Old fragments, new horrors. (Post MP3, a year after)

"Well, its easier to keep track of numbers, I suppose." he said, "Unlike the humans who often have multiple people with the same name."

Going through the next room, Rackus opened the next door and found what appeared to be an elevator with a bright orange hologram. The pirate stepped into it, and the elevator hummed to life, and then quickly rocketed downward. At this point, Rackus didn't bother talking, as it became almost deafeningly loud from the rushing wind around them.

He had heard that the elevators on Talon IV were fast, but he didn't know that they would be blindingly fast. The commando had even heard a few stories about some unlucky pirates who had not kept their limbs within the circle of the elevator, having lost a few limbs.

Talon stepped onto the elevator along with him, then felt the elevator rocket downward, catching him off-guard a bit. But he stood still otherwise, not letting the sudden movement make him lose balance. Something in the suit definitely helped with that bit.

After a good while, the elevator eventually slowed down, and came to a complete stop, causing Rackus to almost lose his footing. Almost. Ahead of the two was a door. There was another behind them

"(Fire base nearby, follow rear path to reach it.)" his navigation system announced

"Not far now."he said aloud to Talon

He shot the one behind them, and proceeded into a corridor that had a small pool of lava around a stone platform. There was a door on the other side. Rackus shot the door, and then simply hopped along.

Helix meanwhile, has passed through the entrance to the Chozo Ruins, having gone up an elevator and through the first "room" to get to the main hub of the ruins of the advanced birdman race (And yes, that's actually the direct translation of their original name(Chojin Zoku) from Japanese to English). Now he had a conundrum, namely: he had never really explored the Chozo Ruins so much, having left that to a few of the lower level pirate grunt workers instead, seeing as how he was a high ranking part of the Elite program by the time he found out about them. He vaguely knew where things were, but he had never really found out the exact layout, or explored too carefully. Maps provided to the Galactic Federation by the Hunter suggested that the elevator into the Magmoor Caverns would be at the opposite end of the plaza he was in, through a few doors elevated well above the ground level. Records indicate an energy-tank had been located on the ledge leading to the first of said doors, but that the Hunter...Samus Aran that is, Helix needed to break out of his habits gained while a part of the Pirates, seeing as he was no longer. That aside, he felt he should likely stop thinking about so many useless matters and try out whatever entrances and hallways were most likely to get him to the elevator to the Caverns quickest. Having finally come to a conclusion, Helix stops wasting time standing at the entrance and begins walking through the plaza, passing (and shortly examining) a large tree husk that had a strange hole in it, evidence of a powerful explosion still scattered around the edge. Stranger still was the fact that the hole led into an enclosed space just slightly larger than would be necessary to contain a humanoid creature around the size of the Hunter. But the strange semi-natural architecture of this planet was something to ponder later, for now he had to keep moving. This place was dangerous. Not physically perhaps, but there were so many distractions from his mission, and he needed to get moving. Didn't he? Hmm. As he thinks back on it, there was no real time limit to this mission, and he would be paid the same either way, so why did he need to hurry? Why not relax and take in the sights? Ponder the ponderables? Still, he had to admit to himself that the Phendrana base interested him greatly, he had only been present there briefly before he grew large enough to need to be moved to the Phazon Mines, and he heard that the Hunter had destroyed a fair amount of the research pieces and even stolen the thermal visioning equipment that they had stored in the research lab Aether, on the Eastern end of the base. Well, enough pondering a Hunter-sized hole in a tree, it was time to move on. Or it would be, IF HE WASN'T BEING ATTACKED BY A BUG AS BIG AS HE WAS WITH A BIO-METAL SHIELD PLATE OVER ITS HEAD! A Plated Beetle, either an evolution or a further stage of growth of the standard and simple "beetle" species common on Tallon IV, more resilient, stronger, faster, and more defensible due to their bio-metal plated cranial shields, they were more powerful in just about every way than their cousins (or younger counterparts) the beetles. Of course, this wasn't really much other than A MASSIVE ANNOYANCE! Helix roared out his bestial battle cry as the worthless creature came charging towards him. He hated these "Plated Beetles", having been forced to fight captured specimens of the race repeatedly to test his power back when he was still in his mutationary growth state. Luckily, at his current size and strength, they weren't much any more, and he could easily kill them simply by picking them up, tossing them onto their backs, and ripping off their unprotected back end. Which is what he did, rather quickly in fact, before tossing the corpse aside and continuing on past the half-pipe structure and steps. He shortly saw the ledge he needed to get onto, walking over to the wall and sinking his claws into it to climb to the top. Once he got there, it was a simple matter of time before he made his way to the elevator, the Chozo Ruins entrance to the Magmoor Caverns. Finally, now it wouldn't be too much longer before he made his way to the Phendrana ice labs to examine what they had left, and could get moving on to the phazon mines. He supposed he should probably make a stop off at the fire base as well, seeing as it was on his way anyways.

