll smooth things over with the Director, yes," Armsmaster said. "She may want to meet with Hunter, or she may want a representative to meet with her. However, since today's one of her dialysis days, I felt it was prudent to not mention Hunter quite yet."

Dad snorted. "She's going to kill you. Then Militia. Then me." He looked back to me. "Worth it, though."

"Who will?" I asked.

"I'll explain in the car," Dad said. "See you two. Maybe next time you can introduce yourselves properly to her."

Armsmaster nodded. "Maybe." He met my eyes. "Miss Aran. Remember what we spoke about."

"No objections," I said in response, and with that, I followed Dad out of the interview room. He led me through a different route out of the bullpen, through a door marked "Employee Parking." The whole while, we didn't really speak to each other. I wasn't entirely sure whether this was a comfortable silence or an awkward one, but as we approached a black mid-sized combustion-based car, it became clearer.

"So… uh. This is my actual car," Dad said. "It's a bit bigger than the one you might remember."

I nodded. I supposed if I compared relative sizes, this one was smaller, but I was much taller than I had been when I had last been in the car my father had had. I gestured toward the passenger seat, and he used some sort of key fob to unlock the door. I got in, and immediately, I felt around to move the seat back. The car's interior wasn't in the worst shape, but there were some fast food wrappers and sodas on the floor in the passenger seat, and I noted that some of the napkins were torn up on the floor as well.

"Sorry about the mess, but… well, sometimes I transport some of my rats with me," Dad said. "It makes things easier when I can do that, and it's not like I usually have guests in my car."

I nodded in understanding. If he wanted, I'd be willing to help with cleaning things up in here. Or wherever he wanted or needed the cleanup. I would have offered then and there, but he started the car up and after verifying that I was strapped in, he started to drive.

"Twenty-six years, huh?" Dad asked as he turned a corner in the garage. He pushed a button on a fob, and a garage door opened. When I nodded, he let out a sigh. "I'm glad to hear that you didn't completely forget about me in that time. It's been about a year and a half since I dropped you off at that camp."

I shrugged. I didn't want to explain to him that my adoptive parents dismissed some of my dreams, that Gray Voice and Old Bird mentioned something about reincarnation, but they didn't believe necessarily that my dreams had been real. I'd long since stopped mentioning those dreams when I was under Adam's command, and instead, I just worked as a protector. I did my duty, and I would continue to do so. Even here, I would.

"So, where did you park your spaceship?" Dad asked. I suppose he still wasn't fully convinced that it existed.

"Boat Graveyard," I said. "It had the best places to hide the Gunship in the area. I can show you if you want."

"Maybe later," Dad said as we started driving through a tunnel. "It's been a long day. And… you said that you met with Emma, right?"

I nodded. "She recognized me."

Dad lightly tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "Alan will probably call, asking about things if he thinks it's valid. Are you willing to meet him?"

I shrugged. I honestly didn't remember a whole lot about Emma's father other than the name and the word 'lawyer.' In the past, my dealings with people in that profession hadn't always been stellar, but there was a chance that this time would be different. This time there really wasn't anything for him to threaten a lawsuit over. Which was good enough for me.

"I'll see if I can put it off for a bit," Dad said. He then looked me over with a frown. "Do you have more clothing?"

"On my ship, yes," I said. "Nothing from Earth Bet though."

"Well, as long as you have something," Dad said. "I'm pretty sure nothing in storage will fit you From what I saw of Armsmaster's notes, you're much taller than me or you were."

I nodded. "So, why rats?" I asked as we came out of the tunnel on the mainland. "The costume, the control…"

Dad shrugged. "Controlling rats is the power I got from… you don't really want to hear about that."

I tilted my head.

"Maybe ask your AI friend to look up how people get powers," Dad said. "I'll be willing to talk more about it when we get to my apartment."

"Apartment?" I asked, frowning.

"Daniel Hebert sold a house approximately seven months ago, according to public record," Adam said in my ear.

"You sold our house?" I asked. That house was one of the places I remembered most from before I was adopted by the Arans. It was the place I grew up before I had to grow up again. There were things I'd miss about that house, once I remembered even more about it.

Dad sighed. "Yes. I had to."

"What do you mean?" I asked. I narrowed my eyes at my father. That defeatist tone in his voice had me a little worried. "What could make you have to sell it?"

"Memories," Dad said. "I couldn't take the memories. Your mother… you… Every day being in that house was a reminder of what I'd…"

I placed my left hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

"Losing you, that loss of control… Losing your mother…" Dad shook his head, choking up some. I felt some of it myself. Both of my mothers died in situations they probably wouldn't have been in if not for me. Virginia Aran had saved me from my own folly. Annette Hebert had… I'd called her. I was responsible, in some way or shape.

"I'm here now," I said softly. It wouldn't undo anything he'd gone through. I didn't know exactly how bad he'd had it, being without me after losing Mom. I'd had my own way of dealing with grief… that mostly involved explosions and lots of environmental destruction, but it worked well enough. It might not have been an appropriate method of relieving stress here on Earth Bet, however. Instead, I'd have to figure something out with my father.

We drove up to an apartment building located in one of the more affluent areas of the city. I think the area was called "The Towers," and it was where one of those high-class private schools was. Of course, with me having long since finished my schooling, I didn't have to worry about that.

"Turns out the Protectorate pays fairly well," Dad said as we pulled into his building's parking garage. "Especially when you know how to negotiate a contract."

I smiled, nodding. "I think I might still prefer freelancing."

"I have been evaluating the bounties that are set just on those that are within this city, Lady," Adam said. "Most have the "alive" clause set, and it looks like Hookwolf had a bounty associated with him. I will be negotiating the release of that bounty on your behalf. Any objections, Lady?"

"None," I said. "No objections."

"Hmm?" Dad asked, looking at me.

I tapped the comm bead in my ear. "Adam mentioned that there was a bounty on Hookwolf. He'll arrange for the delivery to an account for me."

"You trust it to do that much?" Dad asked. "I thought you said that it was an Artificial Intelligence."

"He is," I said. "And he's long since proven to be my friend, even in violation of what those in charge of him would have wanted."

"Sorry," Dad said, and he turned to me in the car. "It's just a little strange to me, is all. The whole situation, I mean. You're older, and you lived a whole life in that other world. You say you have a spaceship."

"Seriously, I can show it to you," I said.

Dad shook his head. "I believe you. Your costume is almost proof enough. Especially since you say you aren't a tinker. That you didn't build it."

I smiled.

"Let's get inside," Dad said. "I can show you around."

Dad led me out of the garage and into a fancy lobby. The building had shined mirrors lining the walls of the lobby, nice sconces with lights in them, and a blue and white tile pattern on the floor. The floor was so clean that I might even be comfortable eating off of it. We made it to a nice shiny brass elevator, one clearly run by a pulley system rather than a hover lift.

Ah. Right. Technological differences. Earth Bet didn't have the advanced technology of the Federation, despite the technology provided by various tinkers. Tinkertech required specialty maintenance, so they went with traditional elevator technology like those on some of the older buildings found in some cities on Federation Earth. While I hadn't spent too much time there, it always was interesting to visit.

We stepped onto the elevator when the doors opened, and Dad pushed the button for the top floor. Somehow, my father had managed to get a penthouse apartment. The doors started to close, but we were interrupted by the sharp yell of a young man.

"Hey, hold the door!"

I held out my hand so the door wouldn't shut completely, and a teenage boy around Emma's age, give or take a year, puffed in and out as he stepped into the elevator. He wore a thick winter coat and a poof hat that he removed once he was inside, revealing a shock of blond hair. He smiled at Dad and me.

"Thanks," he said. "Oh, you're home early today, Mister Hebert."

"Some family showed up, Theo," Dad said, gesturing to me. "My…" He looked at me for a second.

I knew he wanted to call me his daughter, but if this Theo kid knew how old I was supposed to be, questions would be asked, and things would be revealed. Perhaps he might even have his own identity revealed in the process. I didn't want that for him.

"Niece," I said, smiling at Dad. I didn't really want to talk too much, but in for a penny, in for a pound. "Uncle Danny, you know that…" I leaned toward Theo, tipping slightly toward him. "He's like a second dad for me. So sometimes he might call me his daughter. I'm Samus."

"Samus?" Theo laughed. "That's a strange name."

"You can call me Sammie, if you want," I said. It was hardly the first time that I'd been called that. "I'm visiting for a bit, and Uncle Danny's letting me stay with him for a little while."

"Ah… thanks, Sammie," Theo said. "I'm here visiting my step-mom and little sister."

"How are Kayden and Aster?" Dad asked. "Is Aster sleeping through the night?"

"They're good, and Aster is now…" Theo nodded. "I'm going to be watching her tonight while Kayden goes to work."

Dad nodded. "If you need anything, feel free to knock on my door, Theo. Just let me know."

"I will, Mister Hebert," Theo said. "If I'm not taking too much time away from your time with Sammie."

"I like kids," I said. Though I wasn't sure that I should hold one as I was now. The last baby I held… well, it wasn't human. It was cute, though. Its sacrifice… I still felt a bit guilty.

The elevator door closed and started its trek upward. Apparently, Theo's destination was on the same floor Dad lived on. The three of us stood in silence until we got to the top floor, and then when we exited the elevator, somehow we ended up walking the same direction.

Theo knocked on a door about halfway down the hall, and the door opened, revealing a somewhat mousy looking brown-haired woman. She looked a little older than me, and in one hand, she held an adorable little baby. She waved at Dad as we passed, letting Theo into the apartment. Dad offered her and the kid a smile, but he continued walking.

"Theo's a good kid," Dad said. "Pity about his father and stepmother."

"Hmm?" I cocked an eyebrow.

"Max Anders owns Medhall, and he's kind of one of those smarmy kinds of businessmen," Dad said. "Always rubbed me the wrong way even before I started my new job. He didn't really like to hire the Dockworkers for anything if he could avoid it. His second wife, Kayden… the woman back there… I'm reasonably certain she's at least a little racist."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"I've had some coworkers over," Dad said. "You met them today. Kayden can't close the door fast enough when they come over."

As Dad opened the door to his apartment, I tapped my chin. "Empire?"

"Maybe," Dad said. "Or at least one of the supporters. There's too many of those in this city for my liking. For anybody's liking, really."

