Chapter 19

Blood and Strength

...

In the center of the dim vault, the outer case of the newly manifested hidden cylinder shone and began to dissolve. Samus tapped the temple of her helmet, urgently trying to scan the dark roiling mass inside that great column. What she got back was not encouraging. The Last Chozo had called this the first metroid. Samus' first sensor brush did show organic materials and warp-supported crystalline structures much like true metroids but then active scan abruptly stopped reporting. The shapeless flowing thing was black, so unbelievably black. It was like this thing in the tube was eating all electromagnetic frequencies.

There were still a few seconds before it fully exited containment. Samus spent those charging an attack, but she could talk at the same time.

She said to the Last, "This is a poorer decision than you can imagine. You are missing historical data. The scientists who followed you tried to control many versions of the metroid project, but every instance ended in catastrophic failure. The empire lost an entire planet to them! No matter how well you think you understand them, those creatures will not be controlled."

The Last stepped back as she watched the containment cylinder, hardly seeming to notice Samus any more. From inside her battle-suit the Last murmured, "Dangerous, yes, but there is no one left to hurt."

"You're still here!"

"You fear for me? Needless. I saw to my protection long ago."

In a faint flash of disappearing matter the containment cylinder was gone and the pulsing mass of the first metroid spilled forth. It was black in a shade beyond color and in places it almost disappeared, as if it was eating the light itself. Then the dark fangs began to emerge as if being created in that second and the creature suddenly sprouted appendages around the suggestion of a domed core, shapeless pulsing tentacles the emerged and dissolved on a whim, servant to a momentary need. The First looked nothing like no other form of metroid Samus had seen in her long career but somehow it still matched. It was shaped like the memory of a monster.

Then the creature exploded into motion and black tentacles studded with crackling fangs whipped out at The Last. Samus was just about to fall into her standard scenario for "the monster devours its overconfident creator" when, with equal speed, the attack froze. The First's undulating mass drew back in on itself, black flesh parting for an instant to expose a familiar transparent core structure with brain-like globules floating inside. Then new thin tendrils reached out from shifting black flesh to slowly twine around the air surrounding The Last. Feeling towards the Chozo but never touching. The creature could sense her energy, and it remembered. The Last was right, whatever protections she had designed still held.

The Last held out her hand, the long fingers of her gauntlet just barely missing touching the lightless flesh. Then she spoke to Samus. "You are surprised. Lower creatures like you never understand the difference between thought and instinct. So they fear creation, but fear is merely another lying instinct. True thought serves the thinker. And this wonder is my genius made manifest. Even those false copies the others made still know me as their master, all those generations later."

She looked at the horrific First Metroid with something Samus recognized. Pride and hope and fear, and something that might even be love. It was how her chozo parents had sometimes looked at her.

Samus now held a blazing fire contained inside the barrel of her gun, aimed directly at the shifting mass of the proto-metroid. She said, "I'm going to kill it."

"You will try."

But neither of them was certain. In that instant their intentions battled for control of the Path so for a moment the stasis before combat still held. The Last had recruited a questionably loyal monster to her side in an attempt to tip the scale of battle, but Samus could match that move. The fingers of her gauntlet twitched, navigating through virtual menus as she undid a few digital locks. It was time to stop fighting with a hampered suit. It was time to let 'Adam' out to play.

Deep in the core suit systems, virtual partition dropped and battle calculations from the suit computer once more filled Samus' eyes. The suit was fully awake and an equal partner once more. But with it came the little floating text.

"Your choice still awaits. Wonderful death; painful life."

Comforting as always. Samus breathed out slowly.

The Last turned back her way, still lecturing. "Understand-"

Samus fired a charged super missile from thirty feet away, definitively interrupting the conversation. In the inclosed space of this rock-walled vault chamber, the pressure wave was almost as destructive as the initial explosion. Chozo power suits could weather that easily, but the demonstratedly pliable flesh of the First Metroid should find it a harsh introduction. 'Should' but in any case, Samus would find out. After all, this was the learning portion of the fight.

The First did not react in time to dodge the missile; Samus' first discovery. The impact hit directly against the metroid's side, the explosion throwing its creator back until her suit initiated friction lock on the floor, sliding to a halt. Unfortunately, then the explosion flash cleared and the First showed no visible injury; the second discovery. Samus had known that was a strong possibility for a Metroid, but it was still disheartening to not even see a scratch. On the other hand, beginning a fight by suggesting to the foe you're not a threat was often a good idea.