Talon nodded. As he stepped into the place, his suit told him of the rising temperature and activated its hazard shielding, a pink glow flickering over his suit as it turned on before disappearing until they entered a superheated room. The reason it wasn't permanently on was because it emitted a low humming noise in his helmet that annoyed him after a while. A pretty petty reason, but he wasn't exactly permanently walking in lava.

Rackus continued onward. He wanted to strike up a conversation, but wasn't sure of how to exactly begin one. The commando would have gone in with something like "So what is it that you're here for?", but he avoided that one most of all, because he knw that Talon would more than likely follow up with asking Rackus the same. Of course, there was every possibility that they would have said "Can't say" or "None of your business", but the pirate didn't want to take the chance.

He opened the door that was at the other end, and started to briskly walk through, when a burst fire shot straight down from the roof of the narrow passage he entered. Holding the door opened, he noticed that there were several vents, each one shooting flames out individually. A few seconds, one group would activate, a few seconds after another group would do the same with the previous group having deactivated.

"Careful Talon, we'll need to time these." he said to his companion

Once there was a lull, he leaped through and then waited for the next one to stop. He continued on like this, going, and then waiting. It was when he was halfway through that he saw what appeared to be a lake bed of lava, which had a few small, scattered islands around the room, each one with what appeared to be a triclops, a medium sized bug with three pronounced horns on the front of its face, guarding the islands diligently as each one searched for nourishment.

Helix entered the Magmoor Caverns from nearly the opposite direction, only a half-minute or so after Rackus and Talon. The first thing he saw after stepping out of the elevator room was a shaft carved (theoretically) into the natural stone of the caverns, with moving platforms going along the Z-axis of the shaft. Luckily, it took far (very far) more to hurt Helix than a fall of this height, so he jumps down rather than bothering with the platforms, seeing a carved rectangle like hallway with various Chozo symbols and script carved into the walls. It was also evident that there were some kind of heat release valves present, as there was a nearly constant spray of steam from pipes situated along the walls. As he neared the end of the tunnel, he came to a more open area, with two skittering shelled creatures crawling along the only two platforms leading where he needed to go. Which was, unfortunately one of those little tiny doors that had obviously not been designed for a creature of his size. That aside, ever since entering the caverns, Helix could have sworn that he could hear some kind of chanting, coupled with drums, some kind of metallic percussion sound that went off at timed intervals, and some kinds of pipes or something. There was something very strange going on here, and it disturbed him greatly. But, he needed to get through this place more than he had a desire to avoid it, so he pushed the strange, all-pervasive omnipresent sound (that was somewhat akin to music of some kind) to the back of his mind and pushed forward, ignoring the platforms and jumping straight into the magmic substance below before climbing easily onto the ledge with the door. Now, getting the door open was no issue, but how to get through it without ending up dislocating a joint or two?

Several minutes pass as Helix contemplates the doorway, trying to find some way to get through with at least some semblance of comfort, and the only functional solution he can think of would be to crawl, potentially backwards. He sighs to himself, glad that there were no sentients around. This was going to be an embarrassing mission.

Talon followed behind Rackus, using the same timing that he did. He wasn't quite sure what to say either, what conversations to start. Most of his jumps were blinks, which probably negates the need for any sort of timing, but he wanted to match Rackus's pace.

Eventually, the commando made it through. Now all he had to do was navigate the islands. He was about to relay this to Talon, when suddenly a large, five-eyed serpent arose from the lava, and howled at the commando before exhaling a cone of flames. Rackus dodged to the side, and fired a few rounds at the creature's face, but his shots seemed to just agitate it.

"Talon! I need your assistance!"he called out, as he dodged another blast from the creature's mouth.

