The lift to Tourian gently whirred as it dropped down, depositing the lone rider at the bottom of the shaft. They stepped off of it cautiously and found a foreboding looking hallway extending for what seemed like a mile off into the distance. Samus raised her cannon to her hip and took a breath, beginning the long march forward, finding the silence disconcerting.
She did not even recognize the place for it had changed so much. Tourian had been the most advanced sector of the entire Chozo facility, but even the prior tenants had chosen to implement a simpler touch by having all of the walls and ceilings be made out of stone while the floor itself was made out a brushed metal. Sort of like acknowledging the more advanced direction technology was taking them and paying homage to it by subtly updating the interior style.
The area in front of her now looked nothing like that. Every single conceivable aspect of the hallway was coated in a shining metal alloy, gleaming and sparkling as her boots clacked down the chamber. A few cobwebs accumulated at the corners from disuse but otherwise the entire area looked brand new. It looked too sterile to Samus, too out of place. It just felt wrong.
Samus went over the map of Tourian in her head, despite the differences in the area's appearance. She surmised that the alternate lift area she had just exited was about a couple hundred meters away from the main chamber, presumably where Mother was located. To get there, she would have to pass through a laboratory and a few halls that Samus presumed were stuffed to the brim with enemies. It would be just like Mother to have a few contingencies in place; that slippery AI was always devious.
Nothing in her heart but cold rage, a craving for the downfall who engineered this cataclysm upon the galaxy, Samus hurried down the hall. She leaped over a few fallen pillars and dead animals, briefly considering their mummified state before she reached the first door. It was locked, as to be expected, but a missile broke the containment shield and allowed her passage into the nightmare.
Samus leaped back as a few fleshy objects immediately shot out of the opening like liquid from a bottle. Instinct taking over, she ducked and rolled as the first of the Metroids raced toward her, intending to partake of her life essence. Samus crouched as one Metroid neared the wall she placed her back against and fired with the first beam that she indicated on her HUD.
The wintery blast smashed into the Metroid and encapsulated it in a block of ice. The gases in the Metroid's nucleus sac still kept it afloat but it could no longer move, literally frozen in place. Samus looked down at her cannon, noting the cool blue color of the ice beam seeping out from the cracks.
"I'll be…" Samus muttered. "They're not immune to cold."
Quickly, Samus shifted her aim again and again, firing burst of ice towards the Metroids that had tried to take her in their eagerness. Five of the bulbous creatures soon floated in place, trapped in their freezing prisons. Samus then aimed her arm cannon slowly and precisely at the frozen Metroids and fired a missile at each one. The concussive bursts shattered the blocks of ice, along with the Metroids inside, causing frozen chunks of pulpy flesh to drop down to the ground with a crackling sound. The ice beam and missile combination was so effective that Samus did not find herself out of breath from a confrontation that would normally have elevated her heart rate dramatically.
Ice, huh? Would've liked to have known that back on SR-388.
She now stepped into the lab and gaped as she looked around herself in wonderment. About a dozen Metroids floated freely around the room, softly chittering as they detected a food source enter their midst. Samus could see several tubes form a ring around the lab, all filled with a greenish liquid – incubation vats. Multiple monitors flickered in the center, illustrating several schematics about the enigmatic creatures that now infested the lab, portraying their foul purpose.
Samus could tell, based on the robotic machinery at work and from the tissue samples that lay housed in a few vats in the center, that Mother had programmed the lab to begin work on flash cloning the infant Metroid as soon as it had been delivered to Zebes. She could not see the infant in this room, but judging by the number of Metroids that Mother had already been able to produce, she surmised that it probably had long perished after its precious cells were obtained by the insane intelligence. Such an intrusive procedure would have been traumatic on the young creature and Mother would not likely have been delicate while attempting to snag viable tissues to draw its genetic material from.
It's so unfair, Samus thought sourly. That Metroid could have been used for good, but Mother just wanted to create an army from it.
Switching back to her ice beam, Samus gave a snarl as the Metroids moved closer. "I was supposed to take responsibility of all of you, but this is beyond what you were intended for. I hope you're watching, Mother, because your future ends right here!"
With a screech, a Metroid opened its mandibles and broke into a dive, straight at Samus. Calmly, she raised her cannon and shot it once with her beam, freezing it, and plowed a fist straight through it when it floated too close to her body. Frozen water and blood misted into the air, and Samus shot air out of her nose in fury.
A clatter of tools on the floor indicated that another Metroid was making a sloppy attempt to get to her, but there were two others in front that were trying to time their successive strikes at the perfect moment. Samus dodged and flipped in midair, grunting as the kinetic generators embedded in her shoulder blades activated, emitting a protective shield of electricity around her. Her body gently nudged the top of a Metroid and the voltage seared into the creature so forcefully that it popped, spewing clear, viscous fluid everywhere.
In the brief lull of the fighting, Samus whirled to the center of the room after landing perfectly from her jump and fired a missile towards the cloning machinery, the necessary components that made Mother's Metroid army all possible. The vital technology components vanished in a roar, spraying the room with debris. Two more Metroids fell as their membranes were brutally slashed by flying shrapnel, their insides dribbling out of their bodies.