Then she flicked her eyes down. Tiny pressure fractures from the missile blast spiderwebbed across the stone floor around the creature but as Samus sprang to the side, guarding against its retaliation, she saw the cracks did not continue directly behind the creature. A long shadow of pristine floor stretched out from it. Third discovery; the creature was not unharmed, it was unaffected.

Learning was rarely fun.

However, it did provide time to charge an ice beam shot. The shapeless creature once again shifted and turned her way, fangs and tendrils unfolding as it started forward just in time for a flash of white energy to tear through the cavern. The ice bram hit and fang-studded tentacles writhed in pain as an electric shriek pulsed out from the air itself. The rock around them shook and to Samus' sensor aided eyes the stone was transformed, becoming faintly magnetic from just the power of the first metroid's screaming fury. It was not as much pain as Samus would have liked but in battle sufficient quantity can always make up for quality. She continued firing more beam attacks.

Adam's text blinked back into her visor. "You can defeat it. Your opponent knows this. Their intention has another weapon."

Samus followed up on the ice beam barrage with another missile, but this one exploded in mid air. Off to the side, the Last now held her own weapon outstretched, barrel capped with wavering heat from the shot that had met Samus' missile.

The Last spoke through the communications channel as if she sat inside Samus' helmet. "You still think I went to the armory to enter this suit, to mimic your strength. You are blind. My strength has never been in crude combat. Know that any means to enter also provides for exit. And I now hold the key to that door."

The Last raised her hand and a light shimmered above her gauntlet, materializing into a small metallic crystal, covered in burning glyphs. As she held it this thing floating in the air, the gauntlet around her hand began to shimmer and peel back, armor withdrawing like a mechanical tide. Samus recognized that crystal instantly. Grey Voice had made sure she memorized suit safety procedures, though Samus had lost her own copy of that device nearly immediately after leaving Zebes. Safety procedures. Unfortunately, right now a key to automatically open any Chozo battle suit did not seem likely to make her more safe.

Killed by EMT equipment. If word ever got out, the bounty hunter gambling circuit was about to make a certain one armed Byratian sex-monk very rich. Samus eyed the levitating key and calculated how to grab it in the next few seconds.

As if reading her thoughts, the Last moved the key away ever so slightly, still floating above her newly bare hand. Her eyes narrowed. "A useless plan, ending in mutual defeat. Which to me would be a victory. Without this suit I am still Chozo, but you are that suit. Without it you are nothing, only a single broken component without a purpose. Prey for two superior species."

Samus crouched and sprang forward, just barely avoiding the next attack of fanged tentacles from the proto-metroid as she raced straight towards the Last. It was never a good idea to take your opponent's advice on tactics. As soon as the monster was put down Samus would be happy to take The Last on hand to hand. The Last steeled, then noticed Samus' confidence and lost some of her own. Step by step, beat by beat, Samus felt herself slipping into the familiar rhythm of battle. This was just a new game now, separate the Last from the key, wear down the metroid, kill, use key against the Last. Kill again.

The pitch black First Metroid screamed in frustration and pain from the ice blasts Samus directed its way, then its constantly shifting shape crackled with energy as it began to float up off the ground to hover in the air, an irregular ball of shifting mass and whipping tentacles. Ominous, but Samus was not impressed. Gravetic levitation was old hat for the things she fought. Then her suit sensors and inner ear both suddenly told her that down had just relocated.

Samus fell sideways off the floor towards the twisting black maw of the First Metroid, a vortex of hook-like fangs. In a split second she twisted away and fired all her suit jets to avoid that final crunch. But she knew better than to try and fight this sudden gravity attack, and aimed perpendicular to the sudden drop. She missed the First by inches, flying past its long teeth in a makeshift orbit. Samus skidded across the ground before slamming to a halt, friction modulators gripping down as much as they could.

So, this creature could create gravity wells. Samus' opinions on the fun of learning remained intact.

More calculations. The Last seemed undisturbed by this gravity force despite standing very near the monster, which meant the gravity field somehow propagated in a cone instead of a sphere. That was impossible, but impossible was usually the starting point for Chozo science. Then the First lurched and from its black shifting body more massive tentacles erupted, studded in foot-long teeth. One fang managed to scrape across Samus' shields near her shoulder and she gritted her teeth in the familiar agony of a feeding metroid.

