In order to reach the gardens from where I was standing, I had to leap into
a tunnel which began at the top of a wall three times my height. It was so
high. My natural instincts told me that I couldn't do it. But if Old Bird,
who's the same height as me, could do it, then I could do it too. After
all, am I not part Chozo?
I crouched as low as possible, tensing up my leg muscles. Suddenly, like a coiled spring being released, I pushed myself off the ground with all my strength, leaping into the air. I felt myself slow and began to fall before I could even see the tunnel opening, but my extended hands just barely caught the edge. I hoisted myself up and looked down at the distance I just conquered, giddy with excitement.
I did it! I did it! Wow, Old Bird will be so proud of me! I could almost see his face, gaping in surprise and muttering about how short yet strong my legs are. I ran into the station's main gardens and sure enough, Old Bird was there, hunched over a plant he was studying or something.
"Old Bird! Look! I'm here! I jumped here from the commons room!"
The ancient Chozo squawked in surprise and chuckled as he turned towards me. But he moved oddly, as if he was trying to hide behind him whatever he was looking at before.
"Well, Samus-san. Looks like I'll have to child-proof the gardens from your mischief now." Old Bird laughed, but there was something unsettling about the way he acted.
I looked past him. "Old Bird, what's that over there? What is it?" I walked closer and before the Chozo could stop me, caught a glimpse of what he was trying to hide. I gasped, the breath caught in my throat.
There, lying motionless on the floor, was one of the other Chozo of this space station. His name was Crowlus. He was a fine example of a Chozo in his prime, tall and elegant with a plumage of feathers which made him look like he had a ridiculously large head. But now his breath was shallow and his eyes glazed a dull yellow. I could tell that he was dying. I could tell because I had seen it many times throughout the years. I turned to Old Bird, mouth open but unable to ask even one of a hundred questions in my mind.
Old Bird placed a hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort me in any way he could. "Crowlus is leaving this world." He said softly. "He, like all the other Chozo, tires of life and wants to leave the mortal realm. Oh Samus- san, I'm so sorry you had to see this..."
I turned to my friend and mentor with the beginnings of tears in my eyes. I wiped at them stubbornly, but in vain. "So he's just leaving us? But we'll be the last two people alive on this space station!" Old Bird nodded solemnly. I turned back to the dying Chozo. His helplessness and hopelessness angered me. "Why??" I demanded with a child's frustration. "Why are you tired of life? Why are you leaving us all alone?" Crowlus was unable to answer. His eyes slowly closed, never to be opened again. His last breath left him with a sigh. I felt a slight chill run through my body and I knew that it was the Chozo's ghost passing into the next world.
Old Bird stood silent as I grieved for the deceased Chozo. "Why?" I whispered. I turned to Old Bird. "Why? Why have hundreds of young, healthy Chozo died on this space station when you and I are still alive?"
Old Bird smiled sadly with his bird-like beak. "You wouldn't understand, Samus-san. The refugee Chozo here have all lost friends and loved ones on Zebes. They have lost hope. Without them, they find little meaning in the mortal realm. They long to reunite with those they once knew."
I thought this over and for a moment, I thought I understood. But how could anyone just give up and drop dead like that? To give up your life simply because you are unwilling to endure tomorrow. It didn't make any sense to me. But then a more terrifying thought entered my mind.
"Old Bird, will you tire of life?" I asked him with a child's terror. "You must have lost a lot of friends. You're the last Chozo from Zebes. You won't leave me here all alone, will you?"
The old Chozo laughed a bit and touched my face with gnarled fingers. "Hatchling," He called me by my pet name. "I still find meaning in you. So it is for you that I continue to exist in this weary old body. I will not abandon you until you are old enough to fly on your own."
Tears coursed freely down my face and I held Old Bird's hand tightly, afraid to let go, afraid that he might drift into a ghost at any moment. I buried my face in the thinning feathers of his shoulder. "No." I whispered. "Stay with me forever." But he did not answer.
