SAMUS ARAN

Chapter Two

No words were spoken on the ride until the Tesla came to a full stop, parking at the front gates of Maya's elite private school aptly named: Superior Port Academia. It was one of the best in the county and Maya was by far the lowest income earning family to be enrolled at it. Neither mother or daughter noticed that Maya's shirt was on backwards this morning. Maya unbuckled herself and exited the backseat to hear a rather terse "I love you," from her mother as she exited the rear side door with her Princess Prescott backpack clasped and tethered tightly around her backside. Maya replied back to Samus with a more engaged version of "I love you," and turned, heading into the school after watching her mom closely as she continued to attempt to remove her slightly off shade rouge cheek blemish while staring into the car's passenger vanity mirror as Pascal and the Tesla waited for their call-out transmission to exit the single lined cluster of parked cars around the bustling school loading zone.

   Upon pulling out, Samus finally put up the vanity mirror and requested Pascal play her playlist of Heavy Metal and Rap / Hip Hop from a variety of artists both new and old through the Tesla's reverberating, sound cushioned speakers. Samus bobbed her head slowly to the familiar tones as they moved over the speedway toward the naval base. She tried forgetting about the clock, and what she'll have to deal with if she's found late again. She already knows she's going to lie and say she had forgotten to activate her transponder, which sounds better than not being there at all to her. For most of the smooth automated ride, she catches herself repeating the same ideas in her head: That she really doesn't care what happens anyway. Samus closes her eyes and tries listening to her tunes featuring some violent undertones over some sick beats until Pascal informs her they have arrived at the base.

******

After taking her fourth walk around of the sparring quarters, Samus was feeling good about herself again. No one had mentioned her tardiness, and she seemed to have blended in to her surroundings quite nicely. Maybe Commander Jacobson was off today, Samus pondered as she toiled with her sparring suit calibrations inside an empty female locker room which she was deeply familiar with. After a morning of self-loathing and concealer product application, she was eager to cover her entire body in armor and never be seen again. At this point in Samus' career, with Earth not engaged in any wartime conflict, her duties were little, and much of her time at base was left up to her as mid-level leadership. She outranked roughly half her squad now – a slight downgrade from a few years earlier – not that she gave many orders, or considered herself in command of anyone on base. She did show new recruits around and teach them some of the basics, but Commander Jacobson kept a short leash on everyone in the 19th Precept of the 89th Cavalry in the Union of Coalition Forces, which included the entirety of the planet, along with some neighboring friendlies within the Local Group of galaxies. For the most part, The Coalition was on the defensive; gathering intel on groups like Terruna, while also keeping abreast to any larger unfolding's in the Known Universe (KU) involving some big angry guy beating up on some smaller, nice, weaker guy... As naïve, self-serving, occasionally autocratic, and stupid as it sounded, it really came down to that. The Coalition's perceptions of what was "right" and "wrong" in the KU would determine who to get in conflict with, and when "live and let live" came into play. Terruna was on the tip of everyone's tongue these days. More reporting was coming back that their regime was still intact, despite Earth's best efforts to annihilate them after the terror cell failed to sink a full bloomed MohaveFlare into Earth's core. Most believe the flare would have activated every volcano on the planet within a few hours, and drenched the surface with a thousand times more lava then the syphon purifier systems could ever handle.

   Irregardless of their foiled plans, the Coalition received global praise for discovering the flare deep in the Atlantic before it could penetrate the surface, and in Coalition retaliation, Terruna received several High-Density Laser firings which evaporated any member of the group's known fleet for their efforts. Yet still, more and more stories of defectors were popping up through the intelligence channels. Samus attended conferences and private meetings where the latest intel had Terruna potentially in contact with an Omega Fissure, which, if deployed could breach Earth's laser defense shields and a direct hit could cut the planet in half. The whole idea that Earth may even be harboring human members of the regime made everyone a suspect. Many members of Samus' squad seemed on high alert to any suspicious behavior lately.

   Samus caught herself daydreaming again about the fears and dangers around the KU, and shook her head for some clearance. She funneled the tuff of her yellow-tinged platinum blonde ponytail back into the neck lining of her sparring suit before deploying it into action not unlike Ironman would have in the comics. The red and yellow trimmed Castominium Alloyed suit was identical to the combat version they would use in wartimes. Samus clocked her surroundings as she exited the ladies room and entered the large gymnasium where several officers, and many more cadets were sparring on the floor in similar garb. The front visor was a slightly translucent green, which essentially made the wearer unknown to any onlooker without inspecting the displayed dog tag that the suit automatically displayed over the right chest plate once authenticated and deployed by the user. "S. Aran – Corporal" was displayed in a light blue crest for her identification. Samus just loved that it didn't state sex, age, and financial stresses. The only exception between the sparring suit she wore, and the combat variety, was that the former carried no weaponry. In combat the suit was capable of firing multiple wave sourced beams, and if budget allowed for it, commanding officers were outfitted with standard Armor Piercing Missiles, and Super Missiles. Samus still chuckled, recalling the first time she heard "Super Missile" was a real thing, it sounded like a five-year-old had branded half the artillery that Earth's military stocked these days. By design, the suit fit like a glove and – like the combat version – could take one hell of a beating. The material that made up the components of the suit was gifted by the Chozo tribe of a distant, and still mysterious small region of the KU. The new alloy was later translated to English and widely called Castominium after it was discovered after being gifted to the Attorney General of The Coalition by a reclusive tribesmen of the Chozo who visited their planet very briefly, while unannounced; and left even more quickly with little explanations as to why he had gifted the distant galaxy cluster the unique, special alloy which would prove to be a major stepping stone to elevating the Coalition's military defenses.

   "You wanna' spar?" A distinguishable, strong sounding, deep voice came through the suit next to her. Samus checked his badge and confirmed who he was, D. Mercer. The D stood for Darryl she was pretty sure, and he was a lower ranked officer. Samus tried picturing him with his clothes off, which was tough given that he was wearing a similar sparring suit. He was tall. A big plus given Samus' natural height at 6' 3". She dated shorter out of necessity, but shorty's needed to make up the difference with a big bank account if they wanted to bed Samus.

   Samus armed the impact settings on her sparring suit and took position across her foe in the nearest ring. There were no blasters allowed in the gym, meaning this would be pure, physical, out maneuvering. The power suits offered an equal playing field to everyone. Darryl strength out of the suit meant nothing inside. His arm and leg reach could play a factor, but Samus was grinning from ear to ear as she lined up with the tall, drink of water. She loved punishing lower ranked men, especially given his size. She faked him with a grapple move to the right and flipped over his left shoulder as he clumsily moved toward her baiting movements. She tossed him in the air, easily sending his body out-of-bounds, and setting off Samus' favourite sound in the world: The out-of-bounds sparring buzzer! As it sounded, the scorecard gave her a point, which was set to a best of seven series and the light beams that surrounded the sparring ring turned from green to red as Darryl landed on his backside twenty feet out of the ring. Darryl quickly got to his feet and charged over the threshold of the ring for round two.

   Darryl nodded at Samus as he reoriented himself with his surroundings. "Oh its gonna' be like that huh? Its gonna' be like that?!" He shouted while pounding his fists together.

   "Yeah, its gonna' be like that." Samus replied shortly before landing a hyper charged power kick to his solar plexus, which sent him rolling backwards, head over heels in a full, airborne reverse summersault over the out-of-bounds line again setting off the corresponding sounds and light show.