The creaking of mounted nutrient vats breaking free of their restraints from the ruckus going on in the room alerted Samus just in time to backflip away from another pouncing Metroid, causing its momentum to barrel into a row of cloning tubes housed on the wall. Rather comically, as the Metroid was shredded by the plate glass of the cylinders, the remaining tubes shook free of the rafters above and plummeted to the ground, taking three more Metroids that had been milling around beneath it with a hefty crash.
Samus shot the last four Metroids with her beam before she blew them apart with her missiles. She then walked the perimeter of the completely trashed laboratory, checking every single Metroid corpse to see if they were still alive. Satisfied that she had killed every last one of them, she incinerated each and every one of them with her plasma beam, even going back out into the previous hallway to burn the first Metroids she had killed.
Fire was an excellent cleanser in this sort of situation. Most cell life could not withstand the punishment of a couple thousand degrees of heat and the usage of the plasma beam would only ensure that Mother would not be able to retrieve any additional DNA from the corpses that Samus left behind in her wake. If she did not survive her encounter with Mother, that is. At least she could forestall the galaxy's destruction if she failed.
The room was starting to fill with smoke from the smoldering corpses, dimly reminding Samus of Ridley's pyre as he had thrashed in misery while dying horrifically. Samus turned away abruptly from the rising inferno, a hard look on her face. There could be plenty of opportunities later to reflect on her actions, but she needed to stay focused right now.
Proceeding into the next hallway, Samus knew that in her head that there was only a service corridor left and a final stairwell before Mother's chamber could be accessed. The thought that she was this close to the AI was too tantalizing for her to resist. Samus almost broke out in a run but stopped as soon as her foot brushed something light on the ground, the sensation dry and yielding.
She looked down and scrunched her face up as she saw the clearly dead carcass of a Sidehopper, a native to Zebes that used its powerful two feet to jump into the air and claw at prey. This confused Samus as she had no idea how such a large creature (it was just as wide as she was tall) could possibly make it this far into Tourian. Mother certainly would not have allowed any pests from the surface access to this sensitive place. Apart from that, the Metroids in the lab certainly could not have killed this Sidehopper; it was too big and too powerful for any one of them to latch onto for a time. It would have shaken them off with ease. But, the crackling skin, the milky eyes, and the alarming rate of decomposition all pointed to signs of a Metroid attack. But if it hadn't been one of those other Metroids, then what could have-?
A large object burst from a tangle of vegetation growing between two pylons without warning. Samus had only a moment to gasp and hastily loose a missile in reaction before an enormous green mass dropped down around her. Two white mandibles immediately clamped down on her sides, pinching her, and Samus winced. Then as a gummy substance began to ooze over her, Samus jolted as pain seemed to erupt from all over her body. It felt to Samus like her very life was being wrenched out of her, tearing the very fabric of her being. Her skin felt like it was rendering apart, her muscles seemed like they were distorting out of shape, and her bones gave off the brutal sensation of being twisted.
Trapped in the gelatinous organism, her body wracked with pain, Samus opened her mouth to give a final shriek, hopelessly wondering why her time had come so quickly, and that she could not stave it off. As soon as the scream left her lips, Samus expected the agony to continue until there was nothing left of her remaining but something odd happened. The pain stopped.
The pressure on her sides loosened and she fell forward with a grunt. Her Varia Suit chattered as she helplessly shook, her body fighting to get under control from all of the alarm chemicals sloshing around her system. Her energy levels had taken a large hit but it had not been as debilitating as she had initially feared. Weakly, she lifted her head and automatically froze as the largest Metroid she had ever seen hovered gently over her head, about half the size of her ship.
As opposed to the smaller ones no bigger than her torso, this Metroid was at least twice as tall as Samus, not including the length its fully developed mandibles added to the overall total. It was so large that Samus could see not three but four fully formed red nuclei at the base of its gelatinous body, not including the three micro-nuclei that rimmed the top of the creature. Green veins wrapped around it, eager roots that branched out all over the smooth surface, providing circulation throughout the Metroid's body.
Samus had never seen a Metroid in its larval stage get so big before. Usually after a particular amount of time had passed, the larvae would evolve into the Alpha stage of a Metroid but either this big one had not reached that time limit yet or its size was such a drastic freak of nature that its ability to evolve had been nullified completely.
Still, that did not exactly explain why the Metroid had stopped attacking Samus until it nudged itself closer very tentatively. Samus scurried backwards, astonished but still a bit frightened. Her body still stung, recalling the amount of pain that had been inflicted on her all too well. In response, the Metroid let out a mournful warble and floated forward in smaller increments, as if it was trying to show Samus that it had not meant her any harm. Still confused, Samus got to her feet and switched her cannon to the ice beam behind her back, preparing to level off a burst at the engorged creature. But before that could be accomplished, the Metroid gave a cry that sounded more happy than anything else, giving her pause. It was only then did Samus realize what she was staring at, and her grip on her cannon slackened completely.
"Oh…oh my…" she murmured as she raised her left hand towards the Metroid, an infant no longer.
The Metroid scooted forward until its clear body brushed against Samus' outstretched hand. It felt like she was touching a hard jelly, stiffened by years of stagnation. The Metroid continue to chirp happily, recognizing its "mother." It alternated between its friendly yips to a slow, sad note in intermittent intervals. Samus instinctively rubbed the side of the Metroid, completely flabbergasted.
