Author's Note: The events of this story take place between Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Prime 3 (because I have yet to finish the latter : ). Further, this story is connected to my oneshot "The Death of Dark Samus," which behaves now as a sort of unofficial, nonessential prologue.

Anyway, enjoy!

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Metroid Prime: Renegade

Chapter 1

The platform hissed shut behind her, sealing off the steady pit-pat of the rain and leaving her with an empty silence. As she walked to the pilot's station, every motion dragged with the weight of defeat despite her victory. Her stumbling steps. The great rise and fall of her scarred shoulder pads in synch with her quick, shallow breaths. The way she fell into the pilot's chair, her helmet ringing with her own coughs, and blindly punched in the coordinates with her hands as they trembled inside their gauntlets. She examined those hands, as if seeing them for the first time, and shook her head, trying to dispose of the thoughts that were brooding within.

What have I become?

The ship ascended into the heavens. She staggered into her compact quarters, sliding onto the bed, until realizing that she had neglected to remove her power suit. She decided she didn't care. Its alloy had become her skin, its power core her heart, its visors the defined scopes through which she perceived the world. All that existed now was the hunter, was only vengeance, just as Metroid Prime—or Dark Samus, as it had been dubbed by the Federation to accommodate its most recent incarnation—was only Phazon. She wondered, as she had countless times since the incident, if there had been something more to the creature than Phazon. And her—was there something more to her than vengeance?

She remembered the heat of that vengeance, filling her veins, alighting her eyes, an insane sort of hatred for the Space Pirates who had murdered her parents. That emotion had power, had potential, had motivated her to accomplish feats that would otherwise have been well beyond her physical and cognitive capabilities. Her hatred had been her passion, had been the compensation for all the love that was stolen from her life. But that seemed ages ago. In six years hence, she had taken more lives than were due to her. The fire had dwindled. She was left in the cold, yearning now just for solitude.

Yet she still pressed on. And that is what she feared. She wanted stillness. But, even without the fire, that same vengeance pushed her on, dispassionately, impersonally, as if she were caught in a rushing river and too focused on staying barely afloat to escape the current that dragged her interminably along. Laying silently in her quarters, tears formed in her eyes that reflected the light from the stars. She blinked, frustrated that her body and mind were too exhausted to initiate sleep, and cocked her head so she could peer out the window. There, the planet rotated tranquilly in space as if to mock the woman carrying the wounds it had incurred. She stared drowsily into it, listening as the superluminal engine booted up, emitting a high-pitch tone that reminded her of so many screams—those of her mother and of her father, of the beings she had hunted and killed, and of that girl inside her head, screaming eternally for them all.

Then, she was flung into the stars.

--

Unaii watched Hunter Seven floating statically in space around the planet. He pondered the possibility of taking her then and there and be done with the whole business, using manual targeting to avoid locking detection. Click a few buttons, and the scourge of his race could be blasted to the next galaxy. Yet he hesitated. Too many of his kin had perished from such foolish overconfidence. The personal glory of taking the girl's head for himself was appealing, but it did not predominate the fat possibility that his ugly head would end up on her spear. Then again, how many others had died in those vulnerable moments of skittish hesitation?

He growled in frustration over his ambivalence, finally resolving to accumulate reinforcements, convincing himself that he was merely being prudent. Hurriedly—the hyperdrive engines on Hunter Seven had started glowing—he initiated a subspace comlink with his superior.

"I've got her," he said in the harsh tones of his language, "She's about to jump though—I'll give you the coordinates upon pursuit." Already, Hunter Seven had blinked out of the system. He began calculating its trajectory and punching in a pursuit course.

"Don't lose her, or it's your life," his superior said.

The voice chilled Unaii's heart. It was an odd thing indeed to hear the Zebesian tongue—to hear words so often barked from one Space Pirate to another—spoken so smoothly by a human.

"We have arrived at the destination," said the computer.

--

Samus' eyes exploded open, and a surge of adrenaline lifted her from her bed as if she had some terrible nightmare there. Her body always jumped to a state of alertness whenever was cognitively aware of her own wakefulness, a habit formed out of too many early wake-up calls from Space Pirates and assassins. She took a minute to slow her pulse and deepen her breath and ingest the darkness of her quarters. Slowly, self-consciously, she walked over to the mirror.

"Lights."

Her heart stumbled in shock. A listless visor stared back at her. Had she simply fallen asleep with her power suit on? For a minute, she stared into the reflection of herself, wondering of the implications of this oversight. Finally, she reasoned, she had just been so fatigued that she had forgotten to remove the suit. Simple as that. She could have made the same mistake years ago. Putting her thoughts aside, she felt for the sides of the helmet and unlocked it from the rest of the suit. There was a sudden movement of air as the internal atmosphere of the suit merged with that of the ship. Steadily, she lifted the helmet off her head.

In a twist of horror, she realized that she was wearing yet another helmet beneath, and the first helmet came crashing to the floor. Instinctively, she reached towards her face—but yes, in the place of her soft skin was bitter metal.

Panic began to overwhelm her. This defied all reason, all rationality she could muster. The helmet that looked back at her was the helmet of the Dark Suit that she had gained on Aether, with its bright, pumpkin-colored visor. She tore it off, only to find the crimson gleam of the Phazon Suit from Tallon IV stare wickedly into her soul. Where was her face? Where was the woman behind all these masks?

"Unidentified craft detected."

Her eyes exploded open again, but this time her body was already in a state of alarm, not only because of the terrifying dream, but because the ship's alarms had whipped her mind back into reality. "Unidentified craft detected," the computer repeated in an indifference that seemed to mock Samus' riled emotions. She rose swiftly to the bed and returned to the cockpit. She examined the interface, trying to discern the ship's model and intent.

A flash of light caught her eyes. Her blood pulsed in her ears, then seemed to stop, as if anticipating what was to come.

"Shields to maxi—"

An explosion rocked the ship and battered her to the floor.

"Shields to maximum!" she roared, head reeling. "Evasive sequence one!"

The ships engines screamed to life.

Samus snapped to her feet again, tossed her frazzled hair aside, and jumped into the pilot's chair. The assailer was in close pursuit, unleashing missile after missile while spraying her shields with emerald energy bolts. She brought up a visual of it. Unsurprisingly, it was a high-class Space Pirate interceptor, presumably with enhanced firepower and shielding. Lone assassins only came with top technology, especially the assassins that dealt with her.

She was in for a scuffle.

Then again, maybe she wasn't. Three Federation interceptors dropped out of warp just ahead, and Samus relaxed mentally. It was suspiciously fortunate, she knew, that a squadron of Federation ships would show up just at the right time and place to help her here, well beyond Federation space, but sometimes one just gets lucky. But when they, too, started to open fire on her ship, she realized that she indeed was in for a little more than just a scuffle.

Her luck, it seemed, had run out long before this encounter.