Talon watched as the serpent appeared, teleporting to the side to avoid the cone of flames. Landing in the lava which caused him to move quickly to climb out of it and back onto the land. His shields took a bit of damage, but he was fine. "Gotta judge those better next time," he said, before charging his ice attacks, firing ice spikes toward the thing's face.

After a short trip (and a total of two doorways he had to crawl through backwards), Helix made it to a round cavernous room with a pool of magma acting as its main feature, coupled with a pillar connecting the bottom of the room and the ceiling. As Helix approached the pool of magma/lava, a large serpentine creature that he identified as a "magmoor", the creatures these caverns and cave systems were named for, burst out from the pool, assaulting him with a fiery lava breath. Which he promptly wiped off of his armor before it could cool and harden. As it turned out, hyper-elite pirates adorned in denzium-bendesium alloy armor were quite resistant to heat (seeing as he needed super-heated plasma to get uncomfortable, I suppose that makes sense). Helix jumps into the pool, walking over to and then grabbing the magmoor, holding on by the region closest to being able to be called the neck. He squeezes uncomfortably tight for the creature, and brings its face down to his level (which wasn't too much of a drop), growling menacingly at it before hitting it lightly on the head...of course, what was lightly for him, was usually deadly for other creatures, and he ended up severely damaging the serpentine creature's cranium, causing blood and grey-matter to spill out before he tosses the near-corpse aside and continues on his way, punching through a few weak walls made of sandstone and Talloric alloy (Though, he needed to cleave the "wall" above to fit through the opening) before ending up in another cavern similar to the one he had just exited. Helix sighs after looking around, seeing that, of course, there was another Chozo door standing in his way across the magma pool. And another Magmoor, but that wasn't really important, and he showed it such in a similar manner to the last one before moving on his way.

The magmoor was struck by the ice spikes, killing it instantly as they dug right into its skull. The creature fell back into the lava, not be seen again. Rackus, again was met with mixed emotions. He was glad that he had aid, but the commando could have also easily activated his suit and taken it on himself. Thankfully his own kind were not there to witness his act of cowardice.

"Thanks, I owe you one." he said to Talon, and used his thrusters to head for one of the islands

Right away, the tripod that guarded the island he was one headed right for him. Unfortunately for it, Rackus simply kicked it off, sending it into the lava, where it cried out before it melded with the molten rock. After that, he saw what looked like a cave, as well as a door at the end of it.

Using his thrusters, he headed straight for the door, landed, and then shot it open.

(Okay, dude, I recognize pretty readily the rooms you're talking about, but the Tallon Overworld entrance doesn't lead to any of them, at least not in the order you refer to them. I know because I popped a copy of MP into my gamecube, and I literally have the game playing right now.)
(In fact, thinking on how you described them, I'm starting to think you are describing the...Phendrana...west(?) entrance to Magmoor...well, the elevator entrance to Phendrana that is. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm genuinely realizing this and trying to inform you so you can figure out what to do, be it nothing, or making far reaching changes, or only slight ones.)
(Actually, looking back, while your wording of the entrance leads to the image of the/a Phendrana elevator, and the first room wouldn't be accurate if it was the Tallon entrance, the third room mentioned does have something similar/exact in the position mentioned, and would be in the room after the room to the left of the Tallon Overworld entrance...I'm in it right now, after the flames and at the pool with the magmoor.)
(Right, not left. Now I'm feeling stupid, mixing up my directions.)

Talon nodded when he thanked him, teleporting toward the island when he moved there and then following after him through the door. "So you guys made a base in this sorta place? What was there to find here?" he asked. He wasn't sure if putting a base in a place like this was some sort of extreme stealth or stupidity on their part. Maybe a bit of both.