"You're…" she realized, "You're trying to apologize for attacking me." She kept her voice soft, not wanting to startle or scare the Metroid any more. "It's okay…it's okay. You just didn't recognize me. It's…it will be all right. Everything is okay." Still caressing the gigantic Metroid like one would do to a pet, Samus' eyes widened in amazement. "What has Mother done to you, you poor thing?"
It seemed at the very mention of the intelligence's name, the Metroid gave a shrill cry and floated back up to the ceiling, away from Samus. Startled, Samus held out her hand and stepped forward, no longer frightened, the lingering pain already beginning to subside in intensity. "No, wait!" she called. "It's all right, come back!"
Whether the Metroid could understand her or not was irrelevant in this case, but regardless the creature abruptly waggled a bit in the air before it quickly shot down the hall, in the direction of Mother's chamber. Before Samus could call to it again, it turned down a corner and vanished from sight. Samus cursed and launched herself in the direction the Metroid had traveled, pursuing it through the labyrinth. She passed through the next threshold and bounded down a stairwell, taking the stairs three at a time. Samus was hurtling down the chamber so fast that her boots were denting each and every stair with her footprints, causing the structure's rivets to creak in their housing.
Following the large holes in the wall from which only the Metroid could have created, Samus raced through the next chamber but dug her heels into the ground as soon as she recognized the place. She was now standing in what used to be the convening hall, where all the Chozo would gather to discuss matters of dire importance. The last time she had been here, she recalled, she had been collapsed against the wall while her body had been illuminated by the green glow of the modification tanks, trapped in her infernal nightmare.
The room was entirely bare now, but Samus walked over and knelt down at the spot where she knew she had lain years before. She tried to imagine herself like that once more: scared and trembling in a fetal position. Things had changed dramatically since then as Samus straightened, now an armored god of war instead of a cowering castaway. She would need the warrior now more than ever if she intended to pass into the next chamber and beyond. This was not a galaxy in which both beings in such close proximity to the other could survive at once; one must overthrow the other if there was to be peace.
And the road to peace never resulted from a diplomatic solution, regretfully. It was always through war.
She did not need to shoot the door open to the room beyond; it detected her presence and offered admittance right away. Samus took a breath, steeling herself as she stepped inside, each movement of her feet a conscious effort. The door slammed shut behind her, sealing Samus in total darkness. Her breathing began to elevate and her panic threatened to rise. She swallowed, forcing her nauseating emotions down. If Mother thought that she could intimidate her with a natural childhood inclination that was inherently negative, then the intelligence had a lot to learn about her foe.
Samus pushed on through the blackness and switched her visor to a different wavelength, one of the many gifts that Gray Voice had given her. The outline of the entire chamber soon swooped in front of her, like a wire-frame render. She could see the floor and walls in front of her in shades of white and gray, despite the lack of light. The x-ray wavelength's field of view was more limited than visible light, but Samus, remembering from memory, walked over to the far end of the wall, where the shape of a tall pillar began to appear out of the fog, holding a frightful creature within.
Abruptly, Samus detected a warming of the chamber and she disengaged her x-ray visor back to the normal visible light wavelength. A soft red glow was now being emitted from behind Mother's control pillar, silhouetting the intelligence's vital components. The AI now looked demonic from the outline of the spikes punching through her organic tissue to the piercing white glow from the all-judging eye staring right at the bounty hunter. Long shadows reached all over the walls, grasping for Samus' soul. She did not so much as budge and held her ground to show her defiance. She would not be intimidated, even from this hellish being.
"Hello, Mother," Samus announced as she walked forward, the glow making her armor appear a deep burgundy. "You had to know this was coming."
"Samus, be reasonable," Mother said, her voice projecting from speakers embedded in her column. "You have made your point. Why must this continue any further?"
"Begging for your life, are we?" Samus snorted, amused, still advancing. "That's rather unlike you, Mother. Despite your requests, I'm still disinclined to divert from my current course. I'm not leaving this planet until I know for a fact that you are dead and that's not negotiable."
"So, even after you've avenged your bloodlust, you're still not satiated?" Mother yelled. "Think back at to what you've done, Samus. You just killed Ridley – the culprit of your family's death, you've destroyed all of the Metroids, and now you still intend to kill me? Samus, do you really need to let all this destruction in your wake extend to here, to me? Will killing me really bring you peace?"
"Maybe, maybe not," Samus admitted, but raised her cannon nonetheless, the barrel already wide open. "But it will certainly bring peace to others. I will destroy you, as you've destroyed countless individual lives. You've been the mastermind for this entire cycle of destruction. I cannot allow you to live."
Mother seemed to swell in her tank, enraged. "Then, the feeling is completely mutual!"
A static red barrier of Zebetite fizzled to life just feet away from Samus, extending the width of the chamber and cutting her off from Mother. Along the walls, several panels popped free and long barrels extended from the depths beyond. In seconds, turrets bristled from all directions and took aim at the bounty hunter, who was whirling around as she tried to get a fix on how many guns there were before the entire room seemed to erupt in gunfire.
With a rush, Samus engaged the Speed Booster and shot to the other side of the room as beams from everywhere zapped the ground next to her, smacking sparks all over the place. Enveloped in the white light, Samus sped around the room while the turrets frantically tried to track her. She lobbed off a few missiles and blew some of them apart but there were still too many for her to take.