We stepped inside, and the light switched on as a small tower of rats flipped a light switch. The rats then made their way back to individual cages that Dad had on the shelves he had set up in the visible living room of the apartment. Oddly, the room didn't smell that bad. There was a slight musky scent, but it was no worse than the smell my butterfly friends had given off when I was a kid. Before Mother Brain decided to be the most horrible being in the world, anyway.

Dad gestured to a couch that was clean enough, and I took a seat.

"Want anything to drink?" he asked. "I've got water… beer… and I think I have a couple sodas."

"What kind of beer?"

Dad went into the kitchen, separated from the living room only by a breakfast bar, and he opened up his refrigerator. He looked inside and I could almost feel his frown. "Looks like it's some sort of craft beer that Shawn brought the last time he came over. Oh, and there's a Japanese beer in here that Robin brought."

"Coworkers?" I asked.

"Uh…" Dad shrugged. "I didn't say those names."

I snorted. "I'll take the craft beer." Normally, I didn't drink that often, but a beer was probably light enough on alcohol content that it wouldn't affect me too much. Plus, it would make it easier to talk with my father.

He brought over two beers, cracked them open, and gave me one of them. "The kid wasn't kidding. Samus is an unusual name."

"Rodney and Virginia Aran were unusual parents," I said, and I lightly touched my hair, pulling some of the blonde highlights into my view. "But good ones."

"What happened to them? Dad asked.

I sipped my beer. "Killed by a particularly vicious Space Pirate. He's long gone now, but…"

"It doesn't bring them back," Dad said, and he sipped his own beer. "I wasn't sure I was ever going to get you back, Taylor. I'd almost been resigned to the fact that I wouldn't."

"I'm here now," I repeated. Though how long I would be here… would depend. Maybe when I left, when I found a way back to the Earth that I came from, I'd be able to set something up so that Dad could come with me when I left. Assuming that I would leave. Assuming I could leave.

"You are," Dad said.

"I'm afraid to ask the question," I said. "But… how did the whole Protectorate thing happen? And why that costume?"

Dad sipped his beer. "Well, as for the costume, I wanted to spit in the face of the whole PR thing. I'm not going to go to PR events and be their dancing rat monkey for people's amusement. I'm a hero to do a job, and that job is to stop villains and save people. I wanted to pick the hardest thing for them to do merchandise of."

"There appears to be at least two hundred different kinds of Ratcatcher merchandise on a cursory search," Adam said on my comm, and I cocked an eyebrow.

Dad snorted. "It's not something that worked out that well. They even assigned me a specific car, and I think people on the internet ship me with Mouse Protector. She's a nice enough woman, but she's… much too committed to her gimmick."

"Okay…" I gestured for him to go on.

"Protectorate was simple. I went in when I knew I had powers, and I met with their people. We arranged a contract, and well, here we are."

"How did you develop your powers?" I asked.

Dad downed the rest of his beer, placing it on the coffee table. Two rats climbed up the table's legs, grabbed the empty bottle off the table and dragged it to the kitchen, putting it in some sort of bin. He met my eyes for a second. "You don't know about trigger events, do you?"

"I… don't think that my definition would match yours," I said.

"They're how powers develop," Dad said. "The worst day of a person's life. You'd think that would have been when I lost your mother."

Dad shook his head.

"It wasn't even the day I found out you were missing," he said. "You'd disappeared from your camp one night, and they didn't know where you were. It was the day that I felt hopeless. Trapped in an endless cycle of searching that I'd never break out of. I'd never find you, but I'd never be able to stop looking."

Dad closed his eyes and a tear dripped down. "And then I did. I got powers, and I stopped looking for you, Taylor. I'm sorry…"

I placed my beer down on the table, and I knelt near my father, reaching out to clasp his hands into my own. "Dad. You wouldn't have found me, and like I said before, I'm here now."

I was here for him, as long as I needed to be. Any objections, Adam?

 

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.S (Sophia)

There was a difference between playing nice for the Wards and deciding to guard her friends in case trouble came their way, but sometimes the two desires ended up overlapping. The brawl between Protectorate members and the two major gangs of the city was just over half a mile north of their location, and there was every chance that the capes not directly involved in the brawl could make their way further south toward the Boardwalk. Yes, her tranquilizing crossbow bolts would be useful, but they would be equally useful keeping Emma and Madison safe as the three of them took to the Boardwalk to go shopping, as they'd originally planned.

The problem primarily was Madison's focus on Hunter and the reveal that she'd done in front of all four of them. Of course, the woman, Millie, likely already suspected something of the like from the cape's reaction times out of costume as she had bid them farewell, letting them go on their way. Emma knew the right moves when a cape was revealed, especially the way Hunter had been, but Madison… she did not.

"Mads, you really shouldn't talk about that," Emma said as they made their way down the boardwalk, heading toward one of those shops that Emma liked, and Sophia barely tolerated. It wasn't that Sophia disliked fashion, but there was such a thing as too much of it sometimes. There were much more important things to worry about than fashion, namely the villains that infested the city and the criminal scum that assisted them. "There are rules regarding cape identities. You're really not supposed to do any sort of revealing of who they are."

"But she revealed it herself," Madison asked as they got ever closer to the fashion boutique. "Doesn't that mean that Hunter's identity is fair game? What rules, anyway?"

"Unwritten ones," Emma said. "Haven't you ever heard about the reason to keep those identities separate?"

"Hunter's your friend," Madison said quietly with a frown. "So, if her identity gets out to the general public—"

"You could be putting Ems in danger, Mads," Sophia said. "You could put all of us in danger if that identity gets out."

"Not will, though," Madison said. "How often do people get to see what we did? She's the genuine article! I hadn't heard of her before today, but she was so cool."

Sophia looked around. Nobody was watching them or listening in as they walked. As animated as the three of them had been, they looked like a more or less normal trio of teenage girls. Dealing with Mads was easy enough normally, but redirecting the conversation from the obvious woman-shaped elephant in the room was not going to be easy in the least. Add that she knew Emma had to be chomping at the bit to talk more about her childhood friend, even though Taylor wasn't there, and Sophia had the recipe for a potential headache.

It helped that her friends were survivors though. Emma with what had happened in the alley prior to her rescue, and Madison with how she handled and adapted to the school environment of Winslow. She'd stepped up and joined the two of them as they took over every single social engagement that needed to be done. People were put in their appropriate places, and Madison made sure that hers was at Emma and Sophia's side. Sophia could respect that.

After Emma proved that she was a survivor, however, her obsessive side came out to play. It might not have been as much of an issue had Taylor been there. From what little she'd learned of Taylor Hebert, the girl might have been some kind of survivor, but there was a good chance that she'd just be some sort of chatterbox.

Kind of the opposite of the Taylor Hebert that they'd met, better known as Samus Aran. Samus only spoke when she had something important to say. There was no inane chatter there, no idle prattle, just calm, calculated speech. Her movements were similar. Near as she could tell, Samus wasted no energy in how she moved. It was like watching a predator sitting there at the table with them, albeit one that was content to just look. Someone like that knowing who Emma was… messed with her.

Samus wasn't like the previous girls that Emma had mistaken for Taylor. The first hadn't even pretended to know who she was, and kind of waved off what she perceived as the crazy. Sophia had been tempted to beat that girl black and blue for the insult, but she was more focused on consoling her friend at the time. The loss of her former best friend had been a devastating blow to an already fragile mental state. Emma had gone through Hell because of this, but Sophia was confident that she'd come out stronger in the end, even if she didn't trigger.

But then there had been the second girl. And the third. And the fourth. Each time, it hadn't been Taylor. Each time, Sophia had to pick up the pieces with her friend, and each time, Emma seemed just a little more desperate. There were plenty of times where Sophia had considered just cutting her off, but Emma had been so helpful, a real friend. She couldn't bring herself to drop Emma as a friend, not when she was like that.

Sophia had seen Emma's strength and her weakness, and she needed to help bring the former out of her. Survivors worked better when they survived together. When they could hunt down those who were threats to survival together and help each other out.

So, she'd paid some attention when Ratcatcher worked with her. Emma knew the guy, and he had a pretty weird as hell power that was strangely effective. Sue her.

"Sophia, you paying attention?" Madison asked. "We can talk about Hunter, right? What do you think her powers are? She looks like a tinker."

"If she made that suit, sure," Sophia said. "Armsmaster has power armor too, and so do a couple of the Wards."

"I liked the colors," Emma said. "Purple and green just work well together, and you saw how fast she moved…"

Sophia nodded. Some of that might be a power that she had out of the armor, but she wasn't going to talk about the brief… altercation that she'd had with Samus outside of Fugly's. Samus's speed outside the armor was faster than she'd thought any human could move. And yes, she'd call the woman Samus, even if she was Taylor Hebert.

"You think she's really up helping out the Protectorate?" Madison asked.

"Don't see why not," Sophia said. "If she got there in time, she could. She doesn't have any of the gang colors on her either, so she probably won't get mistaken as a villain."

"Especially if she knows who to target," Emma said. She smiled widely. "I bet she's pretty strong. We saw how fast she could get."

Strong, yes. Based on what little she saw, she'd probably class Hunter as a brute/mover/tinker hybrid. If that cannon was anything to go by, blaster probably could get added to the mix. This was assuming that Sophia was getting the classifications right. She'd only been a Ward for about seven months now, after all.

"I don't know," Sophia said, and she glanced at her phone. While she was technically off-duty right now, she needed to pay attention to what was going on. If the fight got closer to the Boardwalk, she'd have to direct both Emma and Madison to somewhere safe. She had a crossbow and some tranquilizing bolts in her bag, and she even had her spare costume with her. However, unless they were in danger or she was given specific orders to mobilize, the costume would stay off and crossbow in her bag.

It looked like the fighting was staying confined to the Docks, and the Console text updates were reporting about a new purple-armored cape joining the fray, noting her to be friendly. Well, Console used the singular they, but Sophia knew Samus was a woman. Ultimately, Sophia was curious to see the combat footage to see what exactly Hunter could do, but that would have to wait.

Instead, Emma led the way into one of the many Boardwalk boutiques. She walked in like she owned the place, or at the very least, she would own the place eventually. She'd done some modeling for the store in question, and as such, she had a perpetual discount that she took advantage of at every possible opportunity. Combined with the platinum card her father gave her with an allotted authorization each week, the three of them were able to get some good shopping in.

Emma made her way over to a section reserved for taller than average women, and a salesperson quickly stepped up to her.