Samus dodged and deflected the next tentacle strikes with explosions of her own, but in the middle of this pitched battle the Last slowly walked over to the pulsing mass of the metroid's body. She was not talking anymore. Samus prepared for chozo blaster fire to begin complementing the monster's attacks, but instead of firing The Last simply reached out to lay her left hand against the side of her creation. Then Samus realized that hand held the Key.

Faint golden light sparkled as black flesh boiled over the floating artifact. Then the light was extinguished; swallowed.

Text appeared in Samus' visor, "The key is now alive. Light integrated to shadow. Where it touches, your suit will not exist. This is good news."

Samus could not spare a moment to silence the Adam virus or the breath to let it know her opinion of these insane ramblings. She was fighting for her life and chipper prophecies of doom were not helping, though at least the suit's combat programs were now operating at full efficiency, freed of the imprisoning partition. The First Metroid screamed again and five more long tentacles whipped out of its body, forming from nothing in the instant they attacked. Samus shot back, deflecting black flesh with burning cold, but in the background of this clash The Last simply turned away and began to walk towards the vault's only door. Samus leapt and fired tracking missiles at her but The Last's suit spun back to shoot them out of the air. Samus would have followed with another attack, but she then had to spin back and paint half the First Metroid's side with ice beam energy or be eaten.

Samus' helmet rang as the frost-burned monster screeched and crackled across the EM spectrum, swamping all the communications channels for another instant. Samus eyes widened in surprise as she was looking straight at the First this time and briefly the creature in somehow greater detail. More definition and more shadow, skin dark green instead of black. Then its flesh resumed its impossibly black shade and the screaming electric noise once more cut out. Samus eyes narrowed. Another thing to learn; the creature's energy eating invulnerability could be at least mitigated.

The Last's voice replaced her creation's on the coms, "Goodby, tortured thing." She stood in the doorway as she slid past the massive vault door that hung ajar. "Your creators were cruel to have made you, cruel to set you on this path. If they lie on mine, I will condemn them. Your name will burn in their minds, Samus Aran, and I will bring justice."

Then she was gone.

Samus' suit jets ignited and she launched towards the vault door after The Last but in mid-flight her motion suddenly reversed with an uncomfortably familiar jerk. Intense gravity pulled her back, waves of damage rippling through her suit and flesh as the gradient in acceleration between her foot and her head caused tides through bone and steel. Samus flung out her arms, grapple beam and blaster kickback in tandem pushed her from the path to those black fangs, but it was a near miss this time. Samus landed, spun, and leapt to avoid the next attack. One long whipping fang scraped her leg armor in another blast of screaming pain, excruciating but tactically irrelevant, but as her foot came down it now felt cold stone and gritting dust instead of the interior of her boot. The touch of the emergency exit key. Samus fired another volley of quick ice blasts to drive the First back and that bought her time for the suit to reform around her lower left leg, glowing as it did so, but that had been close. The First no longer needed to land a clean hit, by virtue of the Key anywhere it touched Samus' armor would just cease to exist.

She had inflicted damage with ice beam and missiles, but as Samus devoted a precious half second to assessing just how much damage a depressing sight emerged to clarity. The room was dustier than it had been, even accounting for the explosions. Samus' eyes took in the eroded look of the stone under the First's floating path, and flicked over to the various impact points where tentacle fangs had hit floor instead of Samus' heart. The rough shallow pits at each point told a clear story, the First was eating stone molecules, much more slowly than it consumed living organisms of course, but this thing's hyper powerful reaper field was gnawing not just at Samus' shields but at the fundamental atomic structure of the universe bit by bit. And if the First was anything like its descendants, that constant flow of energy was healing it every second. That was bad.

And she was now in the wrong position. The First had learned from their fight, and now a fanged tentacle, black as void, whipped towards her and all the avenues of escape were guarded by others appendages. No choice. The moment froze and stretched as Samus slipped into the grim peace of certainty. These instants where the future was perfectly visible were rare, but there was satisfaction even when they were terrible. Samus knew what she was going to do. When it came down to it, a warrior's body was just another piece of ablative armor. So the attack darted forward and Samus sprang to meet it, reaching out to grab hold of the largest curved fang in her hand even as it formed out of the First's roiling black flesh.