As Helix gets back up from his backwards crawl through the tight doorway and turns around, he finds himself in a rather small enclosed room, divided into two nearly symmetrical halves by a grate/gate like structure, bisected by a hollow pillar transporting lava/magma harvested from below the room to a place above it (or perhaps vice versa), with four tubes spewing fiery gas at regular intervals. Hmph, what a simple construct, far from enough to block his path. Helix walks to the lefter half of the structure, raising his right arm and cleaving through the grated metal "fence" with his powerful claws. He repeats this process several times, and when he has finished, he has broken open a path wide enough for him to fit through. Throughout this endeavor (if a minute one), the grated flooring is creaking and groaning underneath his behemothan weight, and he resolves to move quickly, lest his supports give way 'neath him, causing him to fall to the ground below. Walking to the other side of the room, he sighs as he catches sight of the doorway he would need to pass through this time. Was it merely his mind's interpretation, or were these paths and doorways getting smaller? Aside, he still needed to get through, so he disrupted the energized blast-shield covering the door, waiting for it to open way, before resigning himself to the embarrassing backwards crawl once more. Though, once he reached the other side of his torture, he found himself not breathing, but screaming his relief to the heavens. FINALLY! AN OPEN SPACE THAT WOULDN'T CONFINE HIS MOVEMENTS AND BODY TO SUCH TIGHT ENCLOSURES! As his outburst subsides, he looks around his freeing room, known as the Triclops Pit. He first takes notice of the grated flooring below, which (in similar fashion the room he had just exited) had arthropodal creatures with tripartite mandibles, commonly referred to as "triclops", though this name was in fact a misnomer. The triclops had no eyes to speak of, the only things coming in three on its body being the large solid "mandibles" that gripped its prey. Far above the grated flooring was in fact, a ceiling, though it was so high that he could almost not see it, and he willingly chose not to take notice of it in order not to sour his lovely mood from escaping the tight tunnels and small caverns he had been confined to until now. The third thing he took direct notice of were the floating platforms and grated walkways set into the walls to provide a path, obviously laid by his pirate (ex)brethren. He sighed a breath of relief once more, thanking his stars that he could finally be free of those caves and such. He began jumping along the path made by the pirate platforms, still joyous at his freedom, until his gut was wrenched to the bottom, not taking time to sink, as he saw the doorway. He broke out in the closest equivalent to a cold sweat that his body could perform, as he pierced the blast-shield and looked through the small doorway. He heart and hopes were shattered, as he witnessed the tightest, most enclosed space he had yet experienced in this hell, and he ended up resigning himself to this seemingly eternal fate of enclosure within these spaced walls. He silently longed to return to the spacious Tallon Overworld, or the near-fondly remembered Phazon Mines that were constructed in such a way that even he could navigate them easily if one knew the back paths (which he did, seeing as they had been constructed for himself, Upsilon, and the other Elites). Luckily, his broken-hearted state only lasted a short time, as when he finally made his way through the tight tunnel (smashing apart several pistons in the way to pass more freely and quickly) and crawled through one last door, he found himself finally in another open area. Only this time, the cave (the Monitor Station) had an opening to the sky. Even if he was to desire to leave and progress forward, given his intended destination, he could merely climb out and walk along the top of the caverns! He need not subject himself to the enclosures again!

Rackus was a little taken aback by the question. While it was not to be an entirely unexpected one, the commando had still not anticipated the question. As he passed through, and made his way across what appeared to be a metal bridge with destroyed bits of other metal and glass, Rackus replied to Talon.

"To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure myself. I was not here at the time of its construction, nor have I done enough research into the bases to know of what to expect...in fact, to my understanding there shouldn't be anything of worth." he answered, "Assuming that all went well, there shouldn't be any data on the terminals, nor should there be any sort of information at all.

That won't stop me from checking to be sure, though. thought the commando, as he opened the next door at the end of the bridge. He didn't want to divulge his plans to Talon, after all, there was still no telling as to what his motives were.

As Rackus entered the Monitor Station area, his eyes immediately locked onto the large metal structure in the center of the lava pit. It was Fire Base alright, but something was very wrong. There were a few Despair Class defense turrets, although they were clearly deactivated, as they weren't moving at all.

"This doesn't make sense!", as the pirate began to speak to himself out loud, he couldn't help but notice a familiar, distant blue thing out of the corner of his eye, "There shouldn't be anything here! Standard protocol states-OH COME ON!!"

Sure enough, his earlier hunch had been correct. Low and behold, he had crossed paths with the Elite once more.

Talon blinked as he looked toward him, then at the elite. He didn't quite like the idea of fighting a guy who was leading him around, especially in a place where he didn't understand where the hell he was, so if there was a fight he'd probably sit it out. Or interfere in some way that doesn't get the Federation pissed at him.

