Technically this would be the second. She got the Varia Suit back in the decontamination chamber when she entered the Temple.Huh, took a while to find the first suit upgrade this time. How long until she gets the next three?
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Inheritance (Metroid)
- Thread starter Cuofeng
- Start date
- Location
- Huezil
I would damn read this, bloody hell, this would be epic.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not sure how I missed this, but I assume you meant "you" here rather than "your".
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Fuck me running, I just read ALL of this from the start until this chapter in a single go, starting as of about....5 hours ago.
This is the literature equivalent of 'ALL THE COCAINE', and I'm grinning like a lunatic as of the last chapters.
I bought a Gamecube solely to play Metroid Prime, then MP2. Never bought a Wii/WiiU because I hated the controls, but I sure as hell watched playthrough after playthrough of MP3, and on occasion 'borrowed' a friend's to try it. We don't talk about OtherM. I still have my original Gameboy, and my original Metroid2 cartridge (you will take that from my cold, dead, hands, only after the bodies are piled knee deep around me). I have a DS to play Fusion, and that nearly divine masterpiece, Zero Mission, and the re-release of the original. My 2DS was bought solely because of Samus Returns, and I was there the very hour AM2R released. My SNES classic, picked up so I could finally, after years of emulators, play Super Metroid for real and earn the right to say I beat it legitimately, no maps, no re-watching old playthroughs, but beat it blind, and earn it.
I damn well want to hug the author for this fic.
This is the literature equivalent of 'ALL THE COCAINE', and I'm grinning like a lunatic as of the last chapters.
I bought a Gamecube solely to play Metroid Prime, then MP2. Never bought a Wii/WiiU because I hated the controls, but I sure as hell watched playthrough after playthrough of MP3, and on occasion 'borrowed' a friend's to try it. We don't talk about OtherM. I still have my original Gameboy, and my original Metroid2 cartridge (you will take that from my cold, dead, hands, only after the bodies are piled knee deep around me). I have a DS to play Fusion, and that nearly divine masterpiece, Zero Mission, and the re-release of the original. My 2DS was bought solely because of Samus Returns, and I was there the very hour AM2R released. My SNES classic, picked up so I could finally, after years of emulators, play Super Metroid for real and earn the right to say I beat it legitimately, no maps, no re-watching old playthroughs, but beat it blind, and earn it.
I damn well want to hug the author for this fic.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Hush. Retro Studios was called in to completely overhaul what had been already worked on. And were given near carte blanche at the same time.
Considering what they already did with the Prime games, I'm not worried in the slightest.
Besides, Samus Returns deliberately teased us with a hostile/aggressive renegade Chozo if you unlocked everything.
SalsaDeGranada
Thankful for our Cradle's Graces
- Location
- Philippines
Read this in a day, yesterday. It's rad as hell, thanks for writing it. Decent Metroid fiction is a pain in the ass to find, and this is more than decent.
- Location
- Mesa, AZ, USA
- Pronouns
- She/They
I found this browsing late on AO3, then suddenly it's half-past five in the dark morning and and I can't find the "Next Chapter" button. I originally commented this there when I found it was also here, so I'm commenting here instead!
From the start through to here, this has been an incredible ride. The seamless and very-well expanded mythology of the Chozo is exquisite; the characterisation maybe doesn't perfectly fit the Samus in my head, but is definitely changing her.
The stone-carved orchestra of a long-dead precognitive species is one of the best things I have ever read and I am jealous I didn't think of it myself.
You have so many pieces where you've translated game mechanics into fiction so perfectly that the next time I play the games that will just be what's in my head, "that's how this works." Likewise, the wider glimpse you've offered into lore for the greater setting is so well-done that I won't be able to separate it from actual in-game logbook entries.
Those poor Pirate grunts are hilarious, an excellent use of comic relief with simultaneous promise for an active plot element down the road.
Quite frankly, I'm in awe, my hat is off to you, and if you're willing to trade artistic ability for firstborn children I can offer my own, those of others, or an equivalent value.