"Oh, pardon me miss, I believe your size is over in that direction," said the dark-haired person that, even by their voice, Sophia couldn't make out a gender. They were too androgynous a white person. Either they were a somewhat masculine woman or they were a somewhat feminine man, but it was also possible that they were something in between or both at once. Sophia didn't really get that sort of shit, but with Legend being the walking example of tasting the rainbow, it was easy enough to accept.

"Sorry, I'm not here only for me today," Emma said. "My friend Taylor's back in town, and I want to surprise her with something nice for her to wear."

"Do you know her measurements?"

Emma shook her head. "They've changed a bit since she left town. She's taller than before, but I know her old ones."

"She's a bit over six feet tall," Sophia said. "How much, I couldn't tell you but at least a couple inches."

The salesperson nodded, and when Emma gave Taylor's old measurements, Sophia suggested adding to them in some ways and adjusting the fits, but without Samus there, there was the strong chance that they wouldn't be able to guess her exact size.

"Maybe if we get a little larger, she can take it back for adjustment if it doesn't fit right," Madison said. "What do you want to get her though, Ems?"

"Something Taylor rarely wore," Emma said. "I'm getting her a nice dress. She's got some long legs now, and other stuff, but I don't know if she has any nice dresses."

Sophia shrugged. "She'll probably like it regardless. You've got a good eye for dresses, Ems."

Emma smiled. "I know." She started thumbing through the rack, clearly looking for something that'd work well on a woman as tall as Samus was.

Meanwhile, Sophia glanced down at the console updates. Hookwolf, Cricket, and Stormtiger captured, Alabaster and Oni Lee escaped. Well, escaped might be the technically wrong term, given they were never put into custody in the first place. Instead, they simply got away. Frankly, given that setup of capes, Sophia wasn't entirely sure that she would have wanted to get involved in that fight. There wasn't much she could do against Alabaster or Oni Lee due to their powers, but she might have been able to put Cricket down.

Good to see that the combination of the Protectorate and Hunter were capable of pulling it off themselves. The lack of capture of Oni Lee and Alabaster was disappointing, but it occurred to Sophia that it was possible that Samus just didn't know who to prioritize in a fight like that. Millie had said that she seemed a little confused about the swastika on the gangbanger that she'd apparently thrown into a dumpster. She'd just stopped the guy from… doing something with Millie.

Sophia snickered a little at the thought of a Nazi dumpster. Specifically, a dumpster in which Nazis were to be thrown, rather than a dumpster somehow raising its handles in a freaky fasci—facs—what was that word? Facsimile. That was the word. Some sort of dumpster raising its handle in a freaky facsimile of the Nazi salute. While that was a… strange mental image to think about, Sophia decided to focus on the now.

"Sophia, what do you think?" Emma asked, holding up a long blue dress that looked like it was of a mermaid cut.

"Too tight on the skirt," Sophia said. "Go wider at the hips and leave her some room to flare out. Remember that she typically wears some pants and longer sleeves. So… maybe something warmer but still allows freedom of movement?"

"Good idea, Sophia," Madison said. "We don't want to have her freeze her butt off in the brand new clothes."

Sophia smirked, and then she glanced down at her phone again.

There was a text message sitting there, from Miss Militia, asking about Ward whereabouts. Sophia quickly responded that she was out with friends, and it was her day off.

Miss Militia's response to that ultimately was to question further. "What friends are you with?"

Sophia answered honestly. Miss Militia had met Emma once before, and Sophia was pretty sure that Madison had at least taken the tour of the PRT building when it was available. She might have met Miss Militia, even if she didn't remember it. If she did, Miss Militia almost certainly did remember it. Part of her powers was to make it very hard to forget things, and the other, of course, was to make non-tinkertech weapons.

"God, you're spending so much time on your phone, Sophia," Madison said. "Couldn't you just focus on now?"

"Sorry, the brawl's almost over," Sophia said. "Looks like it's just in cleanup phase now."

"Will you…?" Emma asked.

Sophia wrapped an arm around her friend's back. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Ems. Just because Taylor's back doesn't erase what we've got. We're still good friends—"

"The best," Emma said, echoed seconds later by Madison. Poor girl just wanted to be included.

"And your friend being back won't change that," Sophia said. She leaned in closer to Emma. "Plus, she's… older than us."

"I know that," Emma said. "I know that things won't ever be the same between me and her. She went through whatever she did, and we… well, you know what I went through, Sophia. The point is, though… she's back. From wherever she went, and she's strong."

Sophia nodded. "You are too."

"What do you think about hers and Millie's suggestion?" Madison asked. "The therapist?"

Emma shrugged. "She says it helped her. I don't know."

"It might help," Sophia said. "If you believe in all that psycho mumbo jumbo. I'm not sure who it helps and who it doesn't, but the one thing I do know is that unless you know you can trust them, fuck 'em."

"How do you know if you can trust them?" Madison asked.

Sophia shrugged. There were a few therapists on a rotational shift with the Wards, and as a part of her contract, she was mandated one day a week with them. Plural. Honestly, they might have succeeded at earning her trust if they'd kept the same therapist for more than a month. A month just wasn't enough to get to know the therapist well enough to see if they could be trusted. Sure, there were some in there that seemed okay. Yamada was one of them. Pilsner was another, but she didn't know. For all she knew, they could be looking for weakness in her, and she intended to keep that from them.

There was one person she got vulnerable in front of, and it was only when the two of them were not near others.

"So, maybe I shouldn't go," Emma said. "I'm not sure that I'd be willing to trust anyone in specific. Plus, it might interfere with my modeling."

Sophia shrugged again. "It's up to you and your dad, Ems. All I can say is Samus suggested it. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders."

"Told you," Emma said. "You thought she'd be weak, but she's strong. Just like I knew she would be."

Sophia just nodded. They spent some more time discussing minor things as they browsed clothing, like what classes were going to be like on Monday, and which idiot wore what terribly. Emma did pick out something that looked like it would fit Taylor, and then she proceeded to pick out something for herself, Sophia, and Madison as well. Sophia suspected that Alan Barnes was going to be a little surprised by the credit card bill this month, but given what she'd seen of the man since she'd met him, Alan was the kind of person who thought throwing money at something solved a problem. Maybe he wouldn't complain.

As they stepped out of the boutique with their purchases in hand, Sophia's phone rang. Her Wards phone rang. Luckily it looked a lot like her personal phone, and she'd been looking at the phone, keeping an eye on things ever since the brawl started. She answered it with the deft hands of someone skilled at hiding the extra phone, making it look like it was her personal phone.

"Hello, this is Sophia Hess," Sophia said, emphasizing that she was in her civilian identity, around other civilians. After all, she was at the Boardwalk, even if they were outside.

"Sophia, we're going to need you to come into work early today," Miss Militia said. "How far are you from the PRTHQ?"

"Not super far," Sophia said, and she stepped away from the group, mouthing an apology to Emma and Madison about her "boss." "Why do you need me in?"

"We need you for an assessment on a new cape," Miss Militia said.

"Why me?" Sophia asked. "Don't you have others who are better at that?"

"You've met this cape before," Miss Militia said.

"Which one?" Sophia asked.

"She calls herself Hunter," Miss Militia said. "She appears to be related to Ratcatcher. I'm not fully convinced about this fact, and I'd like to get a DNA sample. However, Armsmaster seems to be convinced enough to let her go home with Ratcatcher."

Sophia nodded. She wasn't going to ask all of her questions over the phone because of the lack of secrecy in a public place. "I've met her, yes. She seemed decent enough, for the most part."

"That tracks with what she said earlier," Miss Militia said. "You met with her, alerted her to the multi-gang fight in the Docks area?"

"Yes, that's correct," Sophia said.

"And saw her put her costume on?" Miss Militia asked.

"It'll be hard to forget that," Sophia said. "What's with the third degree before I even get there?"

"You'll find out more when you get in," Miss Militia said. "One last question before you go though."

"All right?" Sophia asked, glancing over to her friends again.

"What was your impression of her? Do you think she's trustworthy?" Miss Militia asked.

"Maybe," Sophia said. "Don't know her well enough one way or the other. I'll see you at work."

"See you soon, Sophia," Miss Militia said.

She hung up and put her phone in her pocket. She made a simple excuse to Madison and Emma though the latter knew where she was really going for work. Emma called her father to come pick up the two of them, and Sophia made her way to the PRT HQ building in downtown, slipping off to change into her costume on the way. She moved faster on the rooftops, after all.

So, they wanted her impression of Hunter, did they? She'd let them know exactly how dangerous she thought the woman was.

They were going to want Samus Aran on their side, even if she didn't join the Protectorate.

In Sophia's case… she just wanted to be sure the woman was who Emma thought she was. Samus Aran needed to be Taylor Hebert.

For Emma's sake.

 

[Ellf]

Arrival 1.C (Colin)

Armsmaster watched the footage of the fight again from each angle that he had access to. His camera, Militia's, Ratcatcher's, and then the footage from Hunter, when run through the modeling program that Dragon had found from that young tinker in WEBDGDG, refined by the two of them, generated a full recreation of what had actually happened in the fight. The program even had some predictive elements to it that allowed it to generate some of the battlefield that hadn't been caught by the recordings. Obviously, it wasn't perfect, but for one of the young tinker's first developments, it was pretty good.

He made a note to send some sort of thank you to the kid, perhaps one of his older items for her to examine before he focused on the footage. Judging from what he could see, Hunter had some sort of stealth system on her suit which allowed her to remain hidden when she approached the fight. The predictive program gave a shimmer overlay of where her footage had been coming from prior to her appearance.

Idly, he started jotting down some notes as he watched. When Hunter appeared and fought Cricket, he noted down what she used, and the same with each use of things against Hookwolf. Then he pulled up the footage that the AI had sent him, from Hunter's supposed escapades on an alien planet. This planet, "ZDR," had a large variety of flora and fauna on it that ranged from the mostly harmless to things that he was certain would flat-out kill an unarmored human being. Some of them might even be able to rip through most non-tinkertech armors, assuming that the reports sent with them were accurate.

And Hunter had fought them with a casual efficiency that highly impressed him, especially when compared to the fight that she had participated in that day. There was little doubt in his mind that Hunter, Samus Aran, was a bounty hunter that did work for a galaxy-spanning government. She had a spaceship, and one thing he was going to request the next time he saw her was to see it in person. The idea of a working spaceship had him a tiny bit on the giddy side.

Space had always been a fascination of his since he was a child, and assuming that Samus could be trusted, there was the chance that he could work with her.