Watching the entire thing like a mad overlord, Mother chuckled. "You know, Samus," she said dangerously, "I've never liked you. Not even for a moment. When you came to Zebes, I knew something was wrong from all the attention the Chozo doted on you. They tasked me to give you the gift of the Power Suit and they cared for you like you were one of their own. It was only when the Chozo revealed to me that they considered you to take an integral part in their grand scheme for the future that I began to worry. They saw something in you that they never did in me. They created me to be perfect, you see, but because my creators were flawed themselves, it should have been obvious to me that they would choose a flawed individual as their inheritor." Mother's voice then bellowed from around the room, "And after all that I had done for them, their decision has hung on me like an insult for far too long!"
"They chose me because I was worthy of their will!" Samus yelled back as she jumped clear over a few circular beams that gouged holes in the metal floor. "They wanted someone who understood life better than you, better than a machine ever could!"
"Then they were fools, all of them!" Mother cried as Samus performed a complicated twist to avoid a trio of beams sent in her direction. "Life needs a calculating hand to guide it. Without my intervention, all life in the galaxy is doomed. The Chozo could not see that, you cannot see that, but I can!"
Samus fired another missile and blew up a turret that had been tracking her as she landed in front of the intelligence. "You're deluded, Mother! Your vision for the galaxy does not exist! When will you learn that life is going to push away from you simply because you judged their fate from a cold calculation? Organic beings all wish to live and the idea of perishing so that the future can be preserved is not an option to them. There's always another way!"
"Their deaths are necessary in order to save the future!" Mother protested. "By eliminating the flawed organisms, I will be free to create the perfect galaxy as the Chozo originally envisioned. Imagine, Samus, an entire realm in peace. Peace, Samus! That is what the ultimate goal has been. And I can attain it, Samus, I can! All you have to do…is die."
"NEVER!" Samus roared as she spun forward, energy collapsing her down as the Morph Ball folded around her. From the center of the orange sphere, a tiny sun erupted, and Mother had to shield her eye behind a protective lens as the darkened chamber momentarily became the brightest room in the facility. There was a hissing sound as two forms of energy battled against one another, creating a foul stench in the air. Something was popping and other objects seemed like they were crumbling to pieces all around the place.
Safe behind her Zebetite shield, Mother opened her eye and saw that the entire room beyond the energy barrier was completely wrecked. The barrier itself was fine, but judging by the whine from the generators, they were struggling to maintain its integrity, worrying her. The walls on the other side were blackened and scorched, the remaining turrets were twisted and melted, and Samus stood amongst a thin cloud of ash, stepping forward menacingly.
"What are you going to do, Samus?" Mother taunted, yet a hint of hesitation remained in her voice, trying to remain confident. "You may have a few tricks up your sleeve, but there is no way you can penetrate this shield. You tried it once before, so why do you think that the outcome will be any different?"
Samus stopped in place and shook her head at the bluff. Mother was totally naïve that she could not be aware of what Gray Voice had revealed through his gift. Samus knew that Mother was not impenetrable and that if her shield had been breached before, it certainly could be breached again. "Then I guess I'm just wasting my time," Samus muttered as she launched a burst of missiles directly at the red shield, swinging her arm in an arc so that the detonations would be interspaced along the surface. The explosions rippled across the electric surface, sparking around the metal walls and overloading the generators once more. With a crackle, the Zebetite barrier dropped and Samus stepped over the line where the shield had once stood, a tight smile on her face. "Your underestimation of my abilities will be your downfall, Mother."
"Samus, wait!" Mother yelled through the snapping of static as Samus began to point her arm cannon in the direction of the glass tank. "You don't know what you're about to do! If you kill me, you kill yourself!"
Her helmet tilted to the side, apprehensive that she was being deliberately stalled. "Explain, then."
"I harbor control over the Chozo's last resort, their last failsafe in case the planet fell under enemy hands" Mother said smugly. "I currently am the last line of defense from preventing the complete destruction of this planet. If you destroy me, then I will no longer be able to prevent the neutron bombs placed at the core of this planet from detonating. All it takes is a second of a broken connection, and Zebes explodes after the signal is sent. You will perish along with everything else. Now, take a look at yourself and think. Is all this worth the risk to you?"
Samus knew what her answer would be even before she pulled the trigger, now completely beyond caring. "It doesn't matter if I die," she spat. "Only that you do."
"NOOOO!" Mother cried as the missile smashed into her glass cage, shattering it and sending debris flying. Mother's biomechanical components disappeared behind a cloud of smoke and Samus shielded her visor from all of the metal parts that flew past her, the wind ripping at her suit. Glass tinkled as it fell from its housing, and the clear nutrient liquid slowly trickled away with a gurgling noise. The clamor of the grinding gears and whirring of electronics ceased, dousing the chamber in silence as the remains of Mother's pillar crumbled to pieces.
Despite every instinct her body warning her not to, Samus stepped forward, trying to pierce the ever growing cloud of smoke, gas, and steam. She checked her missile and energy levels, finding them to still be in the acceptable ranges. Her mind ablaze with thought, Samus held off on celebrating prematurely as she finally neared the base of the control pillar. She eyed the broken tank a few meters above her, her breath tense and strained. Samus was not going to walk out of here without seeing a body; she had to have proof that Mother was indeed dead.
But, with only a few minute clanking noises occurring in the span of a few seconds, the entire lower half of the column burst apart in a hail of metal and sparks. Samus jumped back just in time to avoid the bulk of the debris, and skirted out of the way so that she could aim at whatever had appeared out of the tube, looking to silence its thralls.