Her hand clamped down on the fang and shook with the terrible force of its impact, holding it back. In that same instant came the searing, screaming, unbearable pain as the metroid's reaper field began to eat the life energy out of her body, ripping and tearing cell by cell. But for that brief second the First's assault was stalled by a shield of Samus' blood and bone. Thought vanished under pain, the nerves in Samus' brain spasmed and froze in torture beyond perception, but Samus had lain her intention down at a level below mind, programed her retaliation into the thoughtless void. It was written in her body and in that fraction of a second the attack in her weapon finished charging. Just a tiny a moment more as the metal of her gauntlet holding the fang peeled back in a ripple of light. The Key's energy field undid the suit, leaving only a bare human hand holding back the ripping hunger of the metroid.

The second ticked, a finger began to shift on the trigger, but then the pain vanished.

Shock crashed through Samus' void and she froze without firing, stunned beyond even her instinctive training. The First froze as well, black tentacles shuddering in what had to be equal surprise. The life energy absorption was gone. Samus' bare, bleeding hand clutched the knife-like fang of the metroid but she felt nothing beyond its physical edge. The agony of the metroid had vanished, and the First expressed such confusion that it was not even pushing against her arm with simple strength. They simply stood together in frozen combat, both wondering why Samus was not dead.

Samus stared at her bare arm; the suit had retreated all the way back to her left shoulder under command of the Key. Then in absence of pain, her thoughts began again, making connections. The hatchling. The X parasite. The metroid gene therapy. There had been new organelles in her cells after that, things that the federation scientists had never been able to identify a use for. Or had never told her the use for. Memories flashed together, Aurora's impossibly effective life energy surge machine, The Last's confusion at Samus' resilience. And now the final touch, bare skin against a metroid reaper field, its greatest weapon neutralized.

Adam's text flashed in her eyes. "Life in shadow. Truth exposed. I told you it was good news."

Then new fangs sprouted from the tentacle's black flesh and they sliced through Samus' arm like knives, severing meat and bone. The tentacle whipped away, withdrawing with its burden and Samus' left arm now ended in a red stump just below the elbow.

...

By age fifteen, Samus had reached her full adult height and her skill advanced with her strength. She had passed through the augmentation tanks more times than she could quickly recall and she had now fully integrated all the changes. Old Bird still won most of their sparring bouts, but now he had to rely only on his centuries of experience. When it came to strength and speed, Samus could match him.

Their lessons quickly reached the boundary of what even cybernetic biology could be pushed to, so they continued right past it. Now as she trained Samus wore an advanced blue skintight body suit, a quarter inch of material over her skin that continued to enhance her reflexes, strength, and sensory abilities beyond the capability of organic cells. With it on, Samus could feel vibrations in the ground of an insect walking ten feet away. She could feel every breath of air and taste its chemical composition with her entire body, each sensation fed directly into her integrated nervous system.

When her arm clashed with Old Bird's she could feel his breath rasping in his lungs.

Samus grunted and with a push Old Bird's blow was thrown back. That was the second time during this sparing match. Half a second later, his foot talons rasped the ground and threw up dust in an expert flick towards Samus' eyes. Samus avoided it but was forced to move back and in a swish of his robe, Old Bird was gone, leaving only the jumbled boulders of the broken battlefield under a dark sky of roiling yellow clouds.

Samus was ok with that. Her right hand held a small energy pistol and the shadow of a smile touched her lips. Blue eyes sparkled, in the right light they were lined with the faintest traces of crystalline enchantments inside them. Her aim was perfect now and her eyes could see the UV shadows of the rocks around them. Zebes was no stranger to predators but now Samus strode among them as the alpha. Old Bird was the one who ran through this broken expanse of rubble and ancient crumbled structures

Samus sprang up, easily leaping ten feet through the air to land lightly on a boulder peak, weapon ready to flick out towards any target. Even from this vantage she still could not see where Old Bird had gone to, but the air contained molecules of his breath and the almost imperceptible sounds of stealthy movement could narrow his presence down to a tightly limited area. The faintest breath of wind brushed the yellow hair that hung from Samus' high ponytail and she bolted forward, feet nearly silent even as she raced across the rocky ground after her mentor. She was unquestionably entering a trap, but any second she gave Old Bird to prepare would only make the trap more fearsome. Samus knew what she was, and knew she had no hope of outsmarting the Chozo, but now at least she could outfight him. She would not give him time to think.