He glanced down at his notes. Ideas had begun flowing, and he knew that he would have to spend some time tinkering tonight if he was ever going to get to sleep. Sadly, he still had to review the rest of the footage some more.

Then a call was coming in. Piggot's personal line. Armsmaster grimaced. He'd been hoping to put this conversation off until the following day. Dialysis usually took a lot out of her, and he'd been expecting that she'd be home in bed the rest of the evening. He doubted that she'd be calling without good reason, but as far as he could tell, nothing about the fight had made the news. Yet, anyway. He hadn't been trolling the various cape fight forums, but even they likely wouldn't have any information just yet.

There was nothing to do but answer. If Piggot got his voicemail without a good excuse on his end, she'd ream him out. "Protectorate ENE, Armsmaster speaking."

"About time you answered," Piggot said.

"Director Piggot," Armsmaster said, looking from the footage to his notes once more. He paused the ZDR footage on one of the scenes where Hunter was going through some magma. Magma. The density of that and the extreme heat meant that her movements shouldn't have been possible. But clearly it was, given her power suit. "I was under the impression that you were going to have today off. What brings you to calling me?"

"Two things," Piggot said. "One, I want a full report with all footage captured about the brawl between the ABB and Empire and the Protectorate by lunchtime tomorrow. Sitting on my desk at lunch, Armsmaster, not a second afterward."

"And the second?"

"You let an unknown cape that knows Ratcatcher's civilian identity return to Ratcatcher's home with him," Piggot said. "This Hunter could be a stranger playing on Ratcatcher's desire to see his daughter again."

"She isn't," Armsmaster said. "She provided evidence as to where she had been."

"And did she allow a DNA sample so that we could run her against her supposed father?" Piggot asked. She didn't even wait for him to continue. "No. She didn't. I don't care about what her supposed reasons were for not giving it. She could have been free to go on her own, not with Ratcatcher. You know the man's psychological profile as well as I do, Armsmaster."

Armsmaster grimaced again. Yes, he had considered that. However… "Hunter had been nothing but helpful in the fight against the Empire and ABB. She displayed a level of skill and effectiveness that could only come from training with the gear she has. She clearly isn't a new cape, yet there are no records of any cape with her capabilities at all on Earth Bet."

"That doesn't prove anything," Piggot said. "Need I remind you of Uber or Victor? The former can develop any skills he needs for the moment, and the latter… well, you know what that Nazi does."

"If you saw some of this footage…"

"Footage can be faked," Piggot said. "However, in the interest of giving a possible ally the benefit of the doubt, ask Dragon to analyze the footage. She's better about spotting fakes than either of us."

"I can contact her," Armsmaster said. "But I'm not sure how busy she is at the moment, given Guild activities."

"Do it," Piggot said. "I'll also be wanting to meet with this Hunter once you verify that she's on the heroic side. Reach out with recruitment paperwork. If she is indeed Ratcatcher's daughter, albeit returning while older, there will be the question of identification and other needs that she might have. At the very least, I'd like to get her on as an affiliate. I will have people draft up both sets of paperwork for her perusal."

"Are you sure about that, Director? Just a few seconds ago, you were so certain she was a danger," Armsmaster said.

"Every parahuman is a danger to someone if they are so inclined," Piggot said. "Most non-parahumans too, for that matter. The point is doing a due diligence. Since you failed to obtain DNA proof, I'm going to be reaching out, personally, to New Wave with a donation and a request for Panacea. She should be able to identify whether this Hunter is who she claims to be and the relationship with Ratcatcher. Of course, she'll be under a Protectorate NDA, but she's been under those before."

"I'm not sure that Hunter would agree to Panacea," Armsmaster said.

"She will, if she knows what's good for her," Piggot said. Then she let out a small sigh. "From what I've heard, Hunter seems unsure about the relation between Ratcatcher and her. Like it's a faded memory. If anything, it would be good for her sake as well as ours."

"And you said you want to meet her, Director, to give her the recruitment pitch?" Armsmaster asked. "Why would you want to be the one to do that?"

"Her Artificial Intelligence called her Lady," Piggot said. "I need to see her for myself. Do what needs to be done, Armsmaster, and don't kill yourself tinkering tonight. I want you fresh and rested in the morning."

"Yes ma'am," Armsmaster said. "Goodbye."

"Good night, Armsmaster," Piggot said, disconnecting.

Armsmaster mulled over the call for a few seconds before sending a request over his dedicated line for Dragon to contact him. Assuming that she wasn't too busy with Guild activities, she would probably send contact within the next half hour, long enough for him to start getting his ideas jotted down. He set an alarm for twenty minutes, and another one for twenty-five minutes, just in case he started to go into a fugue state. He needed to be able to catch himself.

If he could figure out the energy source that Hunter used for her armor, it was possible that he might be able to replicate it. The efficiency of her power source was interesting, but he was reasonably certain that observation alone wouldn't be able to get him all the information he needed. Perhaps, once cleared, she would allow him to examine the armor in exchange for an examination of his. Either way, Armsmaster was certain that given more time and opportunities to observe, he would be able to develop something based upon the armor and its weaponry.

He was already making plans for an electrified barrier that he would be able to activate on his body. He might not have been able to get the sheer jump height that Hunter could, but that didn't mean the electrification wouldn't have other uses.

Around the time of his first alarm, Dragon returned his call.

"Colin, hello," Dragon said, her voice coming out of speakers that he'd set up for this.

"Good evening, Dragon." He would have asked her about the weather but forcing her to confront her agoraphobia was something he wasn't comfortable with. She was his friend, after all. "I'm sorry to bother you like this."

"Not at all, Colin, I enjoy our talks, but I get the feeling that this isn't about a new tinkering project," Dragon said.

"You could say that," Armsmaster said, removing his helmet so he could better handle things. Dragon knew his real name, after all, and he knew quite a bit about her. "Director Piggot asked me to have you take a look at something. Combat footage provided by a cape that's new to town. Ultimately, she wants to determine if there are any artifacts in the footage that might indicate that it was faked."

"Faked footage from a cape? What's going on, Colin?" Dragon asked.

"It's complicated," he said. "But the short answer is that the cape claims to be Ratcatcher's daughter, returned from… another Earth. Sort of. You'd have to see the footage yourself and make your own judgement."

"Okay, send it over, Colin," Dragon said, and Colin complied.

He really was curious to see what Dragon would make of the footage. What he'd been able to go over on the ZDR footage that Adam had provided indicated that Hunter was extremely capable. It didn't, however, indicate that she was Ratcatcher's daughter. But the interactions between her and Danny did seem to indicate that fact.

Danny had become something of a friend during the past ten months since he joined the Protectorate. He stood up for other heroes in the eyes of the law and in their handlers, the PRT, but he had practically no ambition of his own beyond making the city a better place. Colin could respect that, and it was with his help that the Protectorate ENE became a better organization. Closer, to be honest. While Colin wasn't as close with Danny as some of the other teammates, he did have a standing invitation to go over to his apartment for dinner and a beer.

Not that he'd taken the man up on it beyond the one time around the holidays. Perhaps he would, now that Hunter was staying with him, but there would need to be incentive beyond just the increased camaraderie between the two of them. Colin was fine with Shawn and Robin going over, Hannah too sometimes, but he was in charge of the team, and he had to spend time with his tinkering, to make sure he was in top shape for any potential issues.

"Colin, this footage… where did you say you got it again?" Dragon asked.

"A new cape that claims to be Ratcatcher's daughter," Colin said. "She used the name Hunter while in her power armor. The footage is supposed to be from her armor's camera system."

"None of these creatures in the footage are found on Earth Bet, nor are the plants or sitting pools of magma," Dragon said. "I don't even recognize the language used on some of these ruins here."

"Are there indications that any of it is faked?" Colin asked.

"I don't see any typical image artifacts or tracers in the footage that would indicate computer-generated imagery," Dragon said. "Given that this is first-person, and… do you have any other footage to compare it to?"

"I have some from the fight she joined today," Colin said, and he sent it over. Dragon seemed to be coming to a similar conclusion to him. Samus… Taylor… her footage seemed to be accurate, which, combined with the identification provided by her and her AI, indicated that she was telling the truth. Samus Aran was a bounty hunter in the Galactic Federation, a citizen of another Earth's nations. It didn't prove that she was Taylor Hebert, but Danny seemed to think she was, and her facial structures did resemble images that Colin had seen of the younger girl. She was taller than she should have been, but it was possible she'd gone through a growth spurt.

"The HUD lines up nearly perfectly between the two footages," Dragon said after a few minutes. "But she clearly was holding back in her fight against Cricket and Hookwolf. Who's the voice in the background with her?"

Colin pursed his lips. "That's complicated. Dragon, I don't know if I've asked you this before, as it really hasn't come up much in our discussions."

"Asked me what, exactly?" Dragon asked.

"What are your opinions on Artificial Intelligence?" Colin asked.

Dragon seemed to be mulling over the question for a few seconds. "How do you mean, Colin?" Though her voice seemed normal, was Colin detecting a hint of a warble to it? It was possible that she was just worrying that her views might not line up with his own.

Not that this really was going to be a friendship ending question or anything. At least not on his end.

"I mean true AI, not simple things that are meant to help with calculations or running bots in video games," Colin said. "An AI that can think and talk, possibly even feel or care about someone."

"I believe it's possible that such an AI could exist," Dragon said. Which really was kind of a diplomatic answer, but it didn't really help with the reasons he was asking.

"That's not really the question, Dragon," Colin said. "What do you feel about such an AI existing? How would you treat them? React to them?"

Dragon seemed to be mulling it over even more. "I suppose that… such an AI might be indistinguishable from a person, but knowing that they are an AI… might mean that you should just treat them the way they want to be treated. I know that if I were in that position, that's what I'd want. Not to be treated any differently than before."

Colin nodded. That was a much better answer, and it lined up better with what he was thinking about with Adam.

"Why do you even ask, Colin? This doesn't sound like a normal hypothetical," Dragon said.

"That voice you heard in Hunter's footage," Colin said. "Is the voice of an AI she brought with her known as Adam. Apparently, the Galactic Federation uploads the minds of great leaders into specially designed computers, where they develop into Artificial Intelligences based upon those people. At least according to the information Adam provided identifying himself."

"So, this AI was once a human being, not a spontaneously-developed personality or a designed personality for the AI?" Dragon asked.

