Veaning hissed and tried to pry her arm free of the bounty hunter's teeth. Samus did not let go, but clamped her jaws down even harder, drawing blood. The Chozo crouched down to ease her elbow, breathing in shallow gasps through her mouth.
"Samus..." She whispered, her words laced with pain. "What are you..." Then she caught sight of her friend's face and stopped short. She could hardly recognize the eyes she stared into. Samus had a distant look to her, an expression of determination and desperation that the Chozo had never seen. It was almost inhuman.
Suddenly, Veaning cried out, then clenched her beak tightly together. The pain in her arm grew to a sensation beyond physical agony, almost as if an integral part of her existence was being torn from her. She had never experienced such a feeling. But her reaction to it was immediate. She forced her breathing to slow and closed her eyes, fighting mentally to retain the unity of her self. It was not difficult for the Chozo to maintain her concentration, even under excruciating pain. Her heritage and lifetime of training prepared her well for battles such as this. Before long, the pain subsided into a dull throbbing, and she felt the strength of her will winning against the will of the Warrior. Her eyes began to droop and she fell limp from the effort.
Samus growled and opened her mouth wider to accommodate more flesh. She could taste slightly damp feathers and the warm, coppery-flavored Chozo blood. The taste made her wild with hunger. Her victim wasn't struggling anymore, but the bounty hunter felt no energy flowing into her body. Frustrated, she released the arm and grabbed the Chozo's neck between her canines. She could feel the faint heartbeat from deep beneath the skin, as well as tendons that occasionally twitched. But still she felt no energy.
Finally, she gave up and spat out her victim. But as she did, her vision blurred severely, nearly making her faint. Her head lolled on her shoulders as if it was she that had been drained of energy. She fell backwards and a branch collided painfully with her neck, jolting her back into consciousness.
"Ow." Samus moaned, one hand rubbing the back of her neck, the other over her mouth. Dazed and confused, she was surprised to feel something damp on her lips. She sat up and squinted in the faint light, trying to identify what was on her hand. There was some sort of deep purple liquid staining her fingers. For a moment, she couldn't quite grasp why it was there. Then she remembered. She froze in disbelief. It was blood. Chozo blood.
"Oh my God! Veaning!" Samus scrambled out of her blankets. "VEANING!" Blinking in the dim light, she made out the Chozo's thin frame crumpled on the floor. She gasped and fell to her knees. Oh God. This can't be happening... This can't be happening!
There didn't seem to be enough oxygen in the room. How could she have done such a thing? She reached out and held her friend close to her, letting tears mix with blood. What would the other Chozo think of her now? They would be saints indeed if they could forgive her for killing their elder's daughter. How could she let this happen? Damn it all. How could she have been so naive, staying with the Chozo when she could inadvertently kill them all? She had woken to a nightmare.
"Veaning? What have I done..." Samus whispered. The pelting rain continued to strike the leaves, oblivious to a human's guilt and grief.
But to the hunter's immense surprise, Veaning began to stir in her arms. Samus almost dropped her burden; she was so shocked. She simply watched from her kneeling position as the Chozo slowly, painfully, rose to her feet and stood tall, her eyes somehow glowing in the relative darkness.
Veaning absently rubbed her injured neck, her expression unreadable. "You do not need to concern yourself over my well-being," Veaning said. "When it is you we should be more concerned with. I am fine, as you can see." She spread her arms out in proof that they were still in working order. Thin Chozo blood marred her feathers, a rich velvet liquid marbled with swirls of white. Yet, thankfully, the human bites to her flesh did not cause much damage. She brushed off a few loose feathers from her plumage that had fallen. She acted pretty calm considering what just happened to her in the past few minutes.
"Veaning?" Samus's voice was barely audible. She reached out to the Chozo, disbelieving, wanting to touch her and make certain that this wasn't a hallucination. But she quickly drew her hand back. "You must be afraid of me now. After what I nearly did to you."
"No, no." Veaning crouched down and put her arms around her friend. "Not at all." Samus shrank away at first, afraid she would again succumb to the energy-starving condition she only just awoke from. But then she fell into the Chozo's embrace, shivering, accepting whatever comfort her friend could offer.
"Oh God. I can't believe it. I thought I had killed you." Her mouth was dry, her voice husky. She was relieved beyond words that Veaning had survived, but ashamed at herself for ever letting this happen. She was also confused. Confused by how her friend managed to survive that attack, when all her previous victims had fallen to her, leaving nothing but an empty husk.