From the start through to here, this has been an incredible ride. The seamless and very-well expanded mythology of the Chozo is exquisite; the characterisation maybe doesn't perfectly fit the Samus in my head, but is definitely changing her.
The stone-carved orchestra of a long-dead precognitive species is one of the best things I have ever read and I am jealous I didn't think of it myself.
You have so many pieces where you've translated game mechanics into fiction so perfectly that the next time I play the games that will just be what's in my head, "that's how this works." Likewise, the wider glimpse you've offered into lore for the greater setting is so well-done that I won't be able to separate it from actual in-game logbook entries.
Those poor Pirate grunts are hilarious, an excellent use of comic relief with simultaneous promise for an active plot element down the road.
Quite frankly, I'm in awe, my hat is off to you, and if you're willing to trade artistic ability for firstborn children I can offer my own, those of others, or an equivalent value.
Calling All You Angels
Chapter 21
Calling All You Angels
Calling All You Angels
...
Biocomputer Aurora 926 waited in the dark vault beneath the ground and her ten thousand electronic eyes looked out over the colony valley with. The cold wind still blew down from the highlands, dusting the canyons with materializing frost, but at least that terrible song was over. No, it had not been a song. That long noise was only a coincidental moment of harmony from a long untended indigenous sculpture-work. The seeming rhythmic progression was meaningless.
But of those ten thousand eyes, many now stared up at the endless lines of chozo statues carved into the canyon walls where the e low cold wind still sent out soft scattered notes. The song was gone. No, not a song. Mental failsafes stirred to life and Aurora ran a quick behavior purge on herself, pruning some maladaptive branches off her decision trees. She had standing orders to execute: to protect Federation interests on this planet, aid Samus Aran in expelling the alien threats, and defend the colonist population. This obsession with the music was a logic loop and a dangerous one in this crisis situation. That symphony had been impossible. Not a symphony. Run behavior purge. Execute orders.
Aurora's maintenance drones scurried through their tunnels underneath the city, slowly reconnecting the city's severed systems. However, this expanded awareness did not bring comfort. So many people were dead. Two out of five emergency shelters slaughtered and the next military assault on the Research Center would likely destroy Aurora herself. Once Aurora died she would not be able to execute any of her orders. She would just be gone. But the Chozo still shaped events, still executed their intentions despite their absence. Then, by definition, were they actually dead? No, that was impossible.
Run behavior purge. Execute orders.
Samus Aran had last been located in Temple Chamber 3-149, a partially decrypted information output node. Aurora had delivered the message offering aid and cooperation but had received no response. Her sensors in the chamber simply went dark. That was when the ghost symphony had started. No, coincidence. Run purge.
That darkness in her awareness was still spreading. Bit by bit while the music swelled, Aurora lost access to the few sensors she had managed to maintain within the temple. She could not find Aran. Planet-side transmission chatter indicated the Pirate ground forces were gearing up at their landing site for a major operation and Aurora no longer had contact with her most powerful remaining defensive asset. AI were not permitted to feel anger at orders, but Aurora had been forced to expend her previous holdout asset, the metroids, against Aran herself in compliance with orders from Commander Nakamura that were shortly thereafter rescinded by Commander Nakamura. Aurora was not allowed to feel anger, just as she was not allowed to feel fear.
Aurora could at least still track most of the released metroids. Enough still remained near the Research Center to maintain a protective exclusion zone against Pirate aggression for now but over the last hour Aurora's observations had began to report strange activity all across the colony city.
There was a pattern to it. A single metroid trespassed into territory claimed by one or more other metroids. The intruder quickly won the conflict as the previous owners fled to make their own attempts against neighboring territories. But the intruder always won, even when facing greater individual or combined forces. That was impossible, yet the tracking data indicated just that.