"According to the data, yes," Colin said. "But… if he had been developed or designed to have a specific personality, or if he'd developed it on his own, I don't think it would matter either. He still has the support of Hunter and supports her in return. I'd like to think that I'd do the same."

"Ah…" Dragon said, and he could almost hear the sigh of relief coming over her line. "You're a good man, Colin. So, I can confirm that the footage provided here appears to be real, or if it's a fake, it is a very good fake."

"So, you believe her claims about the Galactic Federation and such?" Colin asked.

"None of those plants or animals were from Earth," Dragon said. "Footage that we have from Earth Aleph indicate that the flora and fauna situation there is similar to our own, and unless there were significant deviations on that Earth that she ended up in geological chemistry and atmosphere, I'd wager that she was on another planet."

"She did say she had a spaceship," Colin said.

"I'd be curious to see the ship," Dragon said. "Did she say where she had it parked?"

"No," Colin said. "But I'm going to see if she'd be willing to take me to see it, and with her permission, I'll share the images and footage I get with you."

"Oh, thank you so much, Colin," Dragon said. There was a bit of a background noise on her line, indicating that she had to leave. "Oh, that's… I'm sorry, Colin. There's something in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center that requires my full attention."

"Can you tell me what's going on?" Colin said. He knew that the Birdcage was Dragon's responsibility, but if he could help, he wanted to. With the mix of powers involved in there, it was possible that something was happening inside that would be of concern, but he doubted that any of them could escape on a whim. Except maybe the Faerie Queen, but she had chosen to be in there herself.

"Sorry, need to know only," Dragon said. "But it should be easy enough to handle."

"Just let me know if that changes," Colin said. "We'll all help if anything happens there."

"I will," Dragon said. "Worry about what you're going to do about Ratcatcher and Hunter. And the rest of the city. With Hookwolf captured, the Empire is probably going to be restless, and it's possible the ABB may react accordingly."

"Yes, I'll make sure to alert those on patrol tonight," Colin said. "Stay safe, Dragon."

"You too, Colin," Dragon said. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye," Colin said, disconnecting the call. He did worry a little about what Dragon was having to deal with, but she was right that he needed to worry more about the state of Brockton Bay tonight.

He spent some time drafting up some quick briefs for Dauntless and Battery, who were going to be patrolling the northern side of Brockton Bay, and another for Assault and Velocity, who were taking the southern. Ratcatcher had pointed out that, despite the deal Assault had with the Protectorate, it was probably best to keep him and Battery as separated as possible to avoid long-term issues. He trusted Danny's judgement on that. Besides, Assault worked well with Velocity, and if the man complained, he'd deal with him personally.

Challenger was going to be working with Triumph on console that evening, so he left a special briefing for the two of them, and it looked like the rest of the Wards were supposed to do a wave the flag patrol near the Boardwalk that evening. Ideally, they'd be okay with that on their own, but if Miss Militia had gotten enough rest by then, he'd task her with accompanying them.

He planned on tinkering and getting some sleep that evening. Judging from how his ideas were flowing right now, he needed to get some out before calling up Militia anyway. So, once again, setting alarms, he set out with his tools.

Tinkering took most of his focus at the best of times, and at the worst, it absolutely consumed him. This time was somewhere in between. He took his tools, took his materials, and he worked, developing based upon his ideas, upon what he'd seen, and what he thought he should be able to do. Oddly, as he continued, he started to etch symbols into the base of his halberd, ones he'd seen in the ruins of ZDR, not knowing what they meant, just doing what felt right.

When he came out of his tinkering, he looked down at his halberd and, taking it in hand, leveled the base end at a metallic flask on the table. He twisted the base ever so slightly, and a blue beam shot out of the base, latching on and pulling it back toward him. He smiled for a second, admiring his work, and then he sighed, placing the halberd down on the table once more. It was time to make one more phone call, and then do the worst part of his job, tinker paperwork. As a full Protectorate member, he didn't need all of his technology evaluated before he could use it, but he did need to file a report on what he developed for records' sake.

But there was that last call.

"Computer, call Miss Militia," Colin said, using his voice commands.

Militia answered after three rings. "Armsmaster, what do you need?"

"Two things. Are you rested enough to escort the Wards on their patrol tonight?" Colin asked, glancing down at the item on the table.

"It shouldn't be an issue. I'm already at the PRT building in town," Miss Militia said.

"Good," Colin said.

"And the second thing?" she asked.

Colin sighed. This part of the job was one that he never really liked. "Tell me why you would go around my back to tell Piggot about Hunter. You broke the chain of command, Miss Militia."

"It was necessary to keep her in the loop," she said.

"That wasn't your call to make," Colin said. "It was mine. And she would have been alerted when she was back from her dialysis."

"You sent Hunter back to Ratcatcher's home on very little proof," Miss Militia said. "I was worried about a possible Master-Stranger event. I'm still worried about it."

Colin rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We have protocol for a reason, Militia. You know this. Ratcatcher does as well. Hunter was telling the truth and helped us against the Empire and ABB. If you don't trust my judgement right now, you should have brought up the M/S protocols earlier."

"No, sir," Miss Militia said. "I just would like more solid proof of relations between Hunter and Ratcatcher."

"I'll send you the photographic analysis results that convinced me," Colin said. "But Piggot is reaching out to New Wave for Panacea's help with that, assuming Hunter consents."

"That will have to do," Miss Militia said. "If that's all?"

"It is, for now," Colin said. "Just remember the chain of command, Hannah. I know that Danny's a friend, but that doesn't excuse breaking protocol for this. If you suspect mastering or strangers, you should invoke M/S. Understood?"

"Understood," she said. "Goodbye, Armsmaster."

"Goodbye," he said, disconnecting the call. He grimaced once more, thinking on the paperwork. One of the more difficult things would be coming up with a name for the technology that didn't sound… stupid. After all, "grabby chain light beam thing" wasn't really an appropriate name to use. That said…

Magnetic Grapple Beam did have its appeal.

 

[Ellf]

Comeback 2.1

It had been a good few months since the last time I'd slept in a normal bed. I'd been so used to sleeping in my power suit and pilot's chair that sleeping anywhere else was a little on the unnerving side. Normally when I stayed on planet, it took me a few days to acclimate to sleeping without the suit and in any bed, really. The pull-out couch my father had set up for me in his living room was comfortable enough, but I'd slept maybe four and a half hours before I was awoken by movement in the kitchen.

I opened my eyes, looking over to see a pile of rats next to the kitchen sink with some soap, each one washing up its paws before going over to set up a coffee pot. Four were opening the refrigerator, reaching in to pull out some eggs, bacon, and butter. There had to be maybe twenty or thirty rats in the kitchen, all doing some activity relating to cooking breakfast. I'd literally seen each of them make sure they were clean before starting, but… having breakfast prepared by rats? Did this count as an abuse of a power?

I made my way over to the bathroom to clean up a little before continuing my wake-up routine. After washing my face and brushing out my hair, I put the casual clothes I had back on. I would need to go by my ship today to get some more, or I'd need to buy something while here. The issue was finances. I didn't want to depend entirely on my father.

Adam had mentioned a bounty on Hookwolf, and hopefully that would be something I was able to collect, since it was through my help that they were able to bring him in. Either way, I was sure there were other bounties out there that I might be able to capitalize on, and that would give me the funds to do what was necessary.

The ship needed fuel, and I needed parts in order to create the machine I'd use to get the fuel we needed in the correct form. Given that this world still ran on petroleum-based fuel systems, I wasn't confident that there was anything I would be able to buy off the shelf to use. A tinker might be able to help, but I wasn't sure how their technology worked, and I wasn't going to let anything touch my ship or Adam if I didn't know what it was capable of.

I walked out into the living room and glanced back to the kitchen. There was a rat pile in a vaguely feminine shape handling the pans and I smelled coffee being brewed in what looked like a French press. Dad was in the living room now, sitting on the other couch with a cup of coffee in hand. He smiled at me once I was fully in his line of sight, and I returned his smile with one of my own. Last night hadn't been easy on either of us, not really. While reuniting with each other was good, neither of us really knew how to talk to each other.

Dad had his hang-ups, and I had my own. There still was so much about my life that he didn't know, and given my current biological state, there may have been dangers to knowing too much, at least if we were in the Federation. I didn't know enough about the government here on Earth Bet, save for it being divided into individual countries, to make a good judgement on how they would react to what I was. The best-case scenario was that they'd lump me in with their capes, put me under similar regulations, even if I were to operate independently from the Protectorate/PRT umbrella. The Guild in Canada seemed to operate in a similar fashion to how the Hunter organization did in the Federation. Perhaps I would reach out to them if I had trouble establishing myself as an independent.

"Good morning, Taylor," Dad said. "Coffee is ready, though I can't promise how good it will be. I had Mitzi be the one to make it. Remmy's the one handling the eggs."

"You named your rats?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Just the forty that I house here," Dad said. "They're never a part of the swarms I use while caping. They're a bit less expendable than the common ones."

"Kind of like pets?" I asked.

He nodded, and I smiled, heading into the kitchen. As I stepped inside, a rat scurried over to the edge of the counter and held out a coffee mug for me, which I took gratefully. I poured from the French Press and took a sip. Well, I'd had worse coffee, anyway. The drink never was my favorite, but anything better than the Federation Police brew was a plus in my book. Still, I would have to grab some tea off my ship if I was going to be staying at Dad's longer. I still had some Zebesian tisane reserves with some seedlings for when I needed to produce more.

"So, what are your plans for today, Taylor?" Dad asked.

"Do an evaluation of my gunship, figure out a list of materials I need," I said. It was a little easier to speak with Dad now, given it was just us around. Of course, easier didn't mean easy. "Perhaps pick up the bounty on Hookwolf. See if there's more bounties worth pursuing here."

Dad looked at me curiously. "So, when you took the name Hunter, you meant that literally, did you?"

"I did say I was a bounty hunter, Dad," I said. "I've hunted down Space Pirates, criminals, bioweapons, and a number of things that have done things that haunt my nightmares. I've chased things across the galaxy that make Hookwolf look like a puppy."

"Bioweapons?" Dad asked. Well, it made sense that was the bit that he latched onto. "What sorts of bioweapons require a bounty hunter? It sounds more like something a secret agent might do. What, are you some sort of Galactic version of 007 or something? Samus Bond?"

I held up a finger for a second as I processed the question.

