9: Rith Essa
"Mission success! The drones can't reproduce, the people of Earth will be saved, and Mizar will martyr himself in vain."
Vela through herself around me and began to cry happily. She touched on my sternum and my suit dissolved back into me.
"Thank you Samus, for everything. With out you, I may have gone berserk and well, I'm sorry that I almost died after our consummation."
"No, thank you Vela. This is the best thing that has happened to me. And don't fret about your near-death experience. Sex can be dangerous, floods of chemicals, a spike in core temperature, loss of peripheral control, hell if nature did not make it feel so good, we wouldn't have done it throughout the eons."
"When we first met, you mentioned coming from Aether, care to expand upon that."
"Aether would be hard to understand with out knowing my previous mission, on Tallon IV. I was sent to an abandoned research frigate orbiting Tallon IV. Inside I found that the pirates had been conducting experiments on creatures with phazon, a blue, radioactive mutagenic ore. I found myself in the reactor access and encountered a highly mutated parasite queen. In her death, she caused the reactor to overload and I need to escape. Near my exit, I was caught in an explosion that damaged my suit and left me without my orange Varia suit. I escaped the frigate and went planet side. It was a former Chozo colony, filled with technology that could repair my suit. To regain my Varia suit, the one you've seen me in the most, I had to destroy a large sentient plant that had polluted the waters of this planet. I learned that a meteor containing phazon had impacted, and the Chozo had sealed off the crater with 12 locks. I needed to gather the 12 keys to open the locks and investigate the crater. One of the last keys I obtained, was guarded by a hyper-corrupted pirate, called Omega Pirate. When he died, he fell on me and dissolved into phazon. That phazon turned my suit black with red trim. My suit had been corrupted with phazon, but it allowed me to enter the crater. Inside the crater was a large creature, similar to Mizar in appearance. This creature could change its eye colour to match elemental forces that were weak to the same, advanced versions I could shoot. I managed to destroy its exoskeleton and revealed its blue, spectral-like core. The core could produce phazon puddles that I could use against it. When I had destabilized the core, it latched onto my suit and pulled off my phazon, the surface of my suit, and took a sample of my DNA. I escaped from the core and left Tallon IV.
Six months later, I was called to Aether to investigate why a cadre of federation marines had lost contact. Before I found the marines, I came across a phazon version of me that opened a dimensional rift. I followed her through and found myself in a dark version of Aether. She exposed me to the atmosphere and I began to take damage. A hoard of dark creatures had attacked me and taken several of my suits modules. I escaped back to the light side and found the marine transport, the G.F.S. Tyr. The marines were all killed by native creatures, infected with dark parasites. I made my way into a temple guarded by U-Mos, a large moth-like creature. He told me that his species, the Luminoth, had witnessed a phazon meteor impact their planet, and tear it into two dimensions. The dark side was populated by variants of the creatures that attacked me. Those creatures took 75% of Aether's energy for themselves and left the light side unstable. U-Mos asked me to restore Aether and destroy its dark clone. He gave me a module that could absorb the energy on Dark Aether and restore it to Aether. There were four regions to Aether, one desert, one swamp, a temple, and one fortress. I was sent to the desert, Agon, first. I made my way through the region and its counterpart, recovering keys that would unlock the dark temple. Inside were three massive worms and a large brown egg. I cracked the egg and killed the worms. Inside the egg was a Luminoth suit that would protect me from Dark Aether's atmosphere. I recovered the energy and went to the swampy region, Torvus Bog. With a repeat of gathering three keys I accessed the dark temple. This temple was guarded by a larvae that soon matured into a large dragonfly-like creature. The dragonfly could corrupt itself and become dark. It died and left me a visor that could see Tran-dimensionally. With that energy restored, Aether and Dark Aether were in equilibrium. I went to the fortress and repeated my process. The dark temple in there was guarded by very large machine, the Quadraxsis. It had three stages, a complete head and body, a damaged body, and a damaged head. The head and body I crippled by attacking its knees. That damaged the body, but it could commune with the head. All three links from head to body had to be destroyed and that damaged the head. The head began to orbit the body and I needed to access the head's core. My ball could climb the body and launch over to the head, which was vulnerable to my morph bombs. The head exploded as did the body and gave me a combo of light and dark energy as a beam weapon. The last of Dark Aether's energy was guarded by nine more keys, before I could find them, I returned to U-Mos and he turned my suit from dingy brown and bulky to platinum and shapely. All nine keys were found on Dark Aether, two per region and three in the dark, Sky Temple. The Sky Temple had the largest of the dark creatures. He started as an enveloped eye that could be exposed by destroying its tentacles. It soon inverted and was completely covered by a magnetic chrysalis with eleven tentacles, vulnerable to my bombs. The chrysalis cracked when all eleven had been destroyed, and revealed an arachnid-like creature. It was near death, but hyper-aggressive. I could make its heart vulnerable to an opposite beam, and soon overloaded the heart and killed it. Upon absorbing the last energy, the dimension began to collapse. Before I could escape, I came across my phazon clone. She attacked me, becoming visible only to sonar. When she was visible in our spectrum, she began to launch phazon at me. I could absorb it and use it against her like with the creature on Tallon IV. I killed her and escaped to Aether just before the dark side collapsed. I returned most of the Luminoth tech, warped to Daiban, and ended up with you."
"You are a fucking goddess. You destroyed an entire dark and dangerous dimension, by yourself. Was the phazon Samus created from the creature on Tallon?"
"Yes she was. She seemed to fluxuate in mental and physical stability over the six times that I met her. When she was stable, she just appeared and seemed enamoured with me, almost like lust. When she was less stable however, she became violent. At times it seemed like seppuku when I had to defend myself against her."
The sun was setting and that made the mountain scene even more beautiful. She started to sleep, while I sent Floyd to guard our landing site. I wrapped around her and we both slept, warm through the night.