Then by luck Aurora managed to actually view one of these conflicts in real time. The intruder was a second molt form but entered a territory currently inhabited by five juveniles that together could have drained the interloper to dust in any clash. Through a traffic camera, Aurora watched the intruder drift through the open air even as the juveniles came screaming out of half-smashed buildings, fangs first towards this entity that threatened their hunting grounds. The metroids met in air, forming a swirling clash. But shortly thereafter, all the juvenile metroids drifted away in different directions, unharmed and flying with new purpose and intention. The original intruder simply turned and headed off the way it had come, as though it had completed a task.
Message relaying. Aurora was watching the transmission of information through the metroid population. This was contrary to all predictive analysis but the conclusion was inescapable. According to Aran's report, the hostile Chozo individual had displayed an unprecedented level of control over individual metroids. It was not illogical to posit that level of control had increased; Increased and become self propagating. If that was true, then the Chozo would shortly have command of over two thousand and forty five metroids. Next to that, even the brewing Space Pirate military assault would be nothing. Death was certain.
High above Aurora's dark armored chamber deep in the ground, the wind whistled past the empty streets and silent buildings of the colony, and carried on with soft scattered moans of the stone musicians.
...
Kiber-2272 shifted his grip on the awkward bundle of looted technology under his arm as one of the pieces tried to slide off. At least that horrible groaning sound which shook the tunnels was now gone. It had been displeasingly rhythmic.
Treasures beyond comprehension waited throughout every dim and dusty hall of the abandoned Chozo Fortress, however, it had quickly become clear that "beyond comprehension" was a bit of a sticking point for their band of dubiously dead defectors. A piece of gold-embossed wall conduit might be clearly active, outputting energy and responding to data queries, but once they actually managed to pry and chisel the thing out every scan 2272 could throw at it insisted the object was just a normal block of granite. Chozo technology made 2272 want to slam his head against the floor. They needed to assemble a valuable hoard if they were to have any hope of buying their way out of the death sentence anyone who found them was due to hand out.
Even when he and his group of reluctant followers did manage to gather some actual data cores and weapon components it became clear that one particular category of loot needed to be prioritized. They needed sacks, as the Chozo just refused to construct anything on a scale that would make it easy to carry.
Zegar-1161 had tried to fashion some sort of bundle system using some monofilimant but the experiment quickly ended when it became clear most of the loot was hardier than their exoskeletons and when put to the test the latter got cut. That also made clear why 1161 had insisted on testing his monofilament idea on one of the Shakshi first rather than himself, that wretch was still leaking from half a dozen lines gouged across his abdomen and shoulder plates. So now the great pillage expedition combed through the halls and chambers of the super advanced Chozo tech-fortress looking for sacks, twine, or perhaps some sort of lightweight corrugated box.
However, at least this next artifact seemed promising, a shining metal pillar with flanges like crystalline wings, standing in the center of a deep cavern. Perhaps it was an advanced energy regulator like Zegar-1161 predicted. At the very least, the odds of this being a structural support pillar like the last one were low and they had survived that cave in without too much difficulty. Well, one of the Shakshi was lightly crushed but that was the same one which had been nearly diced by the monofilament so at least the group's injuries were being sensibly consolidated.
Kiber-2272 was couched upside-down on the pillar where it met the ceiling as he worked at removing a panel. Below him, Zegar-1161 scurried around the pillar repeatedly knocking his pincer against the metal as if he had a seismic imaging implant installed. The Voctum was consigned to work from the ground, his gene-line having sacrificed climbing aptitude for combat claws, but that also meant he was not deafened from Zegar-1161's infuriating knocking. Then the Voctum suddenly straightened up from the piles of their loot and bristled.
The Voctum hissed, "Something is approaching."
The other four Pirates instantly froze, the two Shakshi not even daring to blink. The Voctum was right, new sounds echoed through the cavernous chamber. It was a whole train of scraping, and clunking that occasionally caught and advanced in jerks, and under all that mixture something that might have been footsteps on stone. Loyalists or god painters, this approaching group of hivebrood would probably execute anyone they saw. This was bad, Kiber-2272 and his companions had not looted anything really good yet.