She raced through the boulder field with the speed of a stooping falcon. Under her incredible strength, her movement was more like flight than running, each step a precisely angled leap horizontal across the ground. Then she saw it, the trace she sought in a dark shadow created by a large rock slab propped up on lower boulders. Old Bird had found terrain that limited Samus' sight, confined her actions with rock and shadow while leaving his own escape open. But it had taken him time to get here too, so Samus judged her teacher had had only nine seconds to prepare his traps. Analyzing what to do about this would cost Samus more seconds, but she had already decided on her course of action. She lunged into the shadow, and the speed of her passage created whirlwinds of dust.

The little gun in her hand flashed brightly under the rock slab and Old Bird dodged, but that shot had never been intended to land. It simply cut off an avenue of retreat and so defined Old Bird's location to one specific area. Samus' charge hit the Chozo head on, her fist slamming into his chest as her hips twisted with the attack. Old Bird flew back, smashing into a smaller boulder that cracked as he tumbled away, sliding on the floor. Samus' hand touched the cool shadowed ground as she landed, panting. She had put all her force into that attack, transferring every bit of her speed into more striking power as the punch brought her to an abrupt and total stop. But it had worked, the fight was over in one hit.

Then the cracked boulder Old Bird had hit crumbled and the huge rock slab it held up came grinding down.

The world rang and when Samus cleared her eyes she was on her back. She coughed on dust and then found she could not reinflate her lungs all the way. Her chest and stomach were pushed down, almost crushed by incredible force against her abdomen. Then the dust cleared and she remembered; the slab had fallen and she had not quite gotten away in time. Samus strained and squirmed but she was still pinned, half crushed beneath a rock that weighed almost two thousand times her body weight.

Then the shadow came again and Old Bird stood between her and the cloud-dimmed sun, black and featureless before a corona of light. Samus didn't bother to say anything, not that she was sure she could with the pressure on her ribs and the feeling that her belly was almost touching her spine.

Old Bird's face was hidden behind the light. "You lost. Do not trust in the strength of your body."

Samus grunted, fighting even for shallow gasps of air that came with great pain. It was very difficult to respond but she still did so. "I had to. Strength was my only advantage."

The shadow above her shifted. "Act without regard for advantage, and let it come unlooked for. Find the route to success for the weak and set that as your path. Strength only absorbs the margin of ignorance."

Samus grunted a laugh and then gaged silently as the rock shifted another inch against her compressed organs. "That's me. Ignorance wrapped in strength."

Old Bird was quiet for long moment. When he spoke it was almost inaudible. "That is not you. And your true strength is yet to come."

Then he helped Samus remove the rock slab.

...

The Chozo taught that the body was not important, just an ephemeral manifestation of the true self. A body was necessary and valuable, but that did not make it you. Samus' second parents had instilled that lesson in her.

During one of her final passes through the augmentation tank, they had stopped the process just before she lost consciousness. The nervous paralytics numbed half her body, and then Samus watched a gleaming medical blade neatly lop off her right hand at the wrist. It was a strange thing to see part of her body lying beside her, something that she had always considered just an extension of her thought now separate and limp.

Grey Voice instructed Samus to pick up that lump of meat and bone, to manipulate it with her remaining hand. There was no pain, no anxiety beyond what outdated instinct sobbing in the back of her mind. Samus knew that reattaching such an appendage was the work of seconds for chozo medical technology. However, Samus still felt that somewhere, deep within her brain, a monkey was screaming. She held the severed hand in front of her, turning and squeezing it. She saw the cut where bloody bones protruded, and felt how they slid around within the muscles and tendons. But was just a thing. It was not her.

The augmentation machine repeated the operation with her foot, again placing the severed object in her left hand to explore. Distantly Samus wondered how far they could carry this exercise, how many things she would become, but then the lesson was done and with a faint pump of sedative Samus went to sleep on the medical table.

When she awoke, she was whole and she was stronger.

...

Grey Voice summoned Samus into a previously unused room of the Zebes temple. When Samus arrived she saw a naked human body lying dead on the floor. It took a moment to process but once Samus overcame the strange perspective she realized the body was her own.