************
Sitting in the doctor's waiting room in her fusion suit earned Samus nearly as many stares as she gets without it. She expected people here to be used to odd creatures on this crossroads planet. Haven't they ever seen a female humanoid in a bio-mechanical power suit before? Was it the conspicuous bright orange of her suit that made them stare? Or was it the fact that the suit came with a beam cannon attached to the right arm? Well, as long as they don't cause any trouble for her, Samus couldn't care less.
The whitewashed walls and stale air of the claustrophobic waiting room made Samus shift restlessly. There was no clink of metal from her suit as she moved. In a way, the fusion suit was more comfortable than her old suit, which was large and bulky despite its ingenious design which made it feel weightless. An improvement over the Chozo's original design? Doubtful.
Finally, the secretary invited Samus into a room with the doctor and three scientists. Samus groaned. She had been hoping to see only the doctor, but whenever she entered her name into any Federation funded system, a horde of scientists would follow her, eager to study her Chozo designed power suit. The presence of all these scientists annoyed Samus. It annoyed her so much that she decided to shift her persona from stoic to bitchy.
The doctor smiled at the bounty hunter and extended her hand. "Hello, Miss Aran. I am Dr. Loren Bernen, bio-mechanical medical specialist."
Samus stared at the hand for a beat before shaking it. "And who might those three be?" She asked bluntly, nodding her head at the three men who sat against the wall, wearing identical white lab coats.
Dr. Bernen blinked, taken aback by Samus's abrupt manner. "I'm sorry. Allow me to introduce Dr. Lui Chen, leading researcher of human nervous extensions, Dr. Yamaro Peter Sofard, inter-species genetic infusion specialist, and Dr. Camerence Shalafiki, Federation military theorist. Dr. Shalafiki is here because he has studied your power suit once before, Miss Aran, and may provide some insight for the rest of us."
"Really." Samus replied blandly. She didn't remember the Shalafiki scientist admid all the other scientists and specialists the Federation used to throw at her. "I asked for one doctor. Are you other three scientists here to babysit me?"
Dr. Chen coughed irritably. "Miss Aran, the symptoms that you reported to Dr. Bernen are not normal among humans. It may have been derived from a number of factors you have been exposed to in your lifetime, such as your Chozo heritage or lingering effects of being infected by the X. Dr. Bernen, knowledgeable as she is about bio-mechanical illnesses, would not be able to take all these factors into account. All of us, in fact, may not be able to pinpoint your problem."
"So you might not even be able to do anything." Samus muttered under her breath.
"Tell us about your symptoms, Miss Aran." Dr. Chen said, pointedly ignoring Samus's last comment.
Samus sighed and decided to cut the scientists some slack. "Okay. Where should I start? I assume all of you know about my surgery with the X infection and my involvement with the B.S.L. spacestation?"
They all nodded. But Dr. Sofard took out a notebook and flipped to a marked page. "About your surgery, I did some further research about the effects the metroid vaccine had on X-infected victims. You may not know this, but variations of the vaccine have been used on other patients before. However, the metroid DNA was rejected in all of them and they usually ended up as complete X hosts. Those victims had to be euthanized. The only people who survived are those who were infected only in their appendages, which could be easily amputated. The fact that you survived the X intact and accepted the metroid vaccine is of much interest to researchers and scientists."
"Oh? I didn't know that." Samus sounded much calmer than she felt. The last thing she needed to know was that she had another unexplained oddity about her. Chozo blood, power suit, survivor of the X. It wouldn't surprise her at all if she ended up preserved as a museum oddity after she dies.
"Please continue, Miss Aran." Dr. Bernen prompted. She had a clipboard and a pen poised to write.
Samus sat down on one of the spare chairs. "Ever since B.S.L. spacestation was destroyed, I've been feeling...lethargic. I mean, I felt fine when I was actually on B.S.L. But now, in the mornings when I wake up, I can hardly move. It gets better during the day. And it gets a worse if I'm out of my power suit. Speaking of the suit, I want to know what these are." Samus pointed to the mandible-like structures above her oxygen tubes and the blades coming out of her left arm. "They don't serve any function, yet they're there. I doubt they're a cosmetic addition on my surgeon's part. I'm also wondering about my suit's new texture."
"I can provide more information on that, Miss Aran." Dr. Shalafiki interrupted. "I was one of the surgeons who was working on your reconstruction during the X infection."