The object that rose from the ground however, trailing wires and electricity, was not the sort of outcome that Samus had in mind. She locked up in confusion, her neck craning back painfully to perceive the new arrival as the creature rose up on two legs and stomped toward her with an evil chuckle. The thing's two arms smashed aside pipes and bundles of wires in its way, sending various gases hissing throughout the chamber. Some spouted flame from tiny breaches and became torches, lighting up the monster that now stood before Samus.
The sight before her was awe-inspiring to Samus, even though it filled her with dread. The first insane thought that came to her mind upon first glance was that it appeared that a giant chicken had just burst from the ground that had been topped with Mother Brain's vital components. The mechanical legs, ending with clawed feet like a raptor's, were twice as tall as Samus - all metal. The arms themselves were oddly humanoid, each fingertip spiked, but they seemed rather small for its torso. The body itself looked like decaying flesh had been draped over a cybernetic endoskeleton as there were areas on the skin where it had been torn, revealing the machine hidden within.
And perched on top of the neck was the demon herself, Mother Brain. Samus could see the huge eye pulsating as it sought her out. The union of organic and the inorganic components of Mother Brain fit right in with her new body as the freakish theme had been utilized all over. The mechanical undercarriage of the enormous brain now contained a jaw, filled with razor sharp teeth. A purplish fluid drooled between the corners of the jaw and splattered the floor two stories down.
"Holy…" Samus breathed as she gingerly backed up, now a little uneasy. All this time, after assuming that the gigantic brain was helpless in that tank, she could never have fathomed that Mother had the potential to create something like this. This was an absolute monstrosity, an aberration.
Was this what Mother meant by perfect beings? Samus thought.
"Surprised?!" Mother shrieked in glee, noting Samus' stiffened body language. The jaw itself launched the intelligence's voice, deeper and louder than normal, at the human, who was almost thrown over by the sheer volume. "I am not so foolish to put my life in the hands of a few guns and a layer of glass separating me from the world, Samus! I am not as helpless as you might think!"
To emphasize her point, Mother reared her head back in preparation and as she threw her neck forward, a multicolored beam shot from her eye, tearing through the very air. Samus threw her entire body to the side and stared in astonishment as the beam melted a hole through the metal floor and kept on drilling further and further.
What kind of attack was that?! Samus wondered in astonishment.
"What, no clever quips?" Mother growled as her eye steamed. "No backtalk from you, Samus? Or has my wondrous form paralyzed you with its majesty?"
"You are completely insane!" Samus yelled as she fired several missiles in quick succession. Mother simply swatted the slow moving projectiles out of the air with her arms, and gave a howling laugh.
"Your attacks are useless against me, Samus! I'm now beginning to think that I should have done this earlier when I had the chance. If that imbecile Ridley could not finish the job he started, then I certainly will!" With a tremendous roar, Mother stomped her foot down, the talons scraping at the metal. Samus dodged after getting into her Morph Ball form and scurried between Mother's legs. She disengaged out of the small ball and whirled to face Mother's back. She fired first with the wave beam, sending piercing rays of energy hurtling towards Mother's way. As they struck, the beams merely fizzled against the mechanical surface, uselessly sparking in frustration. Mother lumbered around, growling a hideous chuckle in response.
"That was pathetic," Mother snickered. "Try again."
Samus did not waste her time responding to Mother's taunts. She next switched to the ice beam and fired at the creature's knees, encasing them in solid blocks of ice. Samus had no time to revel because Mother simply flexed her joints and they burst free of the frost, hardly delaying her progress.
"Nope," the robotic jaw flexed. "One more time, now."
Howling, Samus finally activated the plasma beam and sent a spiraling rocket of flame hurtling straight for Mother's torso. The terrible combination of flesh and metal did not even try to dodge the attack, quickly letting the inferno wrap around the body. But as soon as it appeared to hit the creature, the flames withered and died, leaving a few scraps of charred flesh hanging from the apparatus, but overall no visible damage had been sustained.
"You've played your hand," Mother cackled as she reared her head back once more. "Allow me to show mine."
Samus knew what was coming and immediately sprang to the side to avoid the attack, but Mother intentionally held off on firing her next burst until she saw the direction Samus was going to be traveling in. Quickly extrapolating the very position the bounty hunter would be in the next few nanoseconds, Mother adjusted her head on her freakish neck and fired, timing her blast perfectly.
The howl of pain from Samus was lost in the rushing roar that echoed in her ears, brought on from the close proximity of the beam. She closed her eyes as her body was struck with what was now the most terrible pain of her life. As opposed to the draining and burning sensation brought on by the Metroid, this felt like each and every molecule of her form was being obliterated apart, scattering her remains into dust. Samus writhed on the ground, trying to escape the pain, but Mother continually shifted her aim as she rolled around, not ceasing with her assault.
Gray…help me! Samus cried out in her head, for she could not muster the words through her mouth. I need you…tell me what to do! Please!
But no one answered, leaving Samus to sizzle on the floor. A hot fire seared through her flesh and cooked her bones. She could feel her teeth chattering so hard that she worried they might shatter. And all this time, Mother stood over her, laughing maniacally at the sight of her rival weak and dying.