As Rackus and Talon entered the Monitor Station not minutes after Helix, he noticed motion out of the corner of his eye. When he looked over, lo and behold, he saw across the way the betrayed Pirate (along with the Federation hired hunter). But they were of no import to him at the moment: his mission took priority in this situation, as neither of them were likely to interfere.
 That in mind, Helix jumped once with his powerful legs, nearly rocketing himself onto the volcanic stone platform that formed the base of the three layered station designed to monitor and record the status of the, still functioning, Geo-thermal power production and refining works that the pirates constructed their small base in Magmoor Caverns to make use of.
 Once comfortably situated on the platform, he began climbing the tower structure, jumping from platform to platform in order to ascend the structure, stopping briefly on the second tier to access the computer terminals and collect the data stored on them (anywhere from five to seven years worth of Geo-thermal readings, records of major and minor occurrences in the area, and information regarding the Hunter's invasion as well as their operations in Magmoor Caverns), finding activation programs for the still present Despair class turrets. He refrained from activating them, as he not only had no need, but they were not programmed to ignore himself or the other two in the room. No need to incite attack on himself and the two who were also in the room.
 Suddenly, he began thinking about the fact that Rackus (Though he didn't know that name yet) and Talon were present here. Why? Well, Talon could have been hired to perform the same mission as him, but what about the pirate? Why would he have any reason to be there at that point? Was he on the same mission as well? But no, that couldn't be it, as the Pirates would have no need of whatever data was still here, in fact...Why was there even any data or machines left? As he began to think back, protocol stated that such things were to be collected upon completion or failure of a mission, and all traces of their presence removed, so why did so much remain?
 Helix had enough of these mysteries, and decided to call the one likelier to have insight into the matter. He walked onto the short bridge leading to a wall, with only an even shorter bride-like platform just to the left and above it being nearby. He then called down to the last place he had seen the Pirate, saying in his native tongue "(Former counter-intelligence operative! Come up here, we have words to share!)" Before walking back into the terminal room, accessing the computer network and trying to find more files, including any that would be likely to have information regarding this obvious breach of protocol.

Above all of this, sitting atop a horizontal facing vent structure reaching up from the topmost tier of the Monitor Station, was a freelancer named Ehra. He himself had just recently done the same as Helix himself was currently, acquiring a copy of all of the data and schematics present on the Monitor Station computer terminals. He was also the reason that the turret defense systems were not currently active, having logged into the terminal controlling them and deactivated all functions other than personnel identification.
 In addition to these things, he was here, and had waited here, for another reason. His secondary and tertiary missions were to observe Pirate Unit-42963, aka "Mad 42" to his superiors, aka "Rackus", as well as delay his completion of and return from his mission, both to better observe his actions to identify if he was still loyal to or likely to betray the Space Pirates, and just plain to keep him out of his superiors hair. Ehra took it that he annoyed them from their choice of wording and overall evident attitude.
 Having seen Rackus and the Elite both enter the room within a short time of one another, though he didn't recognize the feminine figure standing near Rackus.
 Now, he recognized the Elite for a very special reason. He recognized the Elite Pirate as "Elite Pirate Sigma; Helix", as this information was provided by High Command, with orders coming directly from the recently cloned Ridley himself. Those orders were to hunt and kill the traitorous Elite Pirate Sigma, a mission which would pay more than double what his other two missions from the pirates (those being the observation and delay of Unit-42963) and his data and technology recovery mission from the Galactic Federation, combined. Needless to say, this was a high priority on his list, just below observing Rackus (as High-Command had informed him that if he failed to complete said mission, even if he successfully killed Helix, he would go unpaid, and he didn't want to have to go through the trouble of killing and then cleaning up what was left over of the Space Pirates because they denied him payment for services delivered).
 Now he had a job to do, and he was going to do it. He sat quietly and stealthily atop the heat(Theoretically)-vent, observing Unit-42963 from his perch. However, when the Elite called said unit up to his position, that changed things. He needed to move, and he needed to move now. With that in mind, he activated his camera unit and shot out several audio-visual recording devices which planted into the walls, thus allowing him to continue monitoring the group, before he activated his ship's teleporter unit to recall him into it.
 Once on-board, he had Epoch blow up the recordings and project them on his ship's frontal interior screen (the "window" thing on the front), keeping an eye on them from the comfort of his experimental Hunter-class Gunship provided by the Federation (without their knowledge of course). He ended up chuckling a little to himself every time he used his ship, the Delano XIII, as he remembered how he got his ill-gotten good. But that was a story for another time and place, seeing as he had something to do for now.

