The front window of Samus's gunship displayed nothing but space and stars, stretching out endlessly into the distance. One would think that the ship's owner would grow weary of the sight over the years, but she was hopelessly in love with the ever-changing dance of the planets. It was here, out in space, that she felt most at peace with the life that reality had handed to her.
The Chozo used to say that she was 'hatched among the stars'. She earned this title not only from her love of the void, but also from her uncanny ability to navigate space without using a ship's computers or charts. Being able to pilot using mental calculations helped wile away days of journey from one planet to another. Plus, it also conserved the ship's memory banks. And Samus used all that empty hard drive for other pursuits.
Stored in her previous ship's memory banks were years of meticulous research and calculations she had compiled, information which she hoped would someday help her locate living members of the Chozo. It was Samus's dream to find survivors of the race who had reared her, but bounty payments and requests to save the galaxy always got in the way. The destruction of her ship during the X accident was a devastating blow to the bounty hunter. All those years of data lost in an instant. Regardless, she's now recompiling her lost data from scratch, undeterred by the previous loss.
Samus stretched leisurely, leaning back so heavily on her chair that she almost fell over. One hand remained on the computer interface while the other held an orange root which she had been chewing on. The Dachoras and Etecoons were incredible botanists; it's only been a week since they've obtained the hydroponics system and they're already producing a smorgasbord of cellulose edibles, much of which they gorged on themselves. But they were careful enough to leave seeds for the next growing generation so Samus wouldn't have to continuously restock. The bounty hunter wondered if she would ever have the patience to maintain the artificial garden once she found her alien friends a new home.
The hydroponics system was also a blessing because Samus was flat broke. Without the replenishable food source, she would be living off the energy from her suit right now and the animals might be eating each other. There were no bounties to hunt so close to civilization, and it was unlikely that Samus's usual employer, the Federation, would be dropping her a line any time soon. Not after her mutiny on B.S.L. Oh well. She figured that it would only be a matter of time and dead bodies before the Federation returned to her, begging her to take on some reputably impossible mission.
A square panel on the computer began flashing blue. Samus stared at it for a moment, then tapped it twice. A star map of the surrounding area appeared on the monitor, then narrowed in to a specific asteroid belt, then zoomed in closer on a particular orbiting rock. The asteroid shrank down to an icon in a corner of the screen, making way for an image of a dangerous looking insectoid. The creature, though only slightly larger than an adult human, had visibly muscular legs and arms augmented with wicked scythe-like blades. The hands were nimble and dexterous, proof of intelligence, even if they ended in cruel black claws. But their pale, glowing eyes gleamed only with evil, the characteristic trait of their species, distinguishable no matter what variations occurred in the individual.
Samus dug her nails into the interface and leaned her face closer to the monitor. She grinned, then twisted her pretty face into a feral snarl. "Space Pirates!" She spat. She used her hand to wipe the saliva off the screen. The Dachoras and Etecoons heard her and came running over to look. They reacted strongly to the image of the Pirate and chattered amongst each other, angry or frightened. They remembered well their capture on Zebes, even the younger Dachora, who shivered and sought comfort in his mother's feathers. Samus turned to them, lips pulled back in a thin smile.
"Well, well. I seemed to have stumbled upon a Space Pirate outpost." She said to her roommates. Her voice hissed like the dry leaves on a windy plain, barely masking the anger and hatred behind those words. Samus turned back to the image and stroked it almost lovingly. "Ooh, yes. I'll be sure to enjoy this bounty. I'll enjoy killing every last one of you bastards."
"Computer!" Samus demanded. The voice recognition system hummed in response. "Activate autopilot. Bring me down to that rock where the Space Pirates are. And do it discreetly." She lifted herself off the chair and, as if it was ritual, prepared for the upcoming battle.
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Sweat-dampened hair clung to my forehead as I ran, my breathing reaching a feverish pace. I ran in fear, towards the very thing that terrified me so. I followed it through a yawning chasm of its own making to find it pacing restlessly from side to side, furious at my intrusion, daring me to join it even deeper in the core. Teeth, hide and claw, this creature was built like a living tank, its body and defenses legacy of all the weapons and creatures it had assimilated into itself. And God, the thing was huge!