Dad's stereo system turned on at that moment to answer for me. "Lady is a little too famous to pull off a truly secretive mission that would involve infiltration into the ranks of an organization. At the current point in time, anyway. During her time with the Federation Police, she did manage to infiltrate an operation being performed by the Space Pirates by giving her armor an infiltration upgrade. Sadly, that upgrade is not currently available for her."

Dad snorted. He looked from the speakers to me, and then he frowned. "Adam, I would appreciate some warning before you decide to infiltrate my stereo. Also, how did you manage to do that? It isn't connected to any network systems."

"I am connected via Lady's two-way radio transceiver," Adam said. "Your stereo's systems are capable of receiving the connection, and it was trivial to adjust protocols so that you are able to hear me as well."

"Adam, Dad's not used to your availability," I said. "Perhaps you should give him some sort of alert before stepping in."

"Apologies, Mister Hebert," Adam said. "Would you care for a text alert on your cell phone before I begin speaking over speakers?"

Dad glanced to his pocket. "… I suppose that could work. You can call me Danny, Adam. You're an important part of Taylor's life, even if I don't fully understand you."

"Thank you, Danny," Adam said. "Lady, I would also suggest contacting Emma Barnes to check up on her mental state at some point today. Considering that you apparently are Taylor Hebert, your reappearance may have had some adverse interactions on that. What do you think, Lady?"

"Sounds reasonable," I said.

"I have a minor issue with that," Dad said. "Today is a school day, so if you do need to contact Emma, you'll need to wait until she's done."

"Understood," Adam said, and then Dad's pocket began to ring with a tune that sounded vaguely familiar. Some sort of movie music about an evil empire.

"Sorry, I have to take this," Dad said, and he pulled out his cell phone, some sort of round device. He stepped into the bedroom as he answered it, and I watched the rats in the kitchen start plating breakfast. It really was a fascinating thing to watch. If I'd been able to get the Iona Feria to do something like that as a kid, it might have gone differently for them.

Then again, given what Mother Brain had said about them… she probably would have still exterminated them as a so-called threat to the planet.

At least she was gone now, and so was the copy of her that the Federation tried to make. The central cores on ZDR bore some resemblance to her, but none of them seemed to have her capacity for cruelty. At least not yet anyway.

"Adam, approximately how much was that bounty on Hookwolf?" I asked.

"There are several bounties set out on Hookwolf by varying organizations. For his successful capture and entrusting him into Protectorate custody, the bounty was set at an approximate total of fifteen thousand dollars. Assuming that he makes it into the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, the bounty would double."

"Assuming he makes it?" I asked. Why would the bounty have that stipulation for this?

"Hookwolf is a fugitive, having already been broken out of transport on his way to the BPCC. In all likelihood, there is every chance that the transport would be attacked this time," Adam said. "The Empire 88 has a history of breaking their capes out of imprisonment prior to being sent to the BPCC."

"Give me a profile on anyone who was supposed to go to the BPCC, yet failed to do so," I said. "Additionally, I'd like every bit of information you can get on that place. Current inmates, what they did, etc. How long their sentence would be."

"Life," Dad said as he stepped back into the living room. "The Birdcage is a life imprisonment. It takes capes from society and places them where they can't do any more harm. It's supposed to be impossible to escape."

"Life imprisonment without possibility of parole," Adam said, confirming my father's words. "Perhaps it would be better to just kill them if what they've done is so heinous as to require such incarceration."

Dad shrugged. "I don't really like it myself. For every Hookwolf, Marquis, or Teacher in there, there's some minor villains who just accumulated too many strikes. There's also talk that Bad Canary may end up having that as a possible sentence after what she did."

"Bad Canary?" I asked. The name was vaguely familiar, but it reminded me some of the Chozo. I doubted that any Chozo were on Earth Bet, and they especially were unlikely to be under trial here. At least I hoped that was the case. If there was evidence of any Chozo, I'd need to approach them carefully. There'd be no telling if they were Thoha or Mawkin at first.

"A singing cape with a minor master power and feathered hair," Dad said. "You used to listen to her when you were younger, but it seems like she accidentally used her power on her ex-boyfriend."

"And that necessitates the BCCP, why?" I asked.

"I don't think it should. I haven't really done a lot of research into the case, but if it was accidental, it should be easy enough to prove, assuming the defense does its job," Dad said. He shrugged. "But from what I understand, the case is still in discovery at the moment. The trial isn't set to begin for another couple months."

"Poor girl," I said. "What was with the call, Dad?"

"Was work," Dad said. He gave me a considering look, as if he were trying to figure out how to break some news to me. "The director of the local PRT wants to meet with you. I'm supposed to convince you to come with me to the PRT building to meet up with her along with asking you to submit to DNA testing to verify that you're my daughter. I mean, I know that you are. You know that you are, and Armsmaster is convinced you are. However, Director Piggot is not easily convinced, and she wants to make sure that you're not just pretending."

That last bit sounded like he was quoting someone directly, likely whoever he spoke to on the phone. Whether it was this Piggot person or someone else, I didn't know, nor did I care. There were… reasons why a DNA test was probably a bad idea, and there was the chance that even my human DNA wouldn't share enough of a genome with my father at this point to have me considered his daughter. I honestly didn't know. Additionally, if I hadn't processed all of the X that I had consumed on ZDR, there was the chance that would show up as well. The X parasites I consumed should all be dead or inactive, but that didn't make it less of a worry. Dealing with an X parasite incursion on a planet as highly populated as Earth Bet was not something I wanted to have to do.

"I did mention to Armsmaster yesterday that my DNA is not the same as it was when I was here," I said, walking to the kitchen to grab the plated breakfast. "It's… complicated to explain, but you deserve to know it."

"Lady underwent gene therapy to save her life in two different circumstances, and the genetics introduced into her system were not human," Adam said.

"Not human?" Dad asked as he took a seat at what looked like a highly unused dining room table. When I placed the food on the table in front of him, he looked me up and down. "You look human."

"After the loss of Virginia and Rodney Aran on K-2R, Lady was brought to the planet known as Zebes," Adam said. "By the planet's native inhabitants, the Chozo. In order for Samus to better survive on that planet, Samus was given genetic therapy, introducing Chozo DNA into her own and merging it into her. It's likely because of this DNA that Lady has gained her height, and the DNA is why she can jump as high as she can."

"Well, that and the gravity on Zebes was… slightly stronger than Earth's," I said.

"You said two different events, Adam?" Dad asked.

"The second event was to save her from a parasitic infection known as X," Adam said. "She was infused with the DNA of an organism specifically designed to eradicate the parasite. As such, she is currently the only being immune to the X parasite in the galaxy. A fact that likely holds true in this version of the galaxy as well."

"How did you end up infected with that?" Dad asked.

"Bounty mission," I said. "It's… a long, long story, Dad, and yes, I've dealt with a lot of danger, but I've saved people from things too."

Dad rubbed his head. "So, a normal DNA test might not… reveal everything correctly."

"Not likely," Adam said. "And I doubt that any DNA test done on Lady's ship would be considered admissible by your director."

"No," Dad said. "However, she's calling in a favor from New Wave for this. I think she anticipated Taylor's unwillingness to do a normal DNA test. Panacea of New Wave should be able to tell we're related by touching us."

"Can she be trusted?" I asked.

"She's a fifteen-year-old girl," Dad said. "With a mother that works at Alan's law firm while also doing superhero work. She's been doing some work in the hospitals, and as far as I know, she hasn't revealed any information that would violate HIPAA. That said, I do still know some people in contracts. It shouldn't take too long to draft up a basic NDA about what she discovers beyond the confirmation of our relationship."

"That could work," I said. I doubted people of this time had the technology available to them to isolate the individual parts of my DNA, let alone clone them, but if someone asked me earlier in the day yesterday if they could replicate any part of my power suit, I'd have said it was impossible too. The powers that humanity had here were just odd. "If she's amenable to signing such an NDA, I think that it would be okay."

"Would you be willing to share with her the reasons why, Lady?" Adam asked. "She may be curious about some of it."

I shrugged. "Until I meet her…"

Dad nodded. "She seems like a good kid. Maybe putting a bit too much pressure on herself, but with a power as capable as hers is, it's understandable."

He and I ate the breakfast he'd prepared with his rats, and despite a few misgivings I might have had, even with them having sanitized themselves, the food was pretty good. Dad had somehow prepared the eggs exactly as I liked them, and the bacon was tasty as well. Bacon wasn't exactly a common thing that could be acquired on the Federation Earth. It was actually a delicacy due to the scarcity of pork. There were other meats that replaced it, of course, but there was something special about having this kind of bacon.

Our meal went on mostly in silence as I mulled things over. Adam had suggested Panacea as someone who might be able to look at my genome. I did need to know what had happened with me after I absorbed the Quiet Robe X. Did my Metroid side stabilize? Or did I have to worry about it resurfacing at an inopportune moment?

Would I produce more Metroids on my own? I needed to know this sort of thing. If only to keep myself and those I cared about safe.

"I'll do it," I said after finishing my food. "Meet with Director Piggot and Panacea, I mean."

"I'd like to say that you won't regret it," Dad said. "But I can't be sure."

"I'll need that NDA," I said. "I don't want to risk certain parts of my DNA getting out there for study by unscrupulous sorts."

"I'll get it for you," Dad said.

"Good," I said. "It should be interesting to meet your other boss."

Dad snorted. "I just hope she likes you. She barely tolerates me."

"Oh, I'm sure that there won't be anything to worry about there," I said. "I know how to handle people in leadership positions."

I wasn't completely sure if Adam had done it, but the fact that a laughter track came over the speakers of Dad's stereo was oddly timed if he hadn't.

 

[SensibleMalarkey]

Amelia

Stupid NDA's. Who am I going to blab to? Only people I talk with are all already under NDA! I sign the damn thing and approach Ratcatcher and the freakishly tall woman. "Okay," I say with mock enthusiasm, "let's get this bizarre superpowered paternity test done with shall we!"

Stepping towards Ratcatcher I hold out my hand, "you first, to establish the baseline." He takes a quick look at his supposed daughter and slowly takes off a glove, and sloooowly extends his hand out to me, seems to hesitate- I reach out and snag three of his fingers. Holy hell, I do not have all day… and lay off the bacon you old fart.

"Baseline established," letting go of his hand, "alright, you're up," and I walk over to legs-for-days.

She really was stupidly tall. Dyed blonde hair with dark roots showing. A sleek figure… toned arms… trimmed fingernails. Oof, down girl. She was lookin down at me with this piercing, judgmental stare that was far hotter than it had any right to be.