Rackus grumbled to himself as he watched the Elite make its move, although he was more concerned about the turrets. As he said to himself already, there shouldn't be anything here, not even a single terminal. That raised the question as to what exactly happened here? Rackus had heard stories about his brethren attempting to keep Metroids as pets, and as stupid as that was, he just couldn't see them being stupid enough to disobey one of the most important rules when out on the field.

His attention was snatched when the Elite called out to him. He was a little annoyed by the "former intelligence operative" part, but nevertheless, Rackus activated his thrusters, and used them to head for where the Elite was. He was about to correct the Elite on his title, when he noticed the various terminals that were still there.

"Okay, something is very wrong here." he said, and started to make his way to the terminals, ignoring the Elite that was near him

No doubt that this was why the Elite had called upon him, and rightly so, because now Rackus was about to find out what the hell was going on. The commando activated a function on his visor. From his point of view, a cross hair appeared on the screen, and the world around him had changed to a lime green color, to everyone else, his visor appeared to change from blue to lime green. The terminals appeared in a bright orange color to him through his visor. Right away, the cross hair on his visor locked onto one of the data terminals. He quickly but calmly pressed a few buttons on his arm canon.

The screens on the terminals began to flicker, as did Rackus' visor. Within a few seconds though, the terminal data appeared on the inside of his visor. Sure enough, there was still data on the terminals, which made Rackus even more concerned.

As he sifted through the data, every few seconds he would press a button or two on his arm canon, which would cause a data file to be moved from his visor and back onto the terminal itself. After a minute or so of sifting, he then gave a closer look to the data he had collected.

"(What in the name of...)" he muttered to himself in his native tongue when he noticed the dates on some of the files he had collected, and then said aloud more to himself than the Elite or Talon, "(According to this...the teams that were stationed here on this planet originally never left...)"

Talon blinked a bit at that. "What? Didn't the space pirates abandon this place a while ago? Or that lady wiped them out, I forget," he said with a shrug. He didn't 100% understand what was going on, but when he was briefed he was told the place was abandoned.

"(Of course they didn't.) *Sigh*. Humanoid, the Hunter wiped out most of the Space Pirate forces on this planet close to three years ago, when they still had phazon operations running here, and there was still an abundance of phazon being produced by Metroid Prime. But the few that survived should have left, taking what data they could and destroying the rest to eliminate any signs of their presence. It's standard protocol that any grunt straight out of basic would know. Though I confess that, until just recently, I myself had forgotten." Helix responds, first a simple response to the newfound knowledge, then replying to the feminine humanoid sent by the federation.
 Helix then sighed to himself once more, saying under his breath (in the Pirate tongue) "(if there are still Pirates here, I've got work to do.)" Before walking back to the glassy bridge leading to the dead-end wall. This time however, he followed the bridge to the end, climbing easily onto the nearby platform and then the similar bridge above. From there he made his way to the remaining computer terminals present at the Monitor station, logging and hacking in, retrieving all the data specific to the terminals before smashing them with his claws.
 From there, standing atop the three tiered monitor station, he walked onto the folding bridge connected to a nearby spinner unit (it was locked in its upright bridge position at that time), turning around to face the far wall leading up to the opening in the ceiling above. And then, with a long running start, he leapt with all his might to the other side of the room, hitting and digging his claws into the wall, beginning to scale it easily.
 When he finally made his way to the top, climbing over the lip of the ledge onto the "ceiling" of the entirety of the Magmoor caverns. From there, he saw two obvious towering elevator shafts piercing into the sky. Obviously the elevators leading to the Phendrana Drifts South and East (Don't quote me on that second one, which would be the closer one, while "South" would be right nearby the Phazon Mines West Elevator), with a third that he believed likely led to the Phazon Mines, if he was remembering the layout of these places correctly.
 Helix began navigating the vast rocky plains above the Magmoor Caverns, working his way from the Monitor Station all the way to the Phendrana South elevator. He had a long way to go from here. Nowhere to go but up, and the climb was just about to start, as he sunk his claws into the side of the shaft, scaling the immense wall with the horrific red-orange sky as his backdrop.