What was I doing here? In all logic, I should be aboard my ship right now, speeding away from Tallon IV rather than hanging my ass on the line trying to destroy this abomination. There was no bounty for the Metroid Prime. And I had already destroyed all the Space Pirates here. So what if the planet becomes a desolate, phazon-pulsing wasteland? Why do I care?
Of course I care. The Chozo on this planet, though dead, though mad, had made a plea to me which I could not ignore. They all knew of I, Samus, the Hatchling, the Defender, the Newborn, and they looked to me as their savior. Just like Old Bird prophesied, his last words to me. Was it you, my adopted father, who left carved writings for me on the walls of the ruins? Were you one of the Turned, who I sent to the mercy of beyond with tears in my eyes?
I am the Chozo's Hope. If they are ever to rest in peace, I must destroy the Worm, the source of phazon on this planet. This was what I was raised, bred and built for.
"Alright," I hissed as I pointed my gun in the Metroid Prime's direction. "Let's get this over with."
The creature bellowed in rage at my defiance. It charged. I rolled into the morph ball to avoid being tackled, although the minor quake from its passing shook me up quite a bit. The Prime's exoskeleton changed into a shade of purple, which my scan visor told me was currently vulnerable to electric attacks. I blasted it with the triple wave beam from my arm cannon and watched it reel in pain.
The battle was more about endurance than mere power. The sheer number and variety of its attacks were incredible; I found myself jumping and rolling to avoid them most of the time, unable to find even a moment of respite. But as I grew more accustomed to its pattern of attack, I became able to predict its next move and launch my own offence accordingly. Slowly, but surely, I chipped away at each layer of the Metroid Prime's armor as it grew more vicious and desperate in its attacks.
"SKREEEE!!!" The abomination recoiled with a shot of the ice spreader. I crouched and readied another shot, but the creature's insect legs suddenly buckled beneath it. I lowered my gun and watched with bated breath. Did I win?
With great difficulty, the Metroid Prime slammed through a thin wall and fell into a hole on the other side. I counted a full eight seconds before I felt a dull tremor beneath my feet, indicating that the creature had reached the bottom. Cautiously, I leaned my head forward to look down on the pit. It was deeper and blacker than the depths of space. It reached out to engulf me. I jumped in.
I landed nimbly after an eternity of freefall and looked up. Instead of pure darkness, faint blue light emanated from phazon rocks in the walls. And there, twisted and broken in the corner, lay the remains of the Metroid Prime. It bled phazon; the energy of it crackled with intensity.
I took a step towards the corpse when a section of the exoskeleton suddenly broke off. I jumped back in surprise, holding my gun at ready. A translucent tentacle-like appendage emerged from the Prime's shell, followed by five more just like it. They clawed and shoved at the exoskeleton until, with one joint effort, they pulled their body out of its prison.
I couldn't help but gasp. Here was the Metroid Prime free of its external skin of machinery, exposed as a purely organic creature. For one delirious moment, I thought I was back on Zebes, facing the Mother Brain. This creature vaguely resembled that vile Space Pirate leader.
The Metroid Prime's brain/nuclei/whatever was clearly visible through its transparent flesh and amounted for a large portion of its body. It had a hauntingly human face with the same red eyes that once stared out at me from within its mechanical armor. Six flexible tentacles radiated in six separate directions. It didn't look as dangerous as its previous form, but it stank of phazon.
The Metroid Prime took a chance swipe at me with one of its tentacles which I easily jumped over. Upon landing, I quickly pivoted on one foot and launched the ice spreader at the creature's head, thinking that it would work like with most metroids. Who was I kidding; it wasn't particularly helpful against fission metroids and it didn't even cause the Prime to wince. In fact, I doubt this abomination was even a real metroid. I believe this was something else altogether with metroid DNA fused into its own genetic structure.
I threw everything I had at it: power bombs, flamethrower, wave buster and every charge beam in my arsenal. My options eventually narrowed down to running away or trying to physically damage the creature, which I suspected would do more harm than good. There was still one previously untested weapon I could use: the phazon beam, complementary with my phazon suit, courtesy of the Omega Pirate. But it came with a catch: it could only be used in the presence of 'concentrated phazon', whatever that's supposed to mean.