Tears were streaming down Samus' face uncontrollably and for a brief moment when everything was about to go dark, she surprisingly felt bliss waft throughout her body. Her throes automatically calmed and her cries quieted, the pain beginning to drift away. Samus felt the onset of sleep approaching and she wondered if this was a normal symptom of dying. From what she had witnessed in her life of battle, the ones who perished from wounds sustained on the feel never appeared calm in their final moments. They always screamed and thrashed everywhere, hoping that their last feeble movements would prevent their time from encroaching upon them. But maybe it was all just a show. Maybe they never felt any discomfort just like what was happening to her right now.
Softly smiling to herself, Samus waited to die on the cold, hard ground. It was a bit more pleasant like this, just lying here. If only that infernal rumbling from the room and that hideous screaming in the background would cease, then maybe this disappointing moment could be a little more tolerable.
Wait…who is screaming?
Samus' eyes snapped open in shock. She certainly was not the one screaming. And as far as she could tell, she was not dying either. The energy levels on her HUD were barely skirting the minimum, but they were still holding. She then realized that the reason she was no longer feeling any pain was because she was not being struck with that powerful beam any more. Calling upon her last strand of strength, Samus mustered herself and rolled onto her chest, giving her a perfect view of what was transpiring at the far side of the room, making her gape in astonishment.
The rumbling and the screaming were both being caused by Mother Brain, who was now thrashing around the room in agony. Chattering angrily on top of her head, to Samus' complete surprise, was the huge Metroid, having dug its mandibles directly into the flesh of the intelligence's organic brain. Mother was firing her beam indiscriminately around the chamber, trying the shoot the parasite off, but some of the shots just dissipated when they hit the Metroid, becoming absorbed into its nuclei. The large alien warbled in anger as the beam struck it a few times, but it just clamped down harder, quickly drawing more and more of Mother's life force out.
"What are you…aaaahh!" Mother Brain shrieked as she tried to shake the Metroid off. Samus, feeling new hope surge through her body, attempted to get to her feet but she was still severely weakened from Mother's assault. Her legs buckled and she fell heavily on her knees. She was now a slave to fate, forced to watch the spectacle in front of her.
Mother was getting more and more agitated as the Metroid continued to cling to her. Outrage flooded her system. This Metroid was supposed to be fighting for her! This was her grand design! Why was it betraying her? Furious and incredulous, Mother made a last ditch effort to dislodge the Metroid by smashing her own head against the wall, trying to mash the bulbous alien into a paste between her and the unyielding surface. The Metroid saw through that plan immediately and quickly pried itself off just as Mother began to move. The parasite floated away freely and Mother's head impacted hard with the wall. Her legs splayed apart and she slid to the ground, stunned from the combination of assaults on her form.
Now the Metroid pushed over to Samus' prone form, and before she could utter a protest, it gently dropped down on top of her and now carefully gripped her with its interior mandibles. She flinched and braced herself for the sickening pain once more, but was amazed when the discomfort never arrived and a surge of warm energy came in its place. She looked up and saw the same sickly green glow as before but gradually felt her strength slowly returning. Her energy levels, instead of draining, were actually rising.
The Metroid was giving her Mother's own life force.
In the corner, Mother hissed and spat as she shakily got back to her feet, the awkward body rumbling as it tried to regain its balance. The purple fluid was now gushing heavily from the artificial jaw and Mother seethed as it saw the Metroid huddled over the incapacitated Samus. Without any hesitation, she snarled and shot forth another beam, intending to puncture the Metroid's surface with it.
Alerted to the danger, the Metroid squeaked and let go of Samus just in time for the beam to pass harmlessly between them, even though Samus was close enough to feel the air being rudely pushed aside as the energy shot across. She fell to the ground, still not fully rejuvenated but a little more mobile nonetheless. Mother, however, ignored Samus for the time being and continued to blast away at the Metroid, roaring each time she missed. The Metroid zipped around the room and floated high in the air, directly above Samus as Mother readied for another attack.
Samus looked up at the Metroid, the creature that was fighting for her survival. In that instant, she held out her hand, as if she could gently grasp the being from afar. The fact that this parasite, this…weapon, was defending her, its "mother," was overpowering. She gave a tiny laugh. The Metroids understood what it meant to be alive and the privilege it was to be a sentient being for good! The Chozo had succeeded in their goal after all! Filled with joy, Samus stood and was about to let out a cheer, ready to join the Metroid in battle, when a rogue beam, shot from Mother, hit the Metroid directly in the center, spearing through it like a sword.
Membranous fluid flew through the air, and a tiny star flared near the ceiling as a shrill cry, heard only by Samus, echoed sadly. The afterglow of the beam dispersing, Samus blinked slowly as the Metroid appeared to stabilize itself, trying to heal around the rupture. But in mere moments, the structure of the creature rapidly destabilized and the Metroid imploded with little fanfare, its insides collapsing with a poof!
The ringing in Samus' ears haunted her next moments as she watched the disintegrated remains of the Metroid gently drift downward from directly above her. A flurry of particles, the only remains of the infant, floated onto her and coated her suit. Samus was about to scream in fury, horrified at the loss of the last Metroid in the galaxy, when in the corner of her HUD, she noticed that her energy levels had been raised to a level that she had not even considered possible. The Metroid had given her more energy than Samus had ever known.
"Insolent creature," Mother growled as she watched the Metroid fade to dust. "Perhaps the Chozo never created a worthy weapon to begin with."