Samus's eyes widened. She was suddenly able to recognize Dr. Shalafiki's baritone voice as the same voice which spoke to her during her surgery.
"We applied the metroid vaccine to you even though it had never worked on any other victims before." Dr. Shalafiki continued. "But we were desperate. To our surprise, your body took in the metroid DNA immediately and all the X cells within you were eradicated soon after. The scientist team reconstructed your power suit the best we could from parts still attached to your body. However, as we waited for your recovery, odd features began to grow on your suit. These included patches of yellow appearing where they shouldn't be, the growth of the blades and mandible-like structures, and the softening of your suit into an almost epidermis-like material." The scientist shrugged. "Nobody knew what the side-effects of X recovery should be, or how the metroid vaccine affects the body. We took the new growths as a sign of recovery."
"But WHY did they appear?" Samus demanded. She wanted answers. And she was getting impatient at all the information she was trying to absorb from the scientists.
Dr. Shalafiki shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Samus slammed her fist down on the armrest in frustration, making the scientists cringe. She smiled inwardly, pleased that she still provoked that sort of reaction in men.
Dr. Bernen was too busy writing to notice. She stabbed the period at the end of the sentence and looked up. "Miss Aran, can you please elaborate on what you mean when you said that your condition gets worse when you're out of your power suit?"
Samus glared at the scientists and turned to the doctor. Dr. Bernen seemed to be the only one on track here. "I mean just that. After walking for while without my power suit, I simply have to sit down. It's not as if I overexerted myself or anything. I'm not tired at all. But I know that if I keep going, I'll fall over at some point. Also, if I take off my suit after wearing it for a long time, I would simply collapse. It sometimes takes me half an hour before I have the energy to get up again."
"What would constitute as a long time to wear the suit?" The doctor asked.
"A few days."
"How long have you been wearing the suit now?"
"A....few days."
Dr. Bernen nodded and placed her clipboard neatly on her lap. "Miss Aran, would you please remove your power suit? We would like to see exactly what the symptoms you speak of are like."
Samus had been dreading this. She hated being around people in a moment of weakness. But the bounty hunter had never been one to play the coward. And if a solution to her illness could be found, then it was well worth a bit of humiliation.
Samus stood up and took off her helmet, blinking in the bright lights that reflected back even brighter on the white walls. She unlocked the opening of the suit at the small of her back and slowly withdrew her arms, then her legs. It was an odd sensation to remove herself from the fusion suit. Parts of it in contact with her skin would feel sticky as Samus pulled away, like the pulling apart of two magnets. The suit had always been a biological part of her, but their link had never been so close.
As soon as Samus stepped out from the fusion suit, she fell backwards. Dr. Chen moved quickly to catch her, while the rest of the specialists exploded into yelling and frenzied action. Samus suddenly found herself bombarded with stethoscopes, thermometers and other equipment.
"Her heartbeat is normal, but her blood pressure has gone down dramatically!"
"The fusion suit's energy levels are within a normal range. What is written under this flashing green light? It's written in Chozo script!"
"Should we call an ambulance?"
"I'm taking a blood sample. I'm also taking a circulatory fluid sample from the suit."
"Miss Aran! Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?"
For the next ten minutes, Samus watched the activity around her, lying helpless and prone on the floor. Finally, she tried her voice and found that she could speak again.
"I'm....I'm okay." She said. Everyone stopped for a moment and stared at her, amazed that she's talking. Samus managed to prop herself up to a sitting position with Dr. Chen's help. She stretched and flexed her fingers. "The truth is, although I couldn't move, I felt fine."
Dr. Sofard frowned and scratched a pale patch of skin on his neck. "This is most unusual. I've never seen anyone display such symptoms before. Other species, maybe, but not humans."
"It appears to me that it's the fusion suit which is causing most of the problem." Dr. Bernen was scribbling madly on her clipboard and didn't even look up while speaking.
"Miss Aran, I'm afraid that any diagnosis we come up with at this point will likely be inaccurate until we run some lab tests on the samples we've just taken." Dr. Shalafiki said. "I would also like to examine your fusion suit for a day. With your permission, of course."
