Bounty Hunters along the Crimson Stars (for Crooked)

[Dungeon]

The vast emptiness of outer-space that surrounded the unnamed planet of TS3-59ZA was tranquil and silent, as space was meant to be. However, a stolen ship rocketed from the surface of the planet at break-neck speeds; quickly exiting the planet's field of gravity and shattering the peace of the scene like a sledgehammer through a glass pane. A smile curled on to the blue lips of it's captain as the ship sailed through the stars. It was an ecstatic smile, one that was only worn by someone who had had nothing to be happy about recently, but just received the best possible news. Someone who hadn't had a good day in years, but woke up on the right side of the bed one morning and forced their day to be well. And that example wasn't far off, seeing as she had just captured her greatest rival: her own sister. Nebula's smile widened as the set the ship into autopilot, looking back from her seat and down the hall of the ship. She couldn't exactly see the cell that Gamora was locked in, but just knowing that she was there put butterflies in her stomach.

Having freed herself from the clutches of her father, Thanos, Nebula was in no way inclined to return Gamora to Titan. She had spent days, weeks, months, thinking of what she would do once Gamora was in her custody. Should she torture her? Beat her? The options were oh-so-many, and not a one of them didn't make her excited to exact just revenge. However, these thoughts and plans were for later. Nebula had a small base for herself set up on a mostly vacant moon not far from her current location. If she could manage to get there unmolested and transfer Gamora to the holding rooms there, than she was certain that she'd never be heard from again.

Nebula's smile widened even further as she shifted her attention back to the passing stars. Oh yes, this was a good day.

It was an average day. As average as one gets, soaring across the great cosmos in a ship modeled after one's own helmet, decked in bright, orange metal armor that weighed in at about two-hundred pounds. The wearer of said suit sat back in her seat, reclining over the many panels and buttons that aligned her ship's main control panel. Behind her surged green tubes of energy that lit up the dim ship, with pods for her own hostages in the back. Sat floating next to the golden-haired huntress adorned in such a massive suit was a little glob of green, amorphous goop, with three, bulbous, berry-looking organs contained in it's gelatinous form and four little pincers poking out below. Taking a sip of her own drink, the woman held up what looked like a battery for the little brain-shaped monster to suck on, like a pacifier.

The trip to Zebes was going as planned, Samus thought, until a new image displayed on her screen; "FUEL RESERVES LOW. REFILL ASAP." That caught the huntress's attention. Sitting up in her seat, Samus moved to her control panel and reread the warning a few times over, groaning at the unexpected detour, but quickly punching up the nearest fuel station into her database and preparing for a trip there. In the meantime, she'd better check her credit numbers... Uh-oh.

The screen on her mobile device reflected back a familiar number. A big, fat, "O." Samus face-palmed hard, before looking over to her little floating companion and complaining, "I thought I told you to cut me off after two." Gesturing to her ship's trash unit no doubt filled with empty bottles. With a sigh, Samus stopped her ship in mid-space and searched up a new database - one full of pictures, with faces, price-tags, and addresses. A quick scroll through the many 'WANTED' posters until she found one from one 'Ebony Maw.'

"GAMORA" the poster read, the image depicting a serious-faced woman with green skin and black and purple hair. "WANTED ALIVE." Easy enough. Dirty money, without a kill-count, so Samus turned her ship around and let the software boot up her route to wherever this woman was. What was interesting... the signal for her person was moving. On a ship, Samus figured. Well, she wasn't one to shy from a little high-jacking, so her cruiser spun around and headed off towards the blipping light.

It was a mere skip across the galaxy to get to the wayward starship marked on Samus’ radar. Following the signal with her ship on auto-pilot, Samus lounged in her chair, helmet in her lap as she teased a finger under the metroid’s fangs, the little alien parasite closing its mandibles to try and catch her like a cat. As she giggled with idle self-amusement, her ship sent out another alert - “DESTINATION APPROACHING.” Sure enough, Samus sat up to see the cruiser she was after. Pathetic little ship, it was; couldn’t have been a newer model at any rate. Either way, her woman was aboard it, so Samus lazily tapped a finger down to her control panel, made a few specifications, and then hit a big, red button on her screen labeled “CONFIRM;” and off her bullet went.

Static, sphere-shaped and purple - the ball fired straight towards the drifting cruiser and slammed into the main engine, the thruster it contacted with sputtering out uselessly upon contact. The EMP did no physical damage to the ship; merely stopped it. And now, Samus pulled her ship over the largest quadrant of the portly rocket and began a slow descent onto its roof.

“Showtime.” She sat up, giving an affectionate smooch to her metroid pet as she started her way out, every step bringing a loud “CLANK!” underneath her as she walked.

[Dungeon]

The smile plastered on Nebula's face vanished when her ship lurched suddenly, reaching a halt almost immediately. The blue-skinned cyborg scowled and looked to her console in assessment of what had just happened. Her engines didn't seem too damaged, but they were operating at zero percent. With a growl, she stood, the tight lavender jumpsuit that she wore crinkling slightly as she moved to suddenly. She was on her way down the corridor to the holding cell that Gamora was in, believing that it was her Guardian friends that had caught up with her, before something caught her attention. She heard...footsteps? Nebula froze and looked upwards towards the noise, hearing them land on the roof of her ship. Nova Corps? Pirates? Nebula was someone with no shortage in enemies, so whoever was on her roof was most likely not a friend.

Nebula quickly moved back to her seat and grabbed the plasma rifle from underneath her chair, aiming it upwards at the location of the footsteps. Her mechanical eye zoomed in on the surface of her ceiling, and her finger itched against the smooth trigger of the gun. The moment that the intruder made a move, she'd be ready to retaliate.

Stealth wasn’t exactly Samus’ strong-suit, as her ship descended upon the larger space-craft beneath it. Once it did finally make connection, a large, round tube dropped down from her ship’s belly, clashing down against the metal beneath it and suctioning on, air-tight to the vessel. With a few presses of a button, the tube began to heat up, then spin, until a clear, solid hole was sliced in the roof of the airship without the vacuum of space causing any disturbance between the two. With her access point cut into the ship, Samus re-adorned her helmet, swung her arms out behind her, and made a foot-first leap into the hole of the ship.

If Nebula didn’t know where her intruder was coming from, she would then - “CLANG,” went Samus’ two-hundred pound set of armor as she landed, the tube she came from closing up behind her to keep out any possible intruders while she was away (something she had learned to be more careful of after visiting the LV-426 colony) Samus held her arm-cannon in her palm as she entered the darkness of the ship she had boarded. There was no obvious crew, no lights or signs of life - merely rows of empty cages with no passengers. But the GUI transferred to her helmet from the ship insisted; her ‘Gamora’ was on-board, and alive. Somewhere.

The quiet of the ship didn’t sit well with her. So Samus walked, sneakily as she could in her megaton armor, keeping eyes out on both sides while moving closer to the dot on her map. A simple eye’s look at the ship, and she had a few criticisms - something this big needs a crew to man, and the uptake of the cruiser spoke to that. A bit weary of her all-too-quiet surroundings, Samus cocked her arm-cannon back, letting a little blue swirl begin to form inside her barrel as she walked. The energy was pulled straight from the air and compacted into a tight ball, which housed itself inside Samus’ armor, a charge shot ready to be fired should she need to.

Fortunately, it was a matter of steps until she should be finding whoever this ‘Gamora’ is. And if she really was alive or not.