It was an exact copy. To accelerate the growth of a cloned body was an easy thing, as long as you did not care about survival or want it to have a developed mind. That was evidently what Grey Voice had done for the last few years, and now had a corpse on the floor of this room, identical in every way to Samus. This was the next lesson.

At Grey Voice's instruction Samus stripped out of her clothing and knelt beside her own dead body. She was to wash it, lifting and turning and prodding this limp avatar so that she might break down the barriers in her mind. Samus complied, and felt the curiously heavy weight of the corpse with every touch. There were mirrors on the walls and so she could see herself from every angle, one body alive and one body dead.

Grey Voice left without a word, so Samus knew the lesson was not over. She remained in the room and soon the greater purpose became clear. She was to wait and watch. Food was supplied, and drink, but no clothes or any mental stimulation. But Samus had learned patience so she sat there in the mirrored room, watching her own corpse.

Days passed and the body before began to rot. Samus continued to watch, and in the endless silent hours she meditated on the object in front of her. This corpse had once been indistinguishable from the thing Samus had once considered her true self. Now it was rotting, disintegrating but in truth very little had changed. Nothing had entered or exited this room. All the materials were still here, they were simply entering into a new configuration. Bit by bit the attachments of Samus' mind faded away, changing configuration until she was something new.

Two weeks later she exited the room, and when she did she was stronger.

...

People lay across the golden streets, dead and dying, painted dark with their own purple blood. They lay amid their broken and shattered wings Samus could feel the grief that wracked her body, the fear, and the unbearable physical pain from her wounds. She looked down at where five of her legs had been torn off, too weak to scream even if she could rub the tendrils together enough to make that noise, if they had not been burned off. She looked up with seven compound eyes at the bright orange sky and then all light faded as she died.

It was still dark as Samus returned to her mind and lay on the cold metal table, briefly returned to the chill and dust of Temple Zebes. The opaque helmet around her head cut off all sound and sight, but she could still feel to touch of air and metal. It would take Grey Voice another few seconds to load up the next memory simulation, the next vision of another life as it ended in horror and fear. But those were not Samus' feelings, just another sort of vision. Sometimes, in these moments between, Samus was not sure if these thoughts were her thoughts. Sometimes she could not remember if the cool metal table was touching her skin, or that of some other creature, a strange pale skinned ape on a far distant world.

Then Grey Voice finished with the device and once Samus plunged back into memory to live again. To die again. To die again and again and again, and through that horror learn wisdom.

After, she was stronger.

...

Samus looked up at Old Bird. The breath was hot and dry in her mouth under Zebes merciless sun but she still asked, once again. "Who am I?"

Old Bird pressed a finger to her chest. After years of observation, Samus could now notice that the hand trembled despite the tremendous strength behind it. It had always trembled, she just had not been able to see it.

Old Bird was quiet, almost a whisper. "That question. That question is you. Only that is you. And that is enough."

...

In the dim shadows of the vault, the First Metroid drew back its fang-covered tentacles towards the black central mass, one now clutching Samus' severed forearm. The globular monster was confused at the hand's refusal to dissolve into grey dust. It was proving quite indigestible and that was a new experience for a creature that freely ate basalt on a molecular level. Those black fangs had just sliced through bones that could survive atmospheric reentry, but the crackling shimmer of excess radiation failed to make any headway on eating simple meat. The unnatural gloom which surrounded the First seemed to flow, retreating from elsewhere to concentrate around fangs holding the hand as the monster strained.

Another drop of hot blood splattered against the dusty stone at Samus' feet but the remaining stump of her left arm was already at least partially dealt with. Auto-stints had deployed in her veins and artery to stop the blood loss and medical nanites were scrambling to construct temporary detour vessels and capillaries for all the flesh still left. In the absence of the Key's influence, the battle suit was reforming. Given enough time and materials the suit could fill in the gauntlet with the mechanisms to regain full manual control but for now that empty hand would have to stay limp. Empty but for pain.

Samus breathed out and felt her lungs spasm only slightly as she did so. Parts of her body wanted to go into shock, but that was just biology talking. She stepped forward. Biology was not in charge. The suit flashed warnings and alerts through her vision and haptic feedback, trying to establish new protocols for a user who had just been almost literally decimated, a user it could no longer protect while the Key was in play. Her next step was faster. Technology was not in charge either. Proximity sensors displayed in the visor suddenly showed multiple life forms outside the chamber and drawing closer, charging down the passage the Last had recently fled through. By the odds on this planet those newcomers were not going to be friendly but they were not in charge either.