Of all the people in the room, it was Dr. Shalafiki that Samus trusts the least. The Federation had marred itself in Samus's eyes and she was wary of all its members. If she gave up her suit for a day, Dr. Shalafiki will probably make up excuses and whatever to try to keep it for a longer period of time. The Federation was obsessed with the technology of her power suit.
Dr. Shalafiki sensed her hesitation. "Only for a day, I promise. If you would like, you can stay and watch the procedure for yourself."
Samus shook her head at that prospect. She had better things to do than to wait around all day, listening to various scientists with their medical jargon. She got on her feet and tried her legs, making sure that they don't collapse under her.
"Okay. I'll let you keep my suit for a day. ONE day." Samus said the last part with a tinge of threat, especially directed at that Shalafiki man. "I'll be here at 9 standard, and my suit had better be here as well."
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
Samus began to leave, but Dr. Bernen caught her in the hallway. "Miss Aran, if you're going out, you can borrow my overcoat if you want to."
The bounty hunter turned around. "Huh?" She replied intelligently.
The doctor frowned. "You're not going to walk around in that, are you?" Dr. Bernen pointed to Samus's current attire, which consisted of a tight tanktop cut just above the ribs and low jeans hemmed high above the knees, exposing an embarrassing amount of skin.
The bounty hunter looked down at herself, then laughed out loud. "Doctor, I'm not a woman known for her modesty." Samus shrugged. "I don't mind walking around like this."
Dr. Bernen chewed her bottom lip nervously. "Well, you should be able to take care of yourself, considering that you are a bounty hunter. But be careful. I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Aran." And with that, the doctor turned back to rejoin her colleagues.
Samus felt a bit better about leaving her suit with Dr. Bernen since the doctor expressed concern for her. Yet, what was there to be concerned about? A peaceful little planet like this one couldn't pose much of a threat to famous and feared bounty hunter Samus Aran, with or without her armor.
Samus went outside and breathed in the flavorful air. It sure beats the recycled oxygen from the power suit or the smell of anaesthetic from the doctor's room. A fresh breeze tugged at Samus's hair. She pulled out the elastic holding it in a ponytail and prepared to explore the planet.
I crouched as low as possible, tensing up my leg muscles. Suddenly, like a coiled spring being released, I pushed myself off the ground with all my strength, leaping into the air. I felt myself slow and began to fall before I could even see the tunnel opening, but my extended hands just barely caught the edge. I hoisted myself up and looked down at the distance I just conquered, giddy with excitement.
I did it! I did it! Wow, Old Bird will be so proud of me! I could almost see his face, gaping in surprise and muttering about how short yet strong my legs are. I ran into the station's main gardens and sure enough, Old Bird was there, hunched over a plant he was studying or something.
"Old Bird! Look! I'm here! I jumped here from the commons room!"
The ancient Chozo squawked in surprise and chuckled as he turned towards me. But he moved oddly, as if he was trying to hide behind him whatever he was looking at before.
"Well, Samus-san. Looks like I'll have to child-proof the gardens from your mischief now." Old Bird laughed, but there was something unsettling about the way he acted.
I looked past him. "Old Bird, what's that over there? What is it?" I walked closer and before the Chozo could stop me, caught a glimpse of what he was trying to hide. I gasped, the breath caught in my throat.
There, lying motionless on the floor, was one of the other Chozo of this space station. His name was Crowlus. He was a fine example of a Chozo in his prime, tall and elegant with a plumage of feathers which made him look like he had a ridiculously large head. But now his breath was shallow and his eyes glazed a dull yellow. I could tell that he was dying. I could tell because I had seen it many times throughout the years. I turned to Old Bird, mouth open but unable to ask even one of a hundred questions in my mind.
Old Bird placed a hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort me in any way he could. "Crowlus is leaving this world." He said softly. "He, like all the other Chozo, tires of life and wants to leave the mortal realm. Oh Samus- san, I'm so sorry you had to see this..."