Samus' hands were trembling and she clenched both of them as she felt a power like never before surge through her. More and more of the Metroid's particles dropped onto her suit, making a mockery of her failure. As Mother Brain swiveled to face her once again, Samus let loose a roar, amplified tenfold by the suit, raised her weapon and pulled the trigger without even knowing which type of beam she had selected.
The long and multicolored beam that burst forth in a hail of sparks came as a shock to both her and Mother. Propelled forth, the beam sheared through one of Mother's mechanical arms and the severed limb fell to the floor, the joints twitching as it desperately tried to interpret the commands it had been cut off from.
"The savior of the galaxy," Samus whispered in awe. The Metroid…it transferred Mother's beam ability onto me. How…how…?
It suddenly became quite obvious to her. The Metroids had the ability to take and disperse energy as they pleased! That was what the Chozo had intended all along, for the Metroids to heal the galaxy while simultaneously ridding it of its enemies! How could she not have known this before?
Samus stared at her palm and gave a solemn promise to not let the last Metroid's gift to her go squandered.
Mother, in the meantime, had been staring at the stump of her arm in complete surprise. "How could you…" she started to say, but Samus bounded back into the arena and fired her hyper-powered beam again, and this time Mother's other arm fell off causing her to backpedal in fear.
Samus did not cease in her firing. A few blasts to Mother's right knee quickly lopped it off without difficulty, causing the awkward creature to topple forward onto the ground. Mother Brain's head perched up on the floor and screeched as several shots from Samus scorched through her torso, creating neat holes that penetrated the initial fleshy outer layer and through the internal mechanisms that made up her body. The skin covering Mother's torso melted like cheese and flopped to the ground in smoldering clumps. Fluids poured out of the cauterized holes and created an oily puddle that stained the otherwise pristine floor. And all throughout the punishment, Mother shrieked and howled, her final leg kicking out feebly.
Coughing out a burst of purplish liquid, Mother actually looked scared to Samus, her lone eye wide open with terror. "Just let me live," she begged, her jaw twitching. "I…I won't stand up to you anymore, Samus. You…you've proved that you are my better. Please…please…have mercy…"
"Mercy?" Samus asked nonchalantly before she pointed the muzzle of her cannon at her foe's eye. "And…what makes you think you deserve it?"
Before Mother could cry out one last time, the hyper beam rocketed through her fleshy head, popping and cooking the eyeball in a burst of steam. The superheated line of energy inflated the brain to gigantic proportions, causing it to explode in a burst of blood and chunky flesh. Ripped apart, the hollowed out shell of Mother Brain kicked one last time, a hideous gurgle coming from her jaw as she died.
"Goodbye, Mother," Samus said with no remorse in her voice.
Just then, a rumble shook the very floor, making Samus hunker down in caution. Before she could question what was going on, a timer set for three minutes suddenly appeared in the corner of her visor. As it rapidly began to count down, Samus immediately harkened back to what Mother had mentioned about the neutron bombs embedded in Zebes' core.
Turns out that damned AI hadn't been lying after all.
Samus did note, as she started to sprint out of the chamber, that Mother had been partially bluffing. The bombs required a warm-up period before they could be fully armed, a fail-safe in case the necessary connection had been broken unintentionally, thus creating the need to reacquire the signal again so that the slightest mistake could not have enormous repercussions. Samus gritted her teeth as she began jumping up a ruined elevator shaft, using some of the beams as platforms. Three minutes would be enough for a Chozo technician to isolate the signal and prevent the bombs from exploding but would it be enough for her to reach her ship at the surface?
The exit at the top of the shaft seemed so far away, but Samus did not falter as she leaped higher and higher. She tried not to look at the clock, but couldn't help it when the timer ticked onto two minutes with a warning flash. By that time, she had reached the very limits of Tourian and she leaped as far as she could go, her gauntlet managing to grasp the mossy edge of a cliff a few stories above where she had just jumped.
Samus hauled herself up and used her hyper beam to blast away at the rocks blocking her passage to the outside. She bounded over a few boulders and skirted between caverns, knowing that she was so close to her ship. After a final turn, she saw a thin ray of sunlight protruding from a crack in the rock ceiling above her. With a yell of joy, Samus bent her knees and then pushed off in an incredible leap, her hands grasping for the light, wanting to embrace it like an old friend.
Uttering a triumphant laugh, Samus burst out into the open air, full of life like when she had lived on this planet as a young girl. Spotting her ship nestled in the shadows of a mountain, Samus raced down the tiny hill and jumped so that she landed perfectly on the hatch. Once inside, she slapped a control on the console for the ship to leave the atmosphere immediately. Nixing all of the pre-flight checks, the HUNTER-II spaceship boomed as its rear engines widened to full power, causing the craft to race past the clouds and into the cold reaches of space.
Looking at the rear viewport, Samus stared sadly at the dusty orb rapidly fading from view. She tried to remember all of the memories that had been created there. There were so many to choose from. She recalled the countless hours upon hours of sparring with training bots under the tutelage of Old Bird and Gray Voice. The two always stood to the side, Old Bird with a smile, Gray with a worried look. It had always been like that. The two were polar opposites of the other; one nurturing, the other pushing.
But, as Samus watched Zebes crack into several pieces with a huge flash, she considered that she would not have wanted her future to have panned out any other way. The Chozo had given her the greatest gift of all: a life. It was a hard life, to be sure, but it was one that had been shaped by choice. She had accepted this duty ever since that fateful day on K-2L, she had never thought twice about the possibility of doing anything else. She was a soldier, a soldier for the galaxy. The last of the Chozo – their sole heir.