I lept over a ring of plasma quake which the Metroid Prime sent in my direction. Taking advantage of the moment, I quickly switched to the scan visor and examined the room around me. None of the phazon on the walls was capable of powering the hyper beam. Dammit, even the stuff still gushing out of Prime's discarded skin wouldn't work.
I turned my attention back to the Metroid Prime. It had all of its tentacles extended in front of it, converging to a point. I expected some new form of attack but to my surprise, the appendages contracted in unison, oozing out phazon from the tips. Then the creature disappeared.
"...the hell?!" I yelled out loud. I looked to my left, then my right, searching for any trace the Metroid Prime. I turned slowly in a full circle, gun arm ever ready. My attention focused back on the pool of phazon it left behind, on which my scan visor almost instantly relayed back a blurb of information.
My eyes lit up with interest. "Well, isn't that convenient." I said to myself. The Metroid Prime had just left me a pile of 100, unadulterated, bona fide phazon. And leaving Samus alone with a pool of phazon was not gonna be one of the healthiest choices this thing had ever made.
"Aaagh!" A plasma quake came out of nowhere and knocked me back into the wall. The searing violence of the attack was felt by every cell in my body, rendering me breathless until my power suit repaired the damage. I pushed away from the Samus-shaped imprint on the wall and landed on my feet, trying to catch my breath.
How stupid of me. Of course the Metroid Prime was still in here. I just couldn't see it.
I switched to the X-ray visor and scanned the cave for the Prime. It appeared before me as skeleton of veins and neurons, even more transparent than before. I saw it just in time to avoid another one of those plasma quakes.
Keeping my eyes and gun trained on the creature, I backed into the pool of phazon. As soon as my boot touched the viral material, it rose to caress me like some sort of amoeboid lifeform, writhing over my artificial skin. My suit reacted by glowing with an unholy blue light. Phazon infiltrated every square inch of my suit, making me gasp at the sheer power coursing through my mechanical veins. My suit was now in 'Hyper Mode' and phazon replaced the energy in my beam cannon.
The Metroid Prime hovered in right front of me. What a perfect opportunity to test out my new hyper beam.
The first shot launched so much energy out of my gun that I couldn't help but yell, "Hell, YEAH!" at the exhilaration of it all. This beam was so damn powerful! Each blast pushed me back a few inches from the impact, even with my legs braced against the recoil. There was no lag time either; the phazon beam fired as fast as I could initiate the blasts. And when it hit the Metroid Prime, the creature's arms flailed in obvious pain but it couldn't move, paralyzed in a helpless stupor.
The energy from the pool of phazon exhausted itself soon after and the Metroid Prime disappeared again. I couldn't find it with the combat or X- ray visor, but it appeared in brilliant yellow and orange to my thermal vision. The abomination roared and lashed at me with its fiery tentacles. It appeared surprised that I was able to see and jump over them so easily.
The tips of two of those tentacles suddenly broke off and hovered in the air, writhing and taking on the distinct forms of metroids. The Prime quickly regrew its lost body parts and bathed its new creations with phazon, turning them into hunter metroids before my very eyes. Confused over their recent genesis, the metroids turned on me with their most primordial instinct: the need to hunt and feed. I managed to freeze and destroy both of the hunters before their mutated tentacles could find my energy. And meanwhile, the Metroid Prime simply watched, oblivious to the slaughter of its kin.
I've wasted too much time with the hunter metroids and the pool of phazon had almost completely seeped into the soil. I morphed into a ball, boosted over to the phazon, and in one fluid motion, unrolled, pivoted, and aimed. For a split second, the Metroid Prime had a deer-in-headlights expression of shock before I unleashed the hyper beam at it.
The abomination was still screaming when I exhausted the phazon supply at my feet, but it had a different quality to its voice this time. I looked up and realized that it was dying. The Metroid Prime's tentacles writhed and its body shook violently, bleeding, crying and drooling phazon. Without warning, its innards suddenly exploded, but were still contained within its transparent outer covering. The result was this huge, shapeless mass of flesh still quivering with life.