I turned to my friend and mentor with the beginnings of tears in my eyes. I wiped at them stubbornly, but in vain. "So he's just leaving us? But we'll be the last two people alive on this space station!" Old Bird nodded solemnly. I turned back to the dying Chozo. His helplessness and hopelessness angered me. "Why??" I demanded with a child's frustration. "Why are you tired of life? Why are you leaving us all alone?" Crowlus was unable to answer. His eyes slowly closed, never to be opened again. His last breath left him with a sigh. I felt a slight chill run through my body and I knew that it was the Chozo's ghost passing into the next world.
Old Bird stood silent as I grieved for the deceased Chozo. "Why?" I whispered. I turned to Old Bird. "Why? Why have hundreds of young, healthy Chozo died on this space station when you and I are still alive?"
Old Bird smiled sadly with his bird-like beak. "You wouldn't understand, Samus-san. The refugee Chozo here have all lost friends and loved ones on Zebes. They have lost hope. Without them, they find little meaning in the mortal realm. They long to reunite with those they once knew."
I thought this over and for a moment, I thought I understood. But how could anyone just give up and drop dead like that? To give up your life simply because you are unwilling to endure tomorrow. It didn't make any sense to me. But then a more terrifying thought entered my mind.
"Old Bird, will you tire of life?" I asked him with a child's terror. "You must have lost a lot of friends. You're the last Chozo from Zebes. You won't leave me here all alone, will you?"
The old Chozo laughed a bit and touched my face with gnarled fingers. "Hatchling," He called me by my pet name. "I still find meaning in you. So it is for you that I continue to exist in this weary old body. I will not abandon you until you are old enough to fly on your own."
Tears coursed freely down my face and I held Old Bird's hand tightly, afraid to let go, afraid that he might drift into a ghost at any moment. I buried my face in the thinning feathers of his shoulder. "No." I whispered. "Stay with me forever." But he did not answer.
************
Sitting in the doctor's waiting room in her fusion suit earned Samus nearly as many stares as she gets without it. She expected people here to be used to odd creatures on this crossroads planet. Haven't they ever seen a female humanoid in a bio-mechanical power suit before? Was it the conspicuous bright orange of her suit that made them stare? Or was it the fact that the suit came with a beam cannon attached to the right arm? Well, as long as they don't cause any trouble for her, Samus couldn't care less.
The whitewashed walls and stale air of the claustrophobic waiting room made Samus shift restlessly. There was no clink of metal from her suit as she moved. In a way, the fusion suit was more comfortable than her old suit, which was large and bulky despite its ingenious design which made it feel weightless. An improvement over the Chozo's original design? Doubtful.
Finally, the secretary invited Samus into a room with the doctor and three scientists. Samus groaned. She had been hoping to see only the doctor, but whenever she entered her name into any Federation funded system, a horde of scientists would follow her, eager to study her Chozo designed power suit. The presence of all these scientists annoyed Samus. It annoyed her so much that she decided to shift her persona from stoic to bitchy.
The doctor smiled at the bounty hunter and extended her hand. "Hello, Miss Aran. I am Dr. Loren Bernen, bio-mechanical medical specialist."
Samus stared at the hand for a beat before shaking it. "And who might those three be?" She asked bluntly, nodding her head at the three men who sat against the wall, wearing identical white lab coats.
Dr. Bernen blinked, taken aback by Samus's abrupt manner. "I'm sorry. Allow me to introduce Dr. Lui Chen, leading researcher of human nervous extensions, Dr. Yamaro Peter Sofard, inter-species genetic infusion specialist, and Dr. Camerence Shalafiki, Federation military theorist. Dr. Shalafiki is here because he has studied your power suit once before, Miss Aran, and may provide some insight for the rest of us."
"Really." Samus replied blandly. She didn't remember the Shalafiki scientist admid all the other scientists and specialists the Federation used to throw at her. "I asked for one doctor. Are you other three scientists here to babysit me?"
Dr. Chen coughed irritably. "Miss Aran, the symptoms that you reported to Dr. Bernen are not normal among humans. It may have been derived from a number of factors you have been exposed to in your lifetime, such as your Chozo heritage or lingering effects of being infected by the X. Dr. Bernen, knowledgeable as she is about bio-mechanical illnesses, would not be able to take all these factors into account. All of us, in fact, may not be able to pinpoint your problem."
