Lightning Among the Stars
Summary: The SA-X. Gorea, Dark Samus. The foes in the cosmos hold power to subjugate civilzations, but they learn that while Samus may not be stronger, or nimbler, or even smarter, she remains deadlier. Deadly as lightning.
Author's Note: The title is a reference to how Samus's impact is often referred to as being a beacon of light among the stars. This is sort of a practice for the fight scenes in a story I'm trying to write, while also putting Samus's battles in a written format. I know I'm not the first to do so, but I thought it'd be fun.
Samus, Metroid, Metroid characters, etc, all belong to Nintendo and stuff…but you knew that already, I'm guessing.
Chapter 1: Imitation as Insult
"The SA-X is me, only heartless."
-Samus Aran, from Metroid Fusion
The battle didn't begin when the SA-X opened fire with icy streams of plasma. Nor when the buzz-saw flare of a Screw Attack signaled its approach on the Operations Deck, nor even when a quake in the room marked the SA-X's entrance via super missile.
No, this battle started when Samus fired a missile into a hornoad, and received a deadly parasite in exchange.
Samus had stood as the parasite approached, keeping herself between the research team and the unknown organism. Her body had taken the creature's lunge, and she had expected it to be a form of final attack, much like the shriekbats or skree of other worlds. Her suit hadn't noticed any side-effects: it was no Ing possession attempt, no Phazon bid for complete control.
No, it was an invasion at a cellular level, as foreign agents tried to dissolve her tissues, even as Chozo technology and Chozo-trained, but very much human, willpower stretched what would otherwise be a matter of seconds into a battle for hours. A battle thought lost, when Samus careened into an asteroid.
A battle thought won when Metroid-like cells tore life energy from the invading entities, reducing them to constituent molecules.
However, that was but the first exchange, as that same parasite reconstituted itself on the discarded parts of Samus's suit. Both sides had taken losses.
On the operations deck, the stakes held: winner takes all, whether it be a pyrrhic planet or the galaxy's very organic, very vulnerable populace.
The SA-X held greater firepower. Each blast of plasma-wave-wide beams Samus unleashed paled before the onslaught of plasma-wave-spazer-ice beams the soulless doppelganger volleyed back.
The SA-X boasted stronger shields. Each collision of Screw Attack and Screw Attack left Samus more battered than her foe. Each diffusion missile, each uncharged beam, splashed off helplessly against the parasite's armor, while Samus leapt and spun away from Super Missiles and a spattering of beams.
Samus held several advantages of her own. The SA-X, as a copy from only some of her cells, had not been able to acquire all of Samus's knowledge, as other X did by totally consuming their hosts' central nervous systems. Samus's Varia Suit—designed specifically with cold in mind—kept her unfrozen, even as painful plasma scorched and tore at her through layers of armor and shields. Her diffusion missiles made the difference all the more notable as waves of icy auras turned her foe into a statue—if only for a few precious seconds.
Perhaps the greatest difference, however, lay in the fact that the Chozo armor had been designed by the psionic Chozo—those searchers of mysteries beyond merely the physical laws that others in the galaxy worked around. The armor wove itself from pure thought, from sheer focus. From that, followed battle, and instinct, and success.
The parasite could copy flesh. It could mimic machinery, even improve upon it. The parasite could reproduce—even mass produce—minds.
The parasite could not reproduce a soul, the heart of hearts.
Samus saw the turn of the battle. Not from scattering an opposing shot with a well-timed Screw Attack, nor landing a beam hit through a segment of platform. Nor even from a surprise diffusion missile allowing for space to move and time to land a free hit.
No, the turn of the battle arrived when the SA-X fired directly into Samus, rending stomach and liver and heart, even as the Suit worked desperately to repair and replenish, and
Samus—through the pain and agony and mind-shredding madness of alarms and physical reactions and organ failure—
Samus fired right back, and the SA-X did not get up.
As a giant, mutant amalgamation, and then a Core-X, the SA-X was no match.
Heart now restructured, pumping blood once more throughout her body, Samus typed in the death sentence of the B.S.L, of SR388. She turned away, ran, and made her way past shredded corridors and docking bay debris.
As the Omega Metroid leaped forward, her starship lost or broken, her missiles falling uselessly against the hide of the beast, Samus wondered if her journey would end here, hacked apart by the penultimate form of the ultimate warrior, alone to atomize in an anti-matter induced blaze of glory, a miniature supernova for generations to see from beyond this star system, as light propagated out from the site of perhaps the gravest threat to galactic civilization Samus had ever known.
As the claws descended, beam firing uselessly against Metroid-armor, Samus decided—
No.
Giving up could never be an option. Not for her.
As claws with the strength to destroy her suit twice over sliced jaggedly through energy barriers and synthetic metal, Samus felt pain like few times before.
Like when Phazon had torn through her guts to strike at her very core. Like when Ridley had vomited plasma directly on her visor, sending waves of destruction and disorientation through her skull. Like when the Baby Metroid felt compelled by telepathy and neglect and hunger to beat through her suit's energy retention system, stealing electricity and chemical power and life from her. Like when Mother Brain turned pure focus, pure thought, pure intent into a beam of sheer annihilation. Like when memories, and regret, and loss sparked through her mind, her heart, her soul, even as Adam sent frigid doom directly into her spine.
And as Samus crashed to the ground, energy all-but spent, she did what she had done all those times before.
She endured.
The Omega Metroid stalked forward, and Samus willed her legs to rise. Where the spirit may be willing, however, the body can still be weak.
A shadow in front of her took shape, and the SA-X grew once more, old hatred overwhelming instinctive terror. The copy charged, and with each blast of its beam—ice to avoid absorption, plasma to pierce the shell—the Metroid reared back, screaming.
But when claws backed by vitality and stolen life swept downwards once more, the SA-X faced a test—and did not endure.
Samus leapt upwards, her legs now obeying, albeit shakily. Metroid-infused cells drank thirstily from the abundance of energy and life in her former foe—and her cells remembered how to wield ice, even as they remembered that Metroids could be unfreezable.
The Omega Metroid—no. Samus Aran? Absolutely.
With the power of ice, the memory of her old suit, and the redirected strength of her former foe, Samus sent beam after beam into the Omega Metroid, tearing into its heart, its core, its very self.
As a flare of purple signaled the arrival of her old starship, the ultimate warrior, the true Metroid, stood still to meet it.
Author's Note: As the last game in the chronological timeline, this might have been more appropriate as a final chapter, rather than a starting chapter. I plan on writing ones for Gorea, Dark Samus, and the Emperor Ing. Not all final bosses work: Mecha Ridley has little thematic or visual flare in a fight, and Phantoon is a bit…lacking, maybe? Non-final bosses might be used, though, like possibly one of the bounty hunters, a Queen Metroid, or Melissa Bergman. Mother Brain can likely get a chapter, though I fell that battle is a bit cliché to rehash.
I hope you enjoyed!
Chapter 2: Living Wish