Samus finally looked away from her crumbling home, hoping that the engines of her ship were powerful enough to get her clear from the rapidly expanding sphere of debris. It pained her to see it all gone, but she knew that there was no other choice. Eliminating the scourge of the Space Pirate leadership was worth the cost of an old and dusty planet any day. Besides, Samus reasoned, Zebes had changed so much that there was nothing there for her anymore. There was nothing more that the planet could provide. Others would accept the cost, they had to.
Suddenly, the radio crackled with static, drawing Samus' gaze over to the console. Riddled with distortion, but still faintly listenable, she could hear a voice being projected forth.
"-UNTER-II…we ha-…on our scopes. This is…-FS Plano. Samus this…-eneral Malkovich. Do you…-opy?"
Samus quickly sat down in the pilot's chair and pressed the red transmit button, relieved at there being someone to talk to that was not actively trying to kill her. "GFS Plano, this is HUNTER-II. I read you loud and clear, Adam."
"-ank god!" Malkovich's voice burst through, a little clearer this time. "Samus, we feared we lost you. We're about a few thousand kilometers away from your position and are willing to offer our services, if able. We just saw Zebes go up in flames. What…what does this mean about the status of your mission?"
"My mission?" Samus repeated as she relaxed in her chair, folding one of her legs across the other as her armor brightened then dimmed, letting her stretch out in her deep blue Zero Suit. With a smile, she leaned forward, her hands steeped in front of her face. "It means, Adam, that my mission is accomplished."
A/N: Well, that certainly felt good to write. Now just to add a small epilogue and I can finally stamp "DONE" all over this story. And by now, Solder: Legacy is the 5th longest story in the entire Metroid FF archive, so that can be considered an achievement. Not bad for a passion project.
Haha! Oh man, you have no idea how good it feels to be so close to nearing the end of this. There were some days when I just wanted to kill myself because writer's block hit heavily (sarcasm - don't send police helicopters). I'll reveal where the future will lead in a few days, but for now, enjoy this last full chapter in this story. I hope you all like it.
LawrenceSnake: (This is going to be a long one as there are many things to address so I'll just split it into multiple paragraphs from here on out)
-Guess I'll start with the first point raised: while the Speed Booster probably would have sufficed as a finishing blow, the overall usage of said ability seemed way too cartoonish in my mind. I just didn't want to have shades of DBZ echo throughout this piece so I had Samus use her gun to blow Ridley up. Redundant it may be, but way less corny than the alternative.
-Now onto the complaints about Ridley: He was specifically supposed to be weaker than expected in the final battle to reinforce the idea that he was not as scary to Samus when they finally entered battle together. Just because he's a winged monstrosity does not mean that he has to be all powerful (in which case - as noted by Zero Mission - Ridley does not live in Norfair and it is only implied that he can fly through space - not counting his Meta Ridley form). It should be worth noting that Ridley's seemingly terrifying nature was built up through his continual bluster, but he consistently got his ass kicked by Gray Voice and Samus. This characteristic was meant to gradually break down his character even more, and by the time Ridley is begging for his life and finally calling Samus by her name, then that is the moment that Ridley has truly lost and is just a pathetic creature to Samus. Besides, Samus was already challenged by Kraid in the previous chapter and would later face another large threat in the one after that chapter. To have her face three enemies that consistently challenge her life would prove to be redundant and maybe even boring.
-But this is the part that really gets me, so I have to say it out loud so that I can get this right. You're saying that Samus should have won, not because of the abilities Gray Voice bestowed upon her, but because she...believed she could? You think that I should have employed one of the most cringe-worthy and overall hated cliches of all time, a trope that I personally find infuriating, as the reasoning for Samus finally besting Ridley? Sorry, pal. That's not awesome, that just sounds dumb. Also, it doesn't fit with the overall theme of pretty much the majority of the Metroid games - the theme of collecting upgrades so that Samus can defeat her enemies. In each game, Samus has to find new abilities so that she can progress through the levels - and if she encountered a boss when she was improperly equipped, then she's toast (Try tackling Ridley without the Varia Suit and see what happens, etc.) It's only natural for Samus to find strength from upgrading her suit so that she has the ability to defeat her enemies more easily - overcoming her fear is only part of the mix but should not be the main reason for why she emerges from these fights victorious.
-The additional citation of the Super Metroid comic is also puzzling as it has long ago proved itself to be not keeping up with the overall canon, plus it reinforces the uninteresting facet that Samus is virtually untouchable when she believes herself to be. (yay...an invincible protagonist...woo hoo...) This of course, is from the same comic that portrays the power bomb as a method to heal (technically a variation on the Crystal Flash technique, although it is poorly portrayed and indicated) and that Ridley would rather flee from a fight rather than face a supposedly "untouchable" Samus. If inner strength was all Samus needed to defeat her foes, then she might as well have chucked the Varia Suit away and have gone on to face Ridley with just her fists and hand-to-hand combat gimmicks. That trope might work in other franchises...but not this one.
Damn, that was a lot of text, but those points needed to be addressed. Apologies if any of that came out snarky, haven't had my coffee today.
And on that bombshell, I'll be back with the ending to Soldier: Legacy in a couple days. Keep your eyes pealed!