She looked over to Ratcatcher. Heh, probably hoping he's not her father. I mean, find out your dad is a superhero! Oh cool!… but it's Ratcatcher… Freakin Ratcatcher!? That would have to be weirdly disappointing.

Legs-for-days - dammit, what was her name - glances back to me and at my offered hand, and says with this smooth voice, "Seems the process is not painful." Huh?

"What?" Oh shit, she doesn't know me! "Oh… no! Not painful. Unlike every dentist in existence, what I do is completely pain free." Which got a lovely little smirk out of her. She reached out, took my hand, and-

HOLY MOTHER OF TACO TUESDAYS!!!

A myriad of alien horrors.

Vast, thick, murky oceans of varying primordial ideals colliding together. One moment: broiling conflicts. The next: a staggeringly beautiful mellifluousness of different wordless languages.

And in those deep oceans, a voice. So small at first, but with each wave it slowly grew louder and louder. Until:

[X] Hi!

Whoa, hello there! You're awfully cute!

[X] Aww, thanks! Who are you? Do you want to play?

I'm Amy, and I'm not sure… you look a little dangerous.

[X] Yeeeaahh… we keep getting in trouble… the Great Destroyer keeps putting us into timeout… or blowing us up.

The Great Destroyer huh? Who are you?

[X] Oh, I'm ~the consumer of worlds~ Eddis. The name's Eddis. Nice to meetcha!

Nice to meet you Eddis! You are just darling. What do you do? Can you tell me?

[X] hmmmm…what can I do… ooh here's a good example! You know puppies!?

…Yes, my sister just got a tiny little black Lab.

[X] Well we can make forever puppies! Just activate a little bit of us and we'll ~devour~ reconstitute the adorable fluffy-wuffy with all of its memories and experiences intact! An adorable puppy that'll be cuddle-able forever! No growing up doggo, just a Cuddle Puppy forever… or at least a super long time.

That sounds kinda sweet.

[X] It is! Just imagine giving your sister a Cuddle Puppy, Amy. Wouldn't she love that!?

Well, actually she probably would-

[X] And wouldn't she be so thankful, and love you for such a thoughtful gift?

That- that sounds really…

"Miss Panacea? Are you alright?"

"Holy fucking shit!" I exclaim as I snap back to reality. Looking up at the blonde… shit, what is her name? I had no idea how to articulate whatever the hell that experience was. But staring up into her eyes… somehow… I managed to say:

"You're a horrifying mess wrapped in a person suit."

She quirked an eyebrow and tilted her head as I started to die from embarrassment; realizing I had likely just insulted the spawn of some godly alien.

I started to stutter out an apology, but before I got there, the woman just shrugged and nodded her head in agreement. A small smile on her face.

"S- Sorry!" I finally managed. Taking my hand from hers, "that was just… unexpected," and I look back at Ratcatcher. Crap, right! I'm here for a reason.

"Um, I have no idea if she is your daughter…" I say, as cold shivers run down my spine. "If you are the father, I really don't want to meet the mother."

One month later. The cuddle-pup-ocalypse began

 

[Ellf]

Comeback 2.2

The PRT HQ building was located in the middle of downtown Brockton Bay. While the oil rig with its fancy bridge made of light and its other defenses was the headquarters of the Protectorate capes, this building was much more utilitarian. Without the barred windows or the emblazoned PRT logo, the building would look a lot like the rest of the buildings in the area. There was an attached hospital, a parking garage, and what appeared to be a helipad on the roof. Honestly, it reminded me a lot of the Federation Police buildings that I'd operated out of during my tenure there. I had no doubt that the interior was probably laid out similarly.

As Dad pulled into the parking garage, he turned to me with a somber look. "So, technically, unauthorized tinkertech isn't allowed in the building. Your armor… partially qualifies as tinkertech, even if it is replicable."

"So, I shouldn't wear it inside?" I asked. They wouldn't be able to stop me from putting it on either way, but I usually preferred to have my armor ready. "That would mean people can see my face."

"Maybe, but if you're in casual clothing, not a costume," Dad said. "People tend to ignore things that don't stand out."

"Dad, I'm over six feet tall with blonde highlights," I said. "I'm going to stand out."

"Move your legs for a second," Dad said, reaching over to the glove compartment. He popped it open, revealing a small bag inside that had some simple black masks. "These aren't perfect, but they should be good enough for while you're not wearing your armor. You don't have a costume otherwise, right?"

I waggled a hand. "I have my Zero Suit, which I wear under the power suit. Parts of it are exposed on my gravity suit, but I'm actually wearing it right now under the clothes."

"Right. I'm not going to have you strip down in my car, so… mask it is," Dad said, and he reached into his pocket, pulling out one of his own. The one he pulled out was of higher quality than the ones in the glove compartment, but beggars couldn't be choosers. He took his glasses off and put the mask on overtop of it, and he exited the car.

I followed suit, and after he locked up, together we headed into the PRT Headquarters. Beyond my initial assumptions that the place was going to be like the Federation Police precincts that I'd worked at before, I hadn't really had much in the way of expectations. As we had taken the employee entrance, we only barely walked past the building's lobby. As we did so, I got a glimpse of the reception desk, manned by a dark-haired man in a PRT jacket, the gift shop, which was something I admit confused me a bit. Why exactly was there a gift shop in what was ostensibly a place of law enforcement? Perhaps it had something to do with cape culture.

I did vaguely remember having some paraphernalia with the logos of certain capes on them. Maybe that was what they sold at the gift shop. On the walls were model photographs of several different capes in costume. Without my visor on, I couldn't have Adam quickly look them up and identify who these children were, but Dad saw me staring.

"Those are the Wards," Dad said. "Children with powers that have chosen to join the Protectorate's program for young capes to learn how to control their powers."

Seemed fair enough. I did somewhat recall the Wards being a thing, and given that Panacea was someone under the age of majority, it did make sense that there would be other young capes. It was admirable even to have this sort of program, to allow the capes the chance to learn more about themselves, how to best utilize their powers.

I'd had to do much the same during my time on Zebes as a kid. Old Bird and Gray Voice had guided me, and even Mother Brain had… helped, as much as I hated to give that thing credit for anything in my life. Of course, she was dead twice over now as I'd killed her on Zebes and then killed the Federation's attempt at making a new one. Gods, if I had to deal with yet another thing coming back from the dead, I might just scream.

That wasn't fair to the kids here, though. My hang-ups were my own, and I did have my ways of dealing with them. Admittedly, most of those ways involved lots of shooting and blowing up of things, but I couldn't deny the catharsis. If only some of the things I'd had to blow up hadn't been planets. Unfortunately, the potential risk of bioweapons being unleashed upon the galaxy writ large often meant that I had to make a decision that was not made lightly.

"Hunter?" Dad asked. "You good?"

I nodded, gesturing for him to lead the way more.

"We've got to go through security here," Dad said. "If you have any weaponry, you can check it here and it will be here for you to pick up when you return. Isn't that right, Zeke?"

Dad looked the PRT Officer… Agent… Trooper… whatever the correct term was, he wore a PRT uniform with a black jacket, Dad looked the light-haired older Caucasian man in the eye. Zeke turned to look at me.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but he's right. Do you have something that might trigger the metal detection alarm or any other weaponry that might not?" Zeke smiled warmly at me in a grandfatherly way. I'd already been thinking about the Chozo that had raised me, and that look warmed my heart. It brought several good memories to the forefront.

I pulled out my Paralyzer and laid it down on the counter. It hurt to be giving up my sidearm a bit, but I was confident that there was no way they'd be able to stop me from using my armor. I wasn't forced to just stick with my Zero Suit as I had before.

"What is that?" asked Zeke.

"Paralyzer," I said shortly. I'd do a dry elaboration, but I didn't want to just give away everything. "Standard issue."

"Standard issue for what?" Zeke asked.

"She's a bounty hunter," Dad said. "I'd think a paralyzing gun would help bring targets in alive."

Zeke let out a small grunt, and then he buzzed me through. I didn't have anything else on me that would likely trigger the machine, save for my radio, which was made of plastic, and as I walked through the metal detector, nothing beeped. Happily.

I gestured toward my sidearm, and then made the universal symbol that I was watching Zeke, and he laughed.

"Oh, don't worry, girl, I'll keep your gun safe."

I smiled, nodding, and once Dad was through the security, we headed off. I assumed that Dad knew what room that we were going to meet his boss in, as he led me through what looked even more like a Federation Police bullpen than what I'd seen the day before. People were sitting at desks looking at open folders, answering phones, working on computers, or some combination of the above. It felt very nostalgic, straight down to the smell of the coffee that they had.

I swear, whoever bought the coffee for police precincts either didn't know what they were doing or they just went for the cheap stuff knowing that officers only needed their minds to function. They didn't need them to function well. Assuming caffeine worked on most humans as well as it did on me, anyway.

Most humans weren't part Chozo and part Metroid though. That mixture was the whole reason for Panacea to sign the NDA. Full legal consequences if she violated it were in the mix. I didn't want to need this, but my DNA was not something to be looked at lightly.

Dad brought me to a small conference room and gestured for me to sit down. The conference room had only a single door, a long table that sat maybe nine people comfortably, and room for an additional twelve chairs in the room. "I'll go let the Director know you're ready. If you want to get into your non-power suit costume while you're waiting, feel free."

I smirked, and then I nodded, lightly tapping the outer part of my headset. Adam might not have said anything just yet, but I knew that he would have useful information once we were ready.

When Dad left the room, he closed the door behind him. I took off my casual clothes, leaving me in a gloveless Zero Suit. I folded up my clothes and put them in the chair next to me, and then I adjusted my mask some and slipped on some gloves. The blue material of my Zero Suit was definitely a lot more flattering to me than the clothes I'd worn over top of it.

When the door next opened, there were three people standing on the other side. One was my father, still dressed in his half-costume rather than the full one I'd seen him wear the previous day. The other was an obese blonde woman with a bob-style haircut. She wore a navy-blue jacket and matching skirt along with a blouse that was only slightly flattering. I noted her eyes were steely blue as they locked on to mine for a second. The weight in that gaze was staggering, but I'd felt worse. I'd seen worse too.

Next to her was a sandy-haired white man with a square jaw, shorter than my father yet taller than the woman. He wore a full suit and the logo for the PRT was emblazoned on the jacket's left lapel. His hair was slicked back with some sort of gel, and he had a slightly more welcoming look on his face than the woman.