"So you might not even be able to do anything." Samus muttered under her breath.
"Tell us about your symptoms, Miss Aran." Dr. Chen said, pointedly ignoring Samus's last comment.
Samus sighed and decided to cut the scientists some slack. "Okay. Where should I start? I assume all of you know about my surgery with the X infection and my involvement with the B.S.L. spacestation?"
They all nodded. But Dr. Sofard took out a notebook and flipped to a marked page. "About your surgery, I did some further research about the effects the metroid vaccine had on X-infected victims. You may not know this, but variations of the vaccine have been used on other patients before. However, the metroid DNA was rejected in all of them and they usually ended up as complete X hosts. Those victims had to be euthanized. The only people who survived are those who were infected only in their appendages, which could be easily amputated. The fact that you survived the X intact and accepted the metroid vaccine is of much interest to researchers and scientists."
"Oh? I didn't know that." Samus sounded much calmer than she felt. The last thing she needed to know was that she had another unexplained oddity about her. Chozo blood, power suit, survivor of the X. It wouldn't surprise her at all if she ended up preserved as a museum oddity after she dies.
"Please continue, Miss Aran." Dr. Bernen prompted. She had a clipboard and a pen poised to write.
Samus sat down on one of the spare chairs. "Ever since B.S.L. spacestation was destroyed, I've been feeling...lethargic. I mean, I felt fine when I was actually on B.S.L. But now, in the mornings when I wake up, I can hardly move. It gets better during the day. And it gets a worse if I'm out of my power suit. Speaking of the suit, I want to know what these are." Samus pointed to the mandible-like structures above her oxygen tubes and the blades coming out of her left arm. "They don't serve any function, yet they're there. I doubt they're a cosmetic addition on my surgeon's part. I'm also wondering about my suit's new texture."
"I can provide more information on that, Miss Aran." Dr. Shalafiki interrupted. "I was one of the surgeons who was working on your reconstruction during the X infection."
Samus's eyes widened. She was suddenly able to recognize Dr. Shalafiki's baritone voice as the same voice which spoke to her during her surgery.
"We applied the metroid vaccine to you even though it had never worked on any other victims before." Dr. Shalafiki continued. "But we were desperate. To our surprise, your body took in the metroid DNA immediately and all the X cells within you were eradicated soon after. The scientist team reconstructed your power suit the best we could from parts still attached to your body. However, as we waited for your recovery, odd features began to grow on your suit. These included patches of yellow appearing where they shouldn't be, the growth of the blades and mandible-like structures, and the softening of your suit into an almost epidermis-like material." The scientist shrugged. "Nobody knew what the side-effects of X recovery should be, or how the metroid vaccine affects the body. We took the new growths as a sign of recovery."
"But WHY did they appear?" Samus demanded. She wanted answers. And she was getting impatient at all the information she was trying to absorb from the scientists.
Dr. Shalafiki shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
Samus slammed her fist down on the armrest in frustration, making the scientists cringe. She smiled inwardly, pleased that she still provoked that sort of reaction in men.
Dr. Bernen was too busy writing to notice. She stabbed the period at the end of the sentence and looked up. "Miss Aran, can you please elaborate on what you mean when you said that your condition gets worse when you're out of your power suit?"
Samus glared at the scientists and turned to the doctor. Dr. Bernen seemed to be the only one on track here. "I mean just that. After walking for while without my power suit, I simply have to sit down. It's not as if I overexerted myself or anything. I'm not tired at all. But I know that if I keep going, I'll fall over at some point. Also, if I take off my suit after wearing it for a long time, I would simply collapse. It sometimes takes me half an hour before I have the energy to get up again."
"What would constitute as a long time to wear the suit?" The doctor asked.
"A few days."
"How long have you been wearing the suit now?"
"A....few days."
Dr. Bernen nodded and placed her clipboard neatly on her lap. "Miss Aran, would you please remove your power suit? We would like to see exactly what the symptoms you speak of are like."
Samus had been dreading this. She hated being around people in a moment of weakness. But the bounty hunter had never been one to play the coward. And if a solution to her illness could be found, then it was well worth a bit of humiliation.
