She snarls, eyes darting left and right and back again as the echoes dance around her. She looks ahead and gets shot in the back. She looks back and gets shot in the head. Ragged, furious breaths cloud the visor.

She swings round, arm flying out. The cannon's barrel spews phazon. The blasts go home and the sight feeds her. Madness jams the cannon trigger. It fires and fires and fires and fires and fires (faster) until all she can see is blue and the world is a cacophony of explosions. The target screeches helplessly.

Holding the trigger, she shivers with delight as phazon energy swims to the barrel of her gun. The target is down. One more hit will finish it but Samus lies to herself for the sake of the hunger. She releases the charged blast and energy erupts from her fist, spiraling forward in a merciless pillar of raw brute force. The echo's frame is reduced to a blue exoskeleton that disintegrates before it has time to hit the ground.

(fuck)

She gasps for air.

(more)

The next target flips into vision. She throws herself at it. Her fist twitches with the urge to claw at it but her mind, clinging on to what is left of itself, sees that the desire is illogical. The echo, staring back at her with its similar suit and similar visor and frighteningly similar name, is clad in metal. It is almost indestructible, but the challenge excites her. Phazon and adrenaline are like drugs and sex but they drive her insane with the need to-

(kill)

The creature's visor smashes against hers. For a heartbeat its glow burns hauntingly into her cloudy eyes. Then she boots it. There's a crack and the thing skitters backwards. She doesn't know if she has hurt it and she doesn't care. She wants to start shooting again because the chaos and their screams throw her into a frenzy. Her shaking digits fumble for the trigger.

Fifty deafening cracks. The sounds run in to each other. Her heart pounds so quickly that she can feel it battering feverishly at her ribs like a caged animal. All is so incomprehensively fast that the only thing she can register is thrill and a faint recognition of her own power.

(Ilikethis)

The light dies, revealing what is now a corpse. It erupts.

(alot)

There's one more. It doesn't look afraid of her but she will make it sorry for that. She levels the cannon.

Pain stabs at her chest. Her lungs are crushed in. Gasping, she collapses. Quiet whimpers ache in her throat. At the top of her visor, the energy bar is pulsing yellow. She can't remember what it means but something acidic is leaking over the rims of her eyes and God damn it, it hurts.

Warning. There's a voice in her ear. It begins to break down as her mind deteriorates. Phazon corruption imminent…life-sup-port systm…

She screams, metal-encased fingers clutching wildly at the rim of her helmet. Her blood is like acid in her veins, scorching tissue and bone, dripping into her lungs, pouring down her cheeks. Madness is on the horizon.

Initiatn-ing final vent…

Her body arches. She means to cry out but instead she's laughing.

Fifty-y…pe-cent…cmplete…

The suit is trying to kill her. It's draining away her energy before the phazon can corrupt her and turn her into the most dangerous weapon the world has ever known. Samus had been informed about this feature, but she no longer remembers. From the ground, it looks like the world is turning on her and it isn't fair because despite what she had told others, it turns out she really is afraid of dying.

"Please…" she chokes.

(don't let me die)

But she is talking to herself.


A/N: I know that this was kind of obscure, and didn't stay completely true to the game in terms of facts, events and such, but I hope it was OK regardless. I was curious as to what the final parts of Metroid Prime 3 Corruption were like for Samus, which lead to the thought: 'I wonder what it would be like if she didn't make it to the end?' Cuz I'm not at all depressing like that.

But hey, didn't you ever get curious about what it was like being partially corrupted? Or was that just me being emo? Probably the latter.

Comments, if any, would be appreciated :)