Prologue

The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace...

Stories. They're odd things sometimes. A story is supposed to have a clearly defined beginning and ending. The good guys and the bad guys are also supposed to be clearly defined, most of the time. That's the way things go; that's why they're stories. My own history, however, doesn't fit those criteria at all. It's very hard to tell where the interesting part, the part that made my name known all across this side of the galaxy from Magani to Drihos, begins. And it's even harder to tell where it ends, because to my knowledge, it still hasn't. Maybe it never will. The lines between the good guys and the bad guys SEEM more clearly defined. But then again, I'm no saint. Some of the stories make me out as some kind of heroic champion, but I know better. I'm a bounty hunter, and I've done my share of things I don't want to talk about. And people who should have been, or still are, my enemies have done things that have surprised me sometimes. One or two cases in particular. But we'll get to that later.

Anyways, I've had plenty of stories told about me, in all sorts of places. From throne rooms to cheap taverns to government facilities to deep-space truck routes. Some of those stories are even true. My name's Samus Aran, by the way, in case you couldn't tell before now. Yeah, that's me, the legendary Pirate-Killer and Metroid-Buster. Oy. There's a reason I try to stay off of the major planets. Guess what it is. But then again, if I completely hated publicity, I wouldn't be writing this, now would I? Ah well, at least I don't have it as bad as Horzat... yeah, I'm mentioning you in the foreword, you old crab. Maybe it'll get you some more business, hopefully with a drunken Iz trucker. I wish you all the good and ill health that may come your way.

Back on subject. I suppose it all really started when the Space Pirates found Planet SR-388. What I got around to before then is MY business, and I don't need to go telling my private life to everybody who'll pick this off a bookshelf. It's unimportant, and it's not what you want to read about anyways, most likely. If it IS, then I implore you in the strongest possible terms to go find a life of your own instead of trying to find everything out about mine. And yes, I DO enforce my privacy with my gun. Anyways, the Pirates were doing some routine exploration of the far side of the galaxy, looking for something to pillage. Since it was the far side, they knew the Federation wouldn't give a shit about what they did. I've never been terribly impressed with them anyways. To cut a long story short, they found the mother load. Metroids, an alien life form of incredible strength that could literally drain the life out of anything they latched on to. The Pirates were thrilled... for the ten minutes they survived on that planet. The second task force was more prepared. They lasted twenty minutes.

Okay, let's cut to the chase. Eventually, the Pirates sent about five hundred of their guys, led by one of the top leaders, Phantoon. They successfully managed to immobilize and capture about twenty Metroids in their baby stages, losing only half their men. They didn't even TRY for older ones. Back on their base planet, Zebes, the Pirates began raising the Metroids, planning to breed them. Before long, the Galactic Federation got wind of this, and they tried negotiating with the Space Pirates. That's right, negotiating. I TOLD you I wasn't impressed with the Feds. Well, while those talks were going on, a Federation Commanding Officer who actually had his head screwed on straight named Adam Malkovich decided that it would be a perfectly distracting time to send in a small, stealth strike. And so, he contacted the best Bounty Hunter in the galaxy, a person so secretive nobody even knew what he looked like. Me.

Yes, that was a he. Like I said, at that time just about nobody had seen me out of my Power Suit, so they didn't know I was female. It helped protect my privacy, so I didn't bother correcting it. When Adam first contacted me, I refused, but when I heard the whole situation I didn't have much choice. Alone, I descended to Zebes with my mission: Destroy the Metroids and the Pirate Queen, Mother Brain. I fought my way through the dank jungles of Brinstar and the fiery depths of Norfair. Since it was a stealth mission, I managed to avoid combat with the Pirates themselves for the most part, although I had my hands full with the native wildlife. The two major exceptions to the rule were the two Pirate Lords of the four under Mother Brain that had been stationed on Zebes: Ridley and Kraid. Kraid was their head scientest as well as a powerful fighter, much smarter than the average Iz, and his tricks almost got the better of me several times. Ridley was their best warrior, a savage Drakar with speed, strength and cunning that came very close to defeating me in battle. I killed both of them, though, and thus opened the way into Tourian, the Space Pirate facility where the Metroids were being bred and Mother Brain was hiding. Suffice it to say I was victorious. Mother Brain was wasted, and Tourian self-destructed, getting rid of all Pirate-held Metroids. Or so we thought. I was dubbed a hero by the Galactic Federation. That was the point at which I decided "what the hell" and took my power suit off in front of cameras for the first time. Look at me, I'm a girl.

