“I can’t believe they gave us this assignment. We’re both civil engineers! We build bridges, not babysit phazon-infused Metroids!”

“I don’t know… I get that they’re super dangerous, and that I’m not really qualified to research them, but they’re still kinda cute.”

“…I was going to put up with this but I think I’ll ask for a transfer to guard duty.”

“You always know the exact words that will hurt me the most.”

“Then stop giving me a reason to use them.”

“Fine… Anyway, look what my buddy from waste disposal gave me.”

“Why do you have a missile tank? They aren’t compatible with any of our tech.”

“They can’t throw it into the incinerator or the compactor since it’ll explode and destroy something important, so he figured I’d have a better use for it.”

“Why not just give it to munitions? They can store it someplace out of reach.”

“They’re all short-staffed trying to mobilize against her. An outgoing signal was detected and they’re expecting an unpleasant surprise by the end of the week.”

“Delightful. Where’d they get it, anyway?”

“It was probably found by an expedition team. They never staff anyone with common sense so they might have picked a few up on Bryyo or whatever to keep ‘em out of her reach and didn’t think to throw them out of an airlock in deep space on their way back.”

“Why couldn’t they have been assigned here instead of us?”

“It’s a universal experience that management sucks. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why she’s freelance and not a part of the Federation.”

“Neither of us would make it as contractors though.”

“Yeah… so what do you think we should do with this?”

“Are you trying to make this into my problem?”

“We can’t just leave it lying around for her to pick up, can we?”

“Fine, fine. How about throwing it down one of the mineshafts from the phazon harvesting operation? I hear her suit absorbs phazon now but it’s not like she’d be able to climb out.”

“What if something down there is load-bearing? I wouldn’t want to risk it exploding, much less having to answer for it…”

“Oof, I’d rather have to face the hunter herself. Did you have any ideas?”

“I was thinking maybe making it trapped, since trying to hide things hasn’t ever stopped her from obtaining them, but I can’t think of anything we have on hand that’ll hurt her enough to make a difference.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

“‘I can’t think of anything on hand that’ll hurt her’? Really?!”

“Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Yeah that was pretty dumb of me. But how are we going to get it in the tank without dying?”

“Shove it through the feeding slot. If the Metroids eat it we can pretend it was an intended experiment, and if they don’t then she’ll have something she wants, just out of her reach. I’m pretty sure she collects the things as a hobby or something, so she’ll definitely try to get it, and if she does the five in it won’t make much of a difference to our forces since she probably has a couple thousand at this point. If she doesn’t figure out how to open the tank, she’ll at least have wasted some time, time she could have spent running through the base shooting everything in sight.”

“But what if she kills all the Metroids and ends up surviving?”

“What happens then? We’ll finally get reassigned, that’s what.”

 

---

 

Afterword

I looked at the Missile Expansion that sat on the floor of the research tank, and then at the Metroids floating in the air just above.

"I wonder how it got there," I thought to myself before I moved on, expecting the game to want me to come back later with some extra visor or beam or whatever in order to deactivate the containment field.

The goal with this exercise was to tell a story using only dialogue. I still consider it to be one of my weak points, so maybe I'll try something like this again soon.

Title is a 'tank' within another 'tank'.