"It was not too difficult surviving your attack." Veaning replied reassuringly. "You might be the Warrior, but not even Ultimate Warriors can take the ghost of a Chozo." That sentence made no sense to Samus. She remained silent and let Veaning continue. "But from the way you speak, I assume you knew of your abilities before you came here. Why did you not tell anyone about this?"
"I..." The bounty hunter felt as guilty as a child caught in a lie. "I thought I would scare your people if I told them."
"'Your people?'" Veaning echoed. "You still think of us as a separate being? The Chozo are our people. We share the same spirit; we share the same blood." To emphasize this, she pressed her beak against Samus's cheek, almost forcefully, a sign of friendship. "Appearance does not matter. Neither does abilities, nor experience. I, for one, am not afraid of you. I know you would never do anything intentionally to harm me." She made herself comfortable on a branch. "Now why don't you tell me exactly what happened to you? You were born human. You were infused with Chozo blood. And now you are part Ultimate Warrior. How did that come to happen?"
The bounty hunter sat on her bed and turned to Veaning with an eyebrow raised in confusion. "Wait a minute. What exactly do you mean by 'Ultimate Warrior'? You said it a few times, but I'm not sure I know what it means." She blinked her tired eyes. There was no chance she would be getting any more sleep this night.
"You are part Ultimate Warrior." Veaning clicked her beak, considering. "Of course, you must know them by their other name. 'Ultimate Warrior' directly translated into Chozo script is the word 'metroid', which, I believe, is the Federation's official name for our creature."
"What?" Samus stood up so quickly that Veaning put an arm over her face, fearing another attack. "Are you saying that I am part metroid? But how..." She froze for a moment as realization dawned on her, the longest moment of her life. She gasped and put a hand over her mouth. "The metroid vaccine! Hell, that's what happened to me! Oh God. It changed me. Of course..." Stupid! It all made sense now. The metroid vaccine she received after her brush with the X infection allowed her to do more than simply absorb the parasites. Like a metroid, she also inherited the ability to siphon energy from nearly all living things. Plus, she supposed that a long period without this type of nourishment would make her slow and lethargic, but contact with a source of energy would excite her into an uncontrolled frenzy, a lust to devour the nearest edible creature. The power suit had changed accordingly, providing her with mandibles and blades like an adult metroid.
God, she should have suspected this earlier. Her 'illness' was not due to a of a lack of nutrition or lack of exercise. Those were all just rationalizations, excuses, because there was no better explanation. If she was capable of guessing the truth, of figuring out that she was partly metroid, then perhaps she purposely didn't try. She didn't want to realize the truth.
And what of the vaccine's side effects? At first, she was direly vulnerable to cold although it has become tolerable with the addition of the varia suit upgrade to her fusion suit. The Federation had also speculated that her system would reject an ice beam upgrade, which was later proven incorrect. It was a reasonable prediction, however. What else had changed about her that she wouldn't discover until the most inconvenient moment? Could she float like a metroid? Could she reproduce asexually if she comes into contact with beta rays? Could she shed her skin and evolve? And if she does, what's stopping her from becoming the next metroid Queen?
Veaning saw that her friend was not about to lunge at her, so she sat down carefully. Samus noticed this and sat down herself. "I'm sorry. I'm not going to attack you."
"Both of us know that you won't be able to stop yourself if you do." The Chozo said quietly. Samus looked away, unable to meet Veaning's eyes. "But a metroid can not kill me. The strength of a Chozo will always prevail over an Ultimate Warrior."
The bounty hunter stared hard at Veaning. "And why is that? I've been wondering why you weren't killed."
"Ah, how should I explain this to you..." A stray wind breezed through the house, causing the Chozo to fluff up her feathers. Her talons clawed nervously at the soft branch she held onto. "Metroids were created to detach the ghosts of creatures. Most animals have their ghosts loosely attached to their physical bodies, and the Ultimate Warrior can easily tear out those bonds to siphon out the energy left behind. But Chozo have a very... conscious control of their ghosts. This is a very primitive way of explaining it, but we can even 'build' and 'break' those bonds as we see fit. We sometimes pass silently into a physical death by deliberately detaching our ghosts. And I resisted your attack by preventing you from tearing my ghost away."