After THAT debacle was cleared up, I went back to bounty hunting. A couple years later, I was just going about business as usual when I recieved an SOS signal from a damaged freighter. I went to see how I could help, and landed in a shitload of trouble. It was the Space Pirates again; they had had a breakout of hostile specimens onboard their hijacked freighter. The fact that they were back in business at all was sufficient reason to investigate for me. Before I found much, though, the whole place went critical and I had to move my ass outta there. Upon doing so, I ran into an old friend. Ridley, somehow back from the dead with a shiny new cybernetic body. Naturally, when he ran off I chased him in my ship, to a planet called Tallon IV. After I made a mess of things on Zebes, the pirates had set up a base there, under the leadership of the two remaining bosses, Phantoon and Draygon. Seemed they hadn't gotten around to reviving Mother Brain and Kraid yet; just Ridley, who they were bossing around. Those two were smart enough to stay out of the facility and off the planet themselves, but they ordered Ridley to stay there and lead that facility under them. Something which pissed him off to no end...

But I'm not here to deliver a lecture on the structure of the Space Pirate hierarchy. On Tallon IV, the Pirates weren't the only problem. Seems I hadn't nailed all the Pirate supply of Metroids back on Zebes, and they were breeding the nasty little bugs here too. And there were more than just the ordinary ones too; I started finding bizarre mutations. I found the source of this at the end of this incident. But in the meantime, I investigated Tallon IV, the Space Pirates, and the Chozo ruins here. What are the Chozo, you ask? A species of avianoids that are now extinct. They were extraordinarily wise and traveled all over the galaxy centuries before most of the Federation's species achieved space travel. They're also the ones who built my Power Suit. That's all you're getting out of me on them, now. Back to Tallon IV. The Pirates were also experimenting with a strange and dangerous mineral called Phazon. In the end, I discovered that the mutated Metroids and the Phazon had the same source: A warped abomination known as Metroid Prime that the Chozo had sealed away. Near the end of my journey, I met up with Ridley again with his shiny new implants; although Phantoon and Draygon wanted to get their hands on Metroid Prime, Ridley was smart enough to realize what a threat it was to everything. However, when I went to wipe out the big bug for good, Ridley figured he could kill two birds with one stone by attacking me. Keep Prime sealed, and settle his score with me. Too bad for him, I whupped him again. And then I went on to prove his fears were unfounded by offing Metroid Prime as well. This was just not Ridley's day, especially since the explosions wiped out every Metroid the Pirates had, for good this time.

After that little incident, I once again returned to bounty hunting for a few years until the Federation called on me again. They had decided Metroids were a threat to the galaxy, and wanted them eradicated. Unfortunately, since SR-388 was on the Far Side, they couldn't send in an army to do the job. So they sent in a single highly-skilled operative to exterminate every Metroid in existence. Me. Yeah, my job's great. I made the trip down to SR-388, and I discovered for the first time that the Metroids I had been fighting... were just the babies. I had to fight off all the stronger stages now; child Alphas, teenaged Betas, young adult Zetas, and the horribly powerful mature Omegas. And that wasn't the end of it; after exterminating every other Metroid, I had to slay the Queen Metroid, the mother of them all. Needless to say, I eventually succeeded. Then I found its last egg, which promptly hatched into a newborn Metroid. It seemed to think I was its mother, and it followed me around like a confused child, exhibitng none of the threatening tendencies of its brethren. Somehow, even though I knew what a menace it was, I couldn't bring myself to kill the Metroid, which I named Matrix. Instead, I brought it back with me on my ship and personally delivered it to the scientific research Space Station Ceres for study.

And that's where our story begins. Departing from Ceres, I knew that little Matrix would be in good hands. However, I couldn't shake this feeling of dread... a feeling which turned out to be dead-on accurate. But that came later. For now, let's start this story, or at least this portion of my life's story, at what I suppose was the beginning. Bounty hunting...