The First floated in front of her, a swirling mass of teeth and darkness, and Samus charged. As the creature tried and failed to consume her hand, the EM-devouring blackness that coated it in invulnerability retreated over into what was was forming into a maw of gnashing fangs, a new organ for a new task. The First Metroid had been a thesis, the living expression of a mathematical solution and so this little piece of "2+2=5" was confounding it.

Confounded. Confused. Uncertain. That was weakness, and Samus wielded certainty like a spear from heaven. There was no time for thought, she just knew. Her dash eliminated distance and then she leapt, burning energy building up in the barrel of her gun.

"Override all restraints."

The moment hung in the air as the chozo battle suit breathed in. There was no need to clarify, with Adam free in the systems the suit knew exactly what she meant. Within each system, every weapon, every capacitor, every device that played freely with energy and matter, each and every rank of programed restraint instantly ended. Half a second passed and the suit shivered as every seam and junction in the armor's exterior began to bleed out light. In the space between tick and tock, Samus' leap began to be traced by blazing fire as the fury of the Chozo Empire was unleashed, all care for its wilder discarded. Terrible, burning, incredible power filled every inch and every particle. In this state the suit would soon destroy itself, torn to shreds by its own lightning fury, moments after Samus' own body burnt away. But in those seconds, it would be unstoppable.

Then Samus slammed against the side of the First and her suit automatically began to open up at the Key's first touch, peeling back layer by layer. However, currently the second layer was pure burning light and that overloaded energy burst outwards like an exploding angel. In that same instant and with all her strength, Samus plunged her weapon arm straight into the monster's shifting flesh even as the barrel began to separate. The charged shot she had held within detonated wildly as containment failed but Samus' punch continued even through it. Fire and frost swept past her face as the helmet split and withdrew, but Samus did not allow herself even to blink as her eyelashes smoked and skin burned. This was the path she had seen. This was the chance.

The First staggered back through the air, gravity fields thrown into flux as it struggled to recover from this suicidal charge. But even as it shifted focus away from the conundrum of the severed hand, the monster now had another problem. An equally indigestible object was pressed right in the center of a newly wounded area, and that object was punching the First over and over with the force to puncture steel.

Underneath Samus the metroid shifted and black tendrils rose around Samus like a pit of vipers, spearpoints sliding out of the tentacle sides as new fangs boiled into existence. Then Samus' fist clenched down behind the base of the nearest fang and with all her force drove it down at the heart of its creator. The First thrashed in a scream of pain as the fang hit the center of mass, but Samus could not hear anymore. Her helmet was gone and with it the ability to hear radio waves.

A thousand half-formed black teeth rose up on each side and bit into the retreating armor but Samus still slammed the fang in her hand down into the center of mass again and again. That fang soon melted away in her fist, reabsorbed, but she punched out to grab another tooth on another tentacle and continued to hammer the attack, the fang's base in her fist like a hand-ax. Around her a barbed whip formed and aimed at her head but in the final second Samus blocked it with what remained of her left arm, taking the piercing hit through skin and muscle just to direct the point away from her brain while she continued to slam her suborned spike down again and again. Then tentacle whose fang she held as weapon bulged and reformed, gifted with new strength now sufficient to overpower Samus' arm, but another new-formed fang swung in, still materializing. It left a gouge across her cheek but Samus snapped forward to grab its base in her teeth and then twist with all her might to slam the point back into the same injured spot. The First Metroid writhed and screamed.

Red human blood flowed like water, but the pitch dark green flesh retreated involuntarily under the assault, exposing the First's transparent globular core, now sporting a jagged crack above the suspended inner nerve clusters. One more strike. Then Samus' fist closed around the base of her latest suborned fang and she instantly knew she could not overpower the tentacle this time. After all the exertion and wounds, her strength had met its limit. Under the Key's influence the Chozo battle suit had withdrawn completely, spreading out behind her in unfolded strips like metal wings connected only by a single line along Samus' spine. The blue interface suit hung off her body in ribbons above bloody skin in a similar state. Samus' unprotected flesh pressed against the First's terrible fury in half a dozen places, skin to twisting, bubbling skin.