Samus only nodded. This was a lot of information to take in at one time. "Wait. Did you say metroids were created?"
"We Chozo created them." She replied simply.
Samus nearly fell over at that response. "What the... Why the hell would they do that! They're probably the most dangerous species in the galaxy!"
Veaning shook her head. "No, the Eaters are." The Eaters. Those would be the X, a threat much more malicious than the metroids, and with so much greater destructive potential. Samus had to agree there. "You do know that Eaters are the primary prey of the metroids? Ultimate Warriors don't even bother with other lifeforms if there are many Eaters present for them to eat. Those parasites are the antithesis of the Chozo. They are viral ghosts who prey upon other ghosts, annihilating them completely. It is a horrible way to die, deprived of even an afterlife. They would corrupt and mutate their victim's physical body, and use it to produce more Eaters. Even metroids are tamer than this; they feed solely on the energy off a ghost's bonds, not on the ghost itself. The pioneer Chozo to Troidemis were completely devoured by the Eaters. To combat these creatures, we created the Ultimate Warriors, and named them so because they attacked the center of existence of all their enemies. But we were not concerned over our own safety. Metroids soon learned that they could not absorb Chozo energy and left us in peace."
Samus sighed wearily. She stared down at her hands. "So that is where they come from. I had always thought that the Chozo of SR3... I mean Troidemis, had been killed by the metroids. And now I find out they were created by the Chozo." The rain outside had subsided, leaving her house glaringly silent. She felt suddenly older. "I spent so much of my life hunting after the metroids. I killed them all. Now I find out that they were the only defense against a greater evil. And Ha, now I am one of them. How's that for ironic?"
Veaning had nothing to say to that, so she stayed silent. The bounty hunter noticed a faint ray of light penetrating through a crack in the wall. It was morning already.
Samus shifted impatiently on her bed. "So now what? We've established that I'm part metroid, and that I can't eat any Chozo. Which is fine here, but if I go anywhere else in the galaxy, everyone around me will be in danger."
Veaning shrugged as if the answer was obvious. "Then don't leave. You are welcome to stay here for as long as you please."
Samus hesitated. She had been considering this plan of action, and now she even had a very good reason not to leave. Yet, spoken aloud, the idea sounded unbearable to the self-proclaimed bounty hunter. The universe was her playground, untamed and in need of exploring. It wasn't simply a desire to find a Chozo world or a feeling of duty towards the civilized galaxy that had driven her to scour the fringes of space. It a love of the stars that kept her suited up indefinitely in her lonely hunter ship, always waiting with baited breath for the next bounty report to come in, sending her resolutely towards unknown destinations.
God how she loved it. She had seen many things in her travels; the strange, the wonderful, the terrifying, the breathtakingly beautiful. Things that no other being in existence had ever experienced. How many could say they had seen the Zebesian sunset, with a belt of acid cloud embracing that ruby sun like a cushion wielding a jewel. Nothing could ever compare to that sight, and now it existed only in her memory. Samus had met many people, and her friends were scattered across space and species. The Chozo, Etecoons, Dachoras, humans, metroids. She missed Old Bird. She missed Adam. She missed Hatchling. And she would miss Veaning and the other Chozo when she left here, but to stay would be condemning herself to prison, a death sentence. Now she has realized this, she knew she would not give up the life she had lived for anything. Illness or not, she would continue to do what she does best.
The Chozo cocked her head, noting Samus's brief silence. "But of course, the Defender would not want to stay in our humble Sheltering Tree, not when there are innocents yet to be threatened and saved." Veaning spoke as if she had just read her friend's mind. She parted a curtain of leaves and peered outside. "It is dawn already. I will talk to my father about your problem and we will do whatever we can to help you. Believe me, you will have the best of Chozo talents at your disposal."
"That's a relief." Samus laced her fingers together and stretched. She smiled broadly. Surely the Chozo, with their vast stores of knowledge, can make her normal again. "I can't wait to be cured of this metroid problem. It's like a curse, not knowing who or when you might kill again, and not being able to control yourself." She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. The memories were not pleasant. She would be glad to finally put them behind her. "Thanks for your help, Veaning. I don't know what I would do without you." The Chozo bowed humbly at the praise. Samus raised an eyebrow and touched her friend's shoulder. "Um, you might want to wash your wounds before you go. Or maybe put on a bandage or something. With all that blood on your feathers, you look more like a Warrior than I do."