Ehra watched from his cameras as the Elite jumped up to the top tier of the Monitor Station and destroyed the computer terminals. But when he jumped over to the wall and began climbing to the top of the caverns, working his way up onto the roof of the magma filled volcanic biome, Ehra had to turn off several of his camera feeds so that he could watch the event directly from his ship's front viewshield.
 "Ha!" Ehra would have never figured the Elite for such kinds of actions, and he watched as it worked its way across the rocky plain that formed the dome roof to much of the Magmoor Caverns, and eventually found itself at the elevator shaft leading to the Phendrana Drifts. Which it also then began climbing?! HAA! Hysterical! Ehra couldn't stop laughing at this ridiculous beast; he was almost sorry he was going to have to kill it! Almost.
 But his primary mission (well, secondary, but who's counting?) took priority, since if it didn't get finished, he was going to lose the bulk of his pay. He turned his attention back to the camera feeds, keeping his eyes primarily focused on Rackus and the feminine Federation hired freelancer, watching the former's every move and listening to his every word. The latter didn't really mean much of anything right then, but depending on what that armor held, could end up meaning a lot after his missions were complete.

"I know that!" Rackus had snapped at the Elite when he had heard it speak to Talon, believing that it had been speaking to the commando

He may not have been as familiar as he should have on the operations therein, but both from the mission debriefing his superiors had given him, as well as some of the data he had just sifted through, he knew full well that "The Hunter" had a hand in heavily hindering the operations on the planet.

According to the data he was reading however, it seemed that the remaining forces had indeed planned on retreating, but something had happened in what appeared to be the Phazon Mining Sector. Unfortunately that was all the commando could decipher as any other files that could have lead to an indication as to what happened seemed to have been corrupted. One thing was certain though, a few of the files seemed to have been messages that had been sent from the Mining Sector, but as previously stated, their contents were corrupted.

He accessed the map for the cavern's area, with the intent on locating the elevator for Phazon Mines. According to the map however, it seemed that all other elevator systems were operational except the Phazon Mine transport elevator.

The commando had turned to where he thought the Elite was still standing, ready to tell his "acquaintance" that any other pirates were likely long since dead...but of course, the juggernaut had already left. "He's fast for someone so bulky..." he muttered in agitation

He then turned to Talon, "I need to head for Phazon mines, but it seems the elevator for that is not functional. So, I'm going to head for Phendrenna Drifts in order to make contact with my ship. Do you still wish to accompany me?

Talon nodded. His suit had some decent Phazon shielding. Getting super close to it wouldn't be a good move, but he could be in areas around it at least. "Wouldn't mind still coming along," he said. He felt like he could come across any active Space Pirate operations just by following this guy around. Especially in a Phazon mine.

As Helix climbed the impressive tower, he almost wondered just how long it was going to take for him to be able to actually make it to the top and finally reach the Phendrana region. Luckily however, it wasn't long after he started thinking in that direction that he found himself  there finally. Well, at the area that, were he inside the elevator shaft, would be inside the boundaries of Phendrana.  Still, in his case, there was some more legwork (or should it be called armwork?) to be done, as he had to climb over and work his claws into the frozen icy wall adjacent to his position and providing a large percent of the support of the surrounding several hundred meters.

Eventually, after much effort and icy slipping, Helix managed to scale the permafrost wall that was acting as support for the surrounding areas hanging above the Magmoor Caverns, climbing up atop the wall and surveying the area. Normally on would be within the confines of the icy caves and small tunnels were they in this region, but luckily Helix had his way around that: using the areas surrounding the individual "Rooms" that usually confine entities trying to navigate the Drifts. This gave him ready access to both Research labs Hydra and Aether, something he was already in the midst of taking advantage of by jumping between areas and scaling ice walls until he eventually reached the connecting bridge. Now he just had a choice to make between the two labs, and which to investigate first.

Rackus nodded to Talon, and then proceeded to go toward a doorway just across a bridge that happened to be nearby. With a few presses of the buttons on his arm cannon, he saved the files he had found to a folder in his visor's system, then disconnected the link between his visor and the terminal. The color of his visor returned to normal, and the terminal had gone off line.

He shot the door across the bridge, and hurriedly made his way to it.

The room beyond the door was a narrow passage, tight and cramped. What appeared to have been a solid wall with a small hole at the base, was now thin opening, just big enough for Talon and the commando to move through. No doubt that the wall had cracked open from the mining equipment that had been left behind.

Rackus slowly moved through the opening, and at the same time, saw another door on the other end. He shot it once he had passed through, which opened to reveal a room with another elevator. One that would lead to Phendrenna Drifts.