Which was the prerequisite to try the second part of her crazy theory.

Two years ago Samus had been infected by a deadly X parasite. The cure was nearly as dangerous, an infusion of self-propagating organelles from the blood of a metroid hatchling. It was unprecedented, unrepeated, and since then Samus had been silently collecting clues about side effects. Her new sensitivity to cold. Her resistance to the Last's prototype reaper field. The success of Aurora's life-energy absorption therapy. Touching that first fang. Side effects and capabilities. These dots led the mind in a certain direction, a suicidally stupid direction but in the face of certain death suicide was a viable strategy.

Even as Samus still struggled against the First's assault, still clutching her one hand onto the back of the long black fang she wrested against, she breathed deep, focused on her bare skin pressing against the First Metroid, and reached out towards the sensation of hunger.

For a second the First stopped and shivered. Then the moment was over, a hundred new small teeth bit into Samus' legs, and Samus heaved her right hand down, slamming the point of the long black fang directly into the heart. The transparent core split open and Samus plunged the First's black fang down through the thick clear gel into the globular red nerve cluster suspended at its center.

This time Samus almost thought she could hear the scream. The First Metroid writhed, its unstable form exploding outwards in claws and teeth and shadow. It was a tornado of knives, an inferno of blades, and then all at once it collapsed into a thick black mud. Organic sludge collapsed on every side as the central mass suddenly dropped to the floor, gravetic levitation gone. Samus fell to her knees on the blood sluiced floor, too spent to even tremble, as she felt victory and relief flow into her like warm slow lightning. She had no helmet, she could not see the shield energy displays, but her reaper system had to have made a good meal out of this creature's death. It better have, as the darkness at the edges of Samus' vision meant the organic component of this partnership, Samus herself, was rapidly losing blood pressure from over a hundred slashes and puncture wounds. She knelt there one breath from collapse as her suit slowly drew back around her body.

In the center of the black and bubbling ruin a new light shone, a single small bright object emerging back into the physical world as it floated up from the corpse of its former captor. Slowly, Samus reached out and closed her sliced and frost-burnt and shattered fist around the Key and let the yellow glow signal that the suit had contained and integrated it. If things went well, the Last would come to regret leaving this behind. With the Key no longer active Samus' suit fully returned, quickly contracting and refolding around her. She welcomed it the way she welcomed air in her lungs. Speaking of which, at least one of those seemed to be punctured; her breathing felt wet. The world spun again but this time that was not a gravity attack, just the inner ear processing blood loss as acceleration, mixed in with the heavy nervous system noise of excruciating pain.

But, for the moment, she was alive. And she had won. Now she just had to plan for what came next.

The transparent green visor slid back over Samus' eyes as her hemet returned, reforming around her, and with it came the blinking yellow dots to remind her of the unknown entities racing towards her outside the vault.

Oh yeah, sensors had picked up life signs rushing down the vault hallway. That had also happened during the fight. Samus smiled as she rocked back on her knees. That was funny. Or maybe it wasn't, emotional reactions tended to get crossed past certain levels of stimulus and Samus had crossed that metaphorical threshold at planetary escape velocity. It was all she could do to slowly twist her neck back to glance over her shoulder.

The thing that now poked its way through the partially open vault door stood lightly on four thick legs like insectile spears. In fact, this creature hardly seemed to need them, buoyed instead by an invisible force it seemed more used to using. Thick dark green armor plating covered the upper half of its irregular round body and a crown of fangs jutted from the front beside four-packs of primitive eyes like dice pips, but the undercarriage was still clearly and depressingly familiar. A semi-transparent dome with red globular clusters suspended inside.

The Aurora's loosed metroids had been given time for metamorphosis and they now had heard the call of their progenitor. They had heard and they had come.

Samus sat kneeling in a pool of black sludge and her own blood, down by half an arm, half her weapons, and about half of the components required to run a human body. The third-form metroid's legs clicked as it stepped across the stone, each step growing closer to Samus' seated armored back. There wouldn't be another fight, Samus knew that. Not a real one. It was too strong and she was too weak. However, she also knew her nature. She closed her eyes and raised her weapon. At the edge of that last blink she saw but failed to process a bit of text that flashed into her visor.

"Now, see where the path has brought you."

...