Life. A sprawling underground forest teeming with life; unbridled, pure, brilliant. But all things must come to an end, and as it grows lower Brinstar slowly starts to die.
Life.
Such a mass of pure life.
The Hunter was always surprised at the vast amount of life when she came down here, amazed at the swarming armies of plantlife and native fauna teeming just underneath Zebes' cracked and scarred surface. She was always inclined to believe, upon planetfall, that the Space Pirates had killed everything off with their relentless technology. And why would anyone ever think otherwise? Crateria was barren and dead, constantly awash with that steady drizzle of acid rain. It was all anyone ever saw on first glance. No one would believe that just under the surface teemed so much vigour, so much energy.
Sometimes the Hunter mused that the Chozo had taken the spark of life with them when they had left. They were always so close to that mystical life force that there was a good chance it was true. But then, on boarding that solemn elevator ride down to the underground forests of Brinstar, she realized that it was not true. The life had just crawled down further, away from the alien presence of the Space Pirates and closer to the planet's core.
Closer to the life force.
Thick ropey vines studded with venomous thorns and glittering with a haze of purple poison adorned the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Like great swords the thorns jutted, threatening to tear a hole in the Hunter's chozonian suit. But where they did touch they left nary a scratch, their sharpened tips no match for reinforced steel. Ignoring the no doubt deadly thorns the Hunter carried on, her exploration leading her deeper into the maze of green. The further down she got the more alive it got, the hotter it got; the thicker it got. There was absolutely no doubt that if she were to take off her helmet she'd be besieged with such heady aromas from the abundant plantlife that her system would have overloaded. Not to say she would have, for the alien atmosphere would kill her, anyhow. But it was an amusing thought to entertain, nonetheless. What if she were a Chozo, she wondered. If she were able to breathe the atmosphere? What would this place smell like? Would it be rife with sweet odours, like the fruit stands back on destroyed K2-L? Or would it be like a bouquet of fresh flowers, brought to her by her long gone mother?
As she walked she passed a thick knot of vines intertwined around a pulsing orb of blue energy. The Hunter paused to inspect it. She was down very low, now. So low that the heat was almost unbearable and her suit had to readjust its internal processes to keep her system stable. This innocuous blue orb of organic tissue, pulsing with a distinct beat that she now realized she had heard all this time, beating away persistently in the background, was ablaze with a swarm of tiny alien insects. There was no doubt that they were pollinating it, feasting on its pollen while inadvertently implanting it with alien spores. Now that she thought about it there were many of the blue orbs pulsating their steady bass beat down here. Maybe this was not just a tiny little self sustained ecosystem, maybe it was something bigger and more important.
Maybe the entirety of Zebes was alive, and Brinstar was merely part of it. And while the Chozo knew this the Space Pirates did not care. And they were killing the planet slowly with nothing but their twisted goals to follow.
The Space Pirates.
Just thinking about them made the Hunter sigh sadly and with a faint wistfulness she left the insects to their work, headed towards the green door at the end of the path. A well placed super missile; the door quietly slid open. The force of the impact dislodged a few alien critters from the ceiling and they quickly scurried for cover. The Hunter allowed herself a smile, watching them dive for safety underneath the vines. She had recognized them. An alien crab with knobbly eyes, a spiked geemer with its multiple little legs, and a few of the curious trilobites she had seen feasting on the corpses of long dead GF soldiers further up, when she had vanquished the beast known as Kraid.
She turned to the new room she had exposed herself to. The heat was rising. Beyond the door the plantlife had ceased, for it could not exist in that heat. The soil was red and crumbling and what plantlife did survive was twisted and brown. The door swished closed behind her as she stepped in.
The Hunter was dead certain it no longer smelled like flowers here, and with a heavy heart started her downward progression, getting ever closer to Norfair and ever closer to the creature that had killed her family. She hated this place, no matter how natural it was.
For she knew it smelled of nothing but sulphur and death. And those smells reminded her solely of revenge.