Samus stood up and took off her helmet, blinking in the bright lights that reflected back even brighter on the white walls. She unlocked the opening of the suit at the small of her back and slowly withdrew her arms, then her legs. It was an odd sensation to remove herself from the fusion suit. Parts of it in contact with her skin would feel sticky as Samus pulled away, like the pulling apart of two magnets. The suit had always been a biological part of her, but their link had never been so close.
As soon as Samus stepped out from the fusion suit, she fell backwards. Dr. Chen moved quickly to catch her, while the rest of the specialists exploded into yelling and frenzied action. Samus suddenly found herself bombarded with stethoscopes, thermometers and other equipment.
"Her heartbeat is normal, but her blood pressure has gone down dramatically!"
"The fusion suit's energy levels are within a normal range. What is written under this flashing green light? It's written in Chozo script!"
"Should we call an ambulance?"
"I'm taking a blood sample. I'm also taking a circulatory fluid sample from the suit."
"Miss Aran! Can you hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?"
For the next ten minutes, Samus watched the activity around her, lying helpless and prone on the floor. Finally, she tried her voice and found that she could speak again.
"I'm....I'm okay." She said. Everyone stopped for a moment and stared at her, amazed that she's talking. Samus managed to prop herself up to a sitting position with Dr. Chen's help. She stretched and flexed her fingers. "The truth is, although I couldn't move, I felt fine."
Dr. Sofard frowned and scratched a pale patch of skin on his neck. "This is most unusual. I've never seen anyone display such symptoms before. Other species, maybe, but not humans."
"It appears to me that it's the fusion suit which is causing most of the problem." Dr. Bernen was scribbling madly on her clipboard and didn't even look up while speaking.
"Miss Aran, I'm afraid that any diagnosis we come up with at this point will likely be inaccurate until we run some lab tests on the samples we've just taken." Dr. Shalafiki said. "I would also like to examine your fusion suit for a day. With your permission, of course."
Of all the people in the room, it was Dr. Shalafiki that Samus trusts the least. The Federation had marred itself in Samus's eyes and she was wary of all its members. If she gave up her suit for a day, Dr. Shalafiki will probably make up excuses and whatever to try to keep it for a longer period of time. The Federation was obsessed with the technology of her power suit.
Dr. Shalafiki sensed her hesitation. "Only for a day, I promise. If you would like, you can stay and watch the procedure for yourself."
Samus shook her head at that prospect. She had better things to do than to wait around all day, listening to various scientists with their medical jargon. She got on her feet and tried her legs, making sure that they don't collapse under her.
"Okay. I'll let you keep my suit for a day. ONE day." Samus said the last part with a tinge of threat, especially directed at that Shalafiki man. "I'll be here at 9 standard, and my suit had better be here as well."
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
Samus began to leave, but Dr. Bernen caught her in the hallway. "Miss Aran, if you're going out, you can borrow my overcoat if you want to."
The bounty hunter turned around. "Huh?" She replied intelligently.
The doctor frowned. "You're not going to walk around in that, are you?" Dr. Bernen pointed to Samus's current attire, which consisted of a tight tanktop cut just above the ribs and low jeans hemmed high above the knees, exposing an embarrassing amount of skin.
The bounty hunter looked down at herself, then laughed out loud. "Doctor, I'm not a woman known for her modesty." Samus shrugged. "I don't mind walking around like this."
Dr. Bernen chewed her bottom lip nervously. "Well, you should be able to take care of yourself, considering that you are a bounty hunter. But be careful. I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Aran." And with that, the doctor turned back to rejoin her colleagues.
Samus felt a bit better about leaving her suit with Dr. Bernen since the doctor expressed concern for her. Yet, what was there to be concerned about? A peaceful little planet like this one couldn't pose much of a threat to famous and feared bounty hunter Samus Aran, with or without her armor.
Samus went outside and breathed in the flavorful air. It sure beats the recycled oxygen from the power suit or the smell of anaesthetic from the doctor's room. A fresh breeze tugged at Samus's hair. She pulled out the elastic holding it in a ponytail and prepared to explore the planet.