(Author's Note: A series of one-shots looking at things that people might not think of or know about Samus Aran.)

(Warnings: Swearing)

(Disclaimer: Metroid and Samus belong to Nintendo, not me)

Things About Samus

~Elevators~

By: AniDragon, aka Riona-chan

One thing a lot of people didn't know about Samus Aran was that she had a phobia of elevators.

It wasn't the height that bothered her. Her power suit could absorb the shock from any fall, leaving her head a bit rattled, but the rest of her unharmed.

It wasn't the small space, either, though enclosed elevators did tend to bother her more than open air ones. All her time spent on her relatively small ship had made claustrophobia a non-issue.

No, what bothered her was that the Chozo had filled nearly every planet they'd ever inhabited with the exact same model of elevator that she'd once gotten stuck in as a child.

It hadn't been for very long, but it had been terrifying for the six year old who'd decided to explore the parts of Zebes that she was supposed to stay away from without telling anyone.

For an hour she had sat there and called out for help. None of the emergency contact buttons were working, and she thought she'd be there forever.

When one of the elders found her, he informed her that a solar flare had knocked out all the power on that side of the planet. Everything else had rebooted itself within minutes, but that one sector had shorted out. And since it was a barely used sector, it had almost gone unnoticed.

And so, every time Samus stepped into an elevator, especially a Chozo-designed one (which were pretty much everywhere, since the Chozo had sold the design to the Galactic Federation), she feared that it would break down and leave her trapped where even her power bombs couldn't get her out.

But she'd figured that this planet would be fine. The job had specified that it hadn't been inhabited in centuries. It was a simple find and retrieve mission. Surely, surely, that damned Chozo elevator wouldn't be here.

And yet, there it was, right in front of her, the only method of getting to the location she needed to search.

She gritted her teeth as she stepped on, running through a string of curses in her head.

Every. Damned. Time. She just couldn't get away from it.

Her heart jumped to her throat as the elevator dropped, bringing her deep underground.

Samus counted the seconds in her head, taking deep breaths to calm herself. It took fifteen seconds to get to the bottom.

When she arrived, she gathered her courage and stepped off the elevator at a normal pace. If there were any enemies around, she couldn't allow herself to show such a weakness. More than that, though, was a matter of pride. Even though she was alone, her pride wouldn't allow her to show that fear.

Why couldn't anyone ever have stairs? She thought to herself bitterly.

~End~

(A/N: This little snippet was inspired by Metroid Prime. Has anyone else ever noticed that every time Samus takes an elevator in that game, it looks like she's on the verge of hyperventilating? So I thought it might be interesting to give her a phobia. Nothing debilitating, just something that would really, really bother her.)