I stared at it in awestruck silence. The gentle glow and movements of the Metroid Prime's new form had an almost hypnotic quality to them, lulling me into carelessness. But in the next moment, the creature turned violent again, shooting out tentacles in every direction. One of which connected right to my stomach! I gasped at the impact. There wasn't much pain, although I expected there to be, but the appendage immediately adhered itself to my suit and tried to drag me towards the main part of its body.
"Argh!" I desperately twisted and fought against the creature's efforts. Yet it drew me ever closer. Finally, with one incredible effort, I tore myself free of the Metroid Prime's grip, but the creature had already assimilated itself with the phazon portions of my power suit. I looked at my hand and realized that I had only my gravity suit left. The phazon suit had been sacrificed as the creature's last meal.
The abomination started growing uncontrollably, almost explosively, making the walls collapse with all the erratic energy being released. "Oh shit," I said to myself, putting one foot in front of the other for balance. This whole chamber was going to cave in, and I'll be buried with it if I don't escape immediately! I turned and ran, not even bothering another glance at the Metroid Prime. I left this perversion of nature to whatever fate awaited it.
Back above ground, in the Artifact Chamber, I thought I could take a brief rest from my ordeal. But when the Chozo statues started falling behind me, I knew I was not safe quite yet. I remotely called in my ship and watched the scene I had made at a distance. The ancient Chozo city fell to ruins before my eyes, fantastic structures toppling in massive explosions. I stood there on the safety of my ship with my helmet removed, wanting to watch the finale of a culture with my own two eyes.
"Are you there, Old Bird?" I whispered into the wind. "Look at me. Your little Hatchling did it. Can you hear me?" I closed my eyes and felt their dampness. I hope the Chozo ghosts here can rest in peace now that the Space Pirates and the Metroid Prime are gone from this world. I have done all that I can. My ship engulfed me and I sped away from Tallon IV, not looking back on the planet until it was but a mere speck in the distance, lost among the multitude of stars.
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Samus stepped out of the shower room onto the main deck of the ship with a towel wrapped loosely around her hair. She gazed out the front window and watched her destination, that lonely asteroid, grow ever larger on the screen. She continued standing there, staring, lost in thought, until she started shivering in her nakedness. The bounty hunter grabbed a black leotard from her closet and an Etecoon handed her a vitamin pill which she swallowed dry. She paused for a moment to run a brush through her hair.
Years ago, the Space Pirate population dropped dramatically when Samus reduced Zebes to oh so many bite-sized pieces. They were forced to put their plans of galactic domination on hold while they concentrated on preserving their genetic diversity. Their recent activities have been limited to petty ship pirating on the outskirts of the known universe. However, hunting Space Pirates these days was not a profitable business. They were simply much harder to find now. Having learned from the Hunter's previous attacks on their strongholds, they were now divided into many small, elusive colonies and scattered in every direction. That way, if Samus came around and destroyed a whole colony, there would still be Pirates left elsewhere to perpetuate.
"So they're trying to hide from me." Samus said to no one in particular as she slipped her still-damp skin into the fusion suit. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." She sang, the last part sounding hollow as the helmet enveloped her head. She rotated her right arm in front of her, watching the beam cannon move with it, imagining what it would do to a Pirate's exposed torso.
Samus's hatred for the Space Pirates was well known, a nurtured, passionate hatred, something which she never bothered to hide. They didn't deserve any of her mercy. They all deserved to die. They will die for killing her parents and making refugees of the Chozo. For their unspeakable experiments on all living things, even themselves. For trying to take over the galaxy. For killing Hatchling. Samus will be laughing when she sent them all to whatever hell awaited them.
She felt the slight change in gravity which indicated that she's on the asteroid's surface. The ship's lights dimmed and a sophisticated cloaking device wrapped around the vehicle, blocking it from all types of sensors. The cloaking technology was actually something Samus installed herself, using technology she learned from the Chozo.
The bounty hunter emerged from the top hatch of her ship, surveying the sparse rock surroundings. She leaped impossibly high into the air, due to the weak gravity, then landed with shocking velocity when her suit adjusted accordingly.
In the distance, there was the faint blue glow of an iris hatch, one commonly used by the Pirates in their bases. It was half-buried with rocks which Samus quickly disposed of with a charge beam blast. The shock also affected the door, which opened its maw, revealing metal innards. The bounty hunter licked her bottom lip, then cocked her gun and walked inside.