Given the deference shown by both my father and this man to the woman, I was freely able to assume that she was Director Piggot, the director that I was here to meet.

"Hunter, I presume?" The woman who was probably Piggot asked.

I nodded.

"Good. My time won't be wasted," Piggot said, and she walked in to take a seat. She was followed by the man with her along with my father. She held up a hand to Dad. "Ah. No, Ratcatcher. Even assuming that her statements are able to be verified, Hunter is clearly not a minor, and you don't need to be in here when you have things you need to do. Triumph was wanting to speak with you earlier."

"I don't want to just leave you here to be questioned on your own." Dad clearly was uncomfortable with the whole situation.

"I'll be okay," I said, looking at my father. He didn't really seem so reassured by that statement. Maybe I'd been too quiet or not as confident as I needed to sound. Sometimes that happened, but I knew what I needed to do.

"Yes, she will," Piggot said.

I tapped my ear once more, in full view of my father. I wanted to let him know that I wasn't alone. Piggot clearly took note of that, but she said nothing about it.

Instead, she said in a clearly exasperated tone, "Ratcatcher, go talk with Triumph. It's something relating to your old job prior to becoming a hero."

"Fine," Dad said. "Hunter, if you need anything… I won't be far away."

I nodded, and then I watched Dad go out the door.

Director Piggot pulled out a tape recorder and set it on the table. I couldn't believe I was seeing an actual cassette recorder, of all things.

She must have sensed my bemusement as she snorted. "Capes always assume that the old ways weren't better. Just because a tinker can build something good doesn't mean it's good in every situation." She smiled and pushed record on the machine, and then she said, "This is Director Emily Piggot of the Protectorate ENE here with the Independent Hero known as Hunter and Deputy-Director Rennick. The date is February twenty-third, two-thousand eleven, and the time is approximately one-thirty PM. Hunter, I would like to formally introduce myself and my second in command."

"Pleasure," I said. I studied the older woman's face. She'd seen combat before, but given her current condition, it had been something very hard for her. Whatever had happened left its mark, and now she had failing kidneys. Armsmaster had mentioned dialysis the day before, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't overtax the woman on my first impression.

A calculating smile came to Piggot's face. "I'm sure you're wondering why we're even bothering to ask questions. The fact is, during the impromptu interview you had with Armsmaster yesterday isn't anything that would ultimately hold up in the court of law. As such, there may be some repeated questions from that session."

I frowned. "Have I done something that would necessitate the courts?"

"Not as such," Renick said. His voice reminded me a little of that one Admiral who had hired me to work with the BSL team on SR388. Hopefully he wasn't like that man. I would hate to have to take measures against my father's coworkers. Most of the time, I preferred to follow established law. "However, you understand that the claims you made to Armsmaster are difficult to prove and given that you would not submit to a DNA test, your relationship is similarly difficult."

I nodded, looking between the two of them. The Director and Deputy Director of this branch of the PRT, both meeting with me. If I'd been on the Federation Earth, I'd understand having people of this level of importance meeting up with me, given I'd spoken with Admirals and Senators about my bounties before. This wasn't quite on that level of importance, as they seemed to be a regional thing, but if they didn't trust me, why would both of them be here?

"What do you want to know?" I asked.

Piggot gestured to me. "First, I would like to formally ask that you submit to a DNA verification test." She held up a hand. "I understand your reservations to having your DNA examined in the traditional sense, but as Ratcatcher should have informed you, there is an alternative to it. Panacea has been requested, and with permission of her mother, she agreed. Her mother and sister will be accompanying her here."

I nodded again. I needed to speak carefully here. While I rarely tripped over my words, I didn't want to be misunderstood at all. "I do have some provisions. She must sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, with her mother as witness. The only thing she's authorized to talk about is my relationship to Ratcatcher or lack thereof."

"So, you believe it's possible that you aren't related to him?" Piggot asked.

I shrugged. From what I knew, memories could be fabricated. Yes, I'd recognized Emma on her saying my old name, but Adam was the one who had put two and two together about Ratcatcher. I did see the resemblance to the man from my memories, but it had been a long time for me. "Memory is a fickle thing. I remember being the daughter of a man who looked like him and had his name. However, it was a long time for me."

"Longer than the nineteen months you were supposed to be missing," Piggot said. She didn't wait for my answer. "Given your physical age, it must have been. So, you claim to be from… or rather to have come from an alternate Earth that is more advanced in technology than we are here."

I nodded.

"Please, for the purposes of the record, use audible answers," Piggot said.

"Yes." I wasn't sure exactly where she was going with this line of questioning. However, she was being professional, at the least. I could respect that.

"And you provided Armsmaster with identification, showing that at one point you were law enforcement for this so-called 'Galactic Federation,'" Piggot said. She shook her head. "How did you manage to end up back here?"

"While traveling back to Earth, we struck an anomaly in space-time," I said. "It shunted us to just beyond the L4 point between the Earth and the Moon. Further out than the Simurgh. We proceeded to fly in and land here in Brockton Bay."

"And park where, exactly?" Piggot asked.

I tapped my fingers on the table lightly. Even if they found the ship, they wouldn't be getting on it without my permission. I doubted they would be able to retrieve it easily from where we'd set it down either. No cranes were going to make it out on the water there. I made a calculated decision. "I parked my ship in what you call the Boat Graveyard. I can take people to see it if they want."

"I will want to see it when we are done here," Piggot said. "With a Protectorate escort, of course."

"Will it be the same one you have in here, or will it be Armsmaster instead?" I asked, giving both her and the man called Renick a careful look.

Piggot let out a bark of a laugh. "You're a sharp one, aren't you? When did you know?"

"Roughly after you dismissed my father," I said. "You're the Director of the PRT ENE, and I am an unknown that you don't fully trust. You're a competent leader. There is no way that you would allow your entire command to be jeopardized over someone who was a potential threat to you. Sir, I'm not sure who you are, but I am reasonably sure you are not the Deputy Director."

"Correct, Hunter," said Piggot. "Allow me to introduce Dauntless. He is wearing some facial prosthetics to hide his identity and make him resemble the actual Deputy Director, but Renick is watching on monitors with some of our agents. If you were to go for your armor or do anything threatening, they are under orders to fill this room with foam."

At that, I glanced upward. Sure enough, sticking out of the ceiling above the room's entrance were two guns that had dropped down as she said that to emphasize her point. I wasn't sure what the foam she mentioned would do exactly, but I was confident that I wouldn't want to deal with it. I probably would be able to, especially in my armor, but proving that point wouldn't endear me to her. Especially if Dauntless was there in case I did just that.

"I see," I said. "Taking few chances."

"With unknown capes," Piggot said, gesturing at me. "Chance is not a luxury that I can afford. Additionally, you said we when referring to your entry onto Earth Bet. I assume that you meant your Artificial Intelligence, Adam, correct?"

I nodded. Then, catching myself, I said, "Yes."

"The combat footage you provided to Armsmaster of your time on that alien planet, was it accurate to the best of your knowledge?"

"Yes," I said.

"So, you are capable of far more lethal tactics than what you deployed against the Empire 88 and the ABB when you aided my capes," Piggot said. She tapped her chin. "That you were willing to restrain yourself says a lot about your character, Hunter. Now, you stated that you want to refuel your ship and figure out why you're here in addition to getting to know your father again. Assuming, of course that he is your father. Let's focus on the first point. What sort of fuel does your ship use?"

"Fusion precursors of hydrogen and helium," I said. "Along with some other elements that help to catalyze the reactions. Normally, I refuel the ship at the docking stations that the Federation has near Earth, but that's not an option here. While I'm aware that there may be some sources of both here, the specific amounts needed and purities would be difficult to obtain directly on Earth without some specific gear that I do not currently have."

"How do you intend on obtaining the fuel then?" Piggot asked.

"A scoop and converter," I said. "Uranus and Neptune have Hydrogen and Helium in their respective atmospheres. I was planning to zip over and get fuel from there. But… that won't help much in returning to the Federation Earth."

"Do you plan on doing that?" she asked.

I shrugged.

"Audible answers, please," Piggot said.

"I'm… not sure," I said. "I did build a life there, and… there's a lot going on in the galaxy. However, assuming Ratcatcher is my father, he's here, not there. I could possibly build a new life here, if it turns out there's no way back to there. Or if I decided to stay."

Piggot nodded. "Your AI calls you Lady. Is there a reason why?"

"Adam is based off of an old CO of mine," I said. "That CO would always refer to me as 'Lady' partially as a joke, a nod to who I was."

"Because others would look down on you instead," Piggot said, nodding. She shook her head. "It amazes me that even in advanced civilizations, there are still idiots like that. So, you said you were gifted your suit, and the footage showed capabilities beyond what you displayed. Can you summarize what your suit is able to do and what you are able to do without it?"

"Without the suit, I am highly nimble and can jump higher than a normal human," I said. "With my suit, that maximum height is significantly increased. I have a weaponry suite that ranges from nonlethal to highly lethal, made to target and destroy bioweaponry experiments. I also have stealth capabilities, increased speed, and an ability to move normally under high pressure environments such as beneath water or magma."

I did not and would not go into further detail than that. She didn't need to know about Power Bombs as I was not under her command, nor did she need to know the extent of my beam weaponry. By giving her the brief information about the Gravity Suit's areas of functionality, it wasn't even really giving much up at all.

Judging from the look in her eye, she knew it too, but there was a bit of respect in that look. The woman had a good poker face hidden behind her exasperated exterior, but she allowed the respect through. It was intentional.

"Assuming that Panacea says that you are indeed Ratcatcher's daughter," Piggot said. "And possibly, even if she says you aren't. Would you consider joining the Protectorate, under my command?"

I tilted my head slightly. Under her command. I didn't know enough about this woman to know for certain whether that would be a good choice. I knew Dad didn't like her too much, that he tolerated her, but that didn't mean that she was necessarily a bad person to work for. However, I had spent the past several years working primarily for myself, alone. Occasionally I'd work with other bounty hunters, but for the most part, I worked alone. Adam helped recently, but as ZDR proved, he could be subverted or imitated.

I liked having him around, but I didn't absolutely need him. Nor did I need Director Emily Piggot.

"No. I won't be joining the Protectorate," I said. "But I'm willing to offer my services as an independent bounty hunter. "

The smile Piggot gave me in response to that was very much a surprise.