Nightmare Report

Creature Name: Nightmare
General Location: BOTTLE SHIP (Sector 2) and B.S.L. Research Station (Sector 5)
Creature Status: Terminated on multiple occasions

The Nightmare was perhaps the most bizarre and destructive bioweapon ever constructed by the Galactic Federation, and while it may have seemed more creepy than dangerous, this creature’s incredible talents nonetheless made it a devastating foe to ever have to face. The Nightmare itself consisted of a vaguely-prawn-shaped body with a narrow tail, massive upper abdomen and head, and a pair of long, segmented metal links that served as its arms and hands, though it seems that its hands were incomplete and missing something or were just left as such as no need seemed to be present to give it any type of grasping appendages. In its original state, the front of this creature’s face was protected by a thick metal casing with two small, red lenses that could allow the creature inside of the mechanical body to actually see with great precision. In terms of weapons, the original Nightmare had the ability to not only use its own body in a diving attack for physical damage but could also fire a series of small energy orbs from energy cannons installed into its arms or, if it needed to trip its opponents up, could fire a series of intense lasers from its arms continuously and sweep them around to damage anything and everything that could not jump up fast enough to avoid them. The monster’s true power, however, came in its most promising feature: a gravity well generator in its tail. In essence, as long as this device was active, the Nightmare could create a gravity well that severely slowed down all movement in the world around it minus its own movement and could thus use this power to make it much harder for its enemies to dodge any of its incoming attacks. Samus Aran first encountered this monster in Sector 2 of the BOTTLE SHIP near Sector Zero and became more than familiar with its power after it ripped itself out of its stasis pod and attacked her out of confusion for being awakened so rudely by the destruction ensuing from the wrath of MB, slowing her down to a crawl in the process. However, the creature’s gravity well generator had not been fully completed and lacked the thick armor on the rest of the creature’s body, so she was able to use repeated charged shots from her Ice Beam to freeze the generator and deactivate it for a short time, allowing Samus to freely move and target the monster’s armored face with Missiles and Super Missiles to damage it. The creature put up an incredible fight, but Samus was able to damage the creature’s face plate so much that it cracked and shattered, revealing on the inside a green gelatinous face with six yellow eyes arranged in two columns and a large, toothless maw from which the creature screamed an ungodly screech. In sustaining so much damage, the creature’s gravity well generator malfunctioned and activated a gravity well inside of the monster, throwing it around the sides of its containment chamber and visibly damaging its metallic body before the creature finally fell to the floor of its chamber and collapsed into an unconscious heap. Samus thought she had seen the last of that monster, but upon returning from Sector Zero after it was jettisoned from the BOTTLE SHIP, the monster awoke once more and activated its gravity well generator for another fight, but by now Samus had reactivated her Gravity Suit, making her immune to its gravitational effects. Even so, all of her beam shots were pulled into the generator and thus required freezing in order to make the creature open to attack again, and all the while the monster was using new attacks to fight her, including blasting a series of three massive energy orbs at her, a devastating laser from its mouth and the power to create additional vortices in the air to absorb her shots and pull them away from their intended target (in addition to the usual sliding attacks it performed before). While the monster proved to be quite resilient, its soft face still made a handy target for both beam and concussive weapon systems and was the doom of it, as Samus inflicted critical damage on it and caused it to self-destruct, blowing apart into pieces and apparently dying for real.

Unfortunately, Samus Aran had not seen the last of this monster, for it seems that it was collected by the Galactic Federation to be put back together and stored on the B.S.L. Research Station, though how they were able to actually rebuild the creature from death is still a secret left unknown to the public. As Samus was leaving Sector 5 of the station for the second time on her journey after downloading data for Power Bombs, the monster could be seen in the background of the Sector’s westernmost areas, having somehow escaped its containment chamber. It would not be until later that Samus was alerted to an explosion in Sector 5, forcing her return to the area for the third time. When she arrived back in the Sector, the area was entirely in ruins and all of the arctic environments that had existed before were thawed and irreparably damaged; the Nightmare had not committed this kind of senseless destruction while Samus was around after it initially escaped its containment chamber, suggesting that it too had become the host of an X-Parasite infestation. After journeying though the destroyed remnants of the Sector, Samus came across a large room filled with nothing but junk and spare parts, and it was here that she finally faced the monster in battle for the final time. It didn’t take Samus long to notice that there was something wrong with the creature, as its right arm had been damaged and the creature had lost its ability to fire continuous lasers or energy balls, instead merely firing small laser shots from the cannons in its arm. The creature tended to float up and down in accordance with Samus’ own movements, so she was able to lure it up high enough to get a clean shot at the gravity well generator on its tail. After a few direct hits, the creature activated its powers fully and slowed every motion of Samus severely, though for some reason this seems to have backfired on the infected specimen as its laser attack was also highly diminished and much easier to avoid. The only real downfall that came to Samus was that the intense gravity well made her Missile drop out of the air mere moments after being fired, but she was still able to damage the generator with charged beam shots and Missile strikes at point-blank range, eventually destabilizing and destroying the device entirely. As Samus had been fighting the monster, she had noticed that there seemed to be green goo leaking out of the creature’s face mask, and when she destroyed the generator on its tail it caused a feedback loop in its body that also destroyed its protective mask, revealing that the goo had come from the Nightmare’s own face, which was misshapen and apparently in the process of melting. In this state, the creature continued to fire lasers from its arms and slowly approached Samus in order to trap her; every time she managed to flip over the monster it would fly around erratically in an attempt to smash into her (usually to no avail) before returning to a position dependent upon where Samus was in the air when it stopped flying around. As the creature took damage from Samus on its vulnerable face, it seemed to ooze and melt more, even to the point where it started to hang off of the robotic casing of its body. After a long and disgusting battle, the creature finally reached lethal damage levels and lost the ability to keep its life functions going; subsequently, the monster’s arms fell off and exploded and left the rest of he body to revert back into a Core-X state, which Samus then destroyed and absorbed to fully recover the attributes of the Gravity Suit.