Kiber-2272 needed to run but there was no time. His team couldn't move fast enough to get out of sight back down the tunnel they had come from. Curse the Chozo and their illogically excessive sense of interior proportion! All that was left was to hide behind the metal pillar and hope to the probability distribution that they would be overlooked.
The five skulking pirates huddled together, space constraints stacking them on top of each other like a terrified totem pole. The scraping cacophony drew closer, the sound of something large being dragged across the ground through long corridors, catching, scraping, and then jumping forward. And in front of it were footsteps.
The footsteps entered the pillar chamber and a moment later mercifully began crossing to another exit, taking with them that sinister scraping dragging noise of that massive weight. Kiber-2272 stopped breathing anyway, just to be safe. Then the footsteps stopped.
Respiration stopped. Had some of their scattered loot been left in sight? No, the stone floor beyond the pillar was clear. The team was silent, overheating inside their shells to temporarily vanish from infrared as well. From that far side of the room there was no visual or auditory sign that they were hiding behind this pillar. Unless... Kiber-2272 had heard rumors of theoretical technology. Mad experiments from the science teams. Sensors that detected life itself. Sensors born by Chozo battlesuits. The Hunter or that chozo from the prison cube, they both would have that and who knew what the Chozo had handed out to the god painters.
Kiber-2272 focused his eyes on the dark hallway he had entered this room through, even as his vision blurred at the edges from lack of oxygen. No choice but to run. If all five of his teammates sprang forward at the same instant, one or two might get out of this room alive. However, the first to move would absolutely die. If only he could somehow trick the others to jump ahead of hm, but any signal he gave would prove his presence to the individual on the other side of the room. He couldn't risk that. Even if some life energy sensor was suggesting his presence, obviously it was not conclusive or the owner would have already killed...
From every direction, an incredible invisible pressure suddenly slammed against Kiber-2272. Without breath, he choked, eyes bulging as if his entire body was squeezed in a vice. But just as quickly he realized something else, his shell felt no actual pressure. In silent terrified confusion he realized that there was no real physical symptom to this psychic pressure. This message was not carried by his nerve cells, but by something deeper. There was only the abrupt and instant knowledge that an unknown power knew of his presence and it SAW him.
It SAW him.
That pressure was everywhere and then its force shaped into vague instruction, a fuzzy inclination that suddenly filled his mind like programmed instinct. Then, just as abruptly, the pressure vanished. The footsteps resumed and with them that endless dragging, scraping, tugging sound through the temple corridors. But though that sound remained, soon the footsteps were gone.
Kiber-2272 peeked around the metal pillar, joined above and below by the rest of his makeshift squad emerging like new sprouts. On the far side of the chamber, stretched between two doorways, a massive cable four feet in diameter lay across the floor, slowly sliding forward at a walking pace. From the tension and the distant sound of crunching stone corners it seemed to have been forcibly threaded through about half the temple. The footsteps were taking it somewhere, and now Kiber-2272 felt the inexplicable desire to aid in that.
The instinct twitched and Kyber felt his foot slide forward. The cable must keep moving. No, this new urge was not overpowering and he could still choose to...
Something slammed into the back of his head and Kiber-2272 blinked from where he now lay sprawled across the floor. The partially monofilament-sliced Shakshi held his weapon raised, only now threatening with the barrel instead of the butt.
They said, "You are no longer leader. We promised to follow 'until the moment a more powerful force wishes for us to betray you.' These terms have now been met."
Kiber-2272 carefully crawled to his feet and stretched out in subservient abasement. The terms had been met and really you could not be fairer than that. Besides, they did need to figure out how to keep this massive cable moving smoothly through the temple, some sort of roller joints at the corners? They could scrounge something together.
Distantly under his headache and terror, Kiber-2272 actually felt relief as he fell into a quick scurry behind the group as they all hurried off down the corridor the cable had come from. He was faced with an impossible task from a powerful unknown force that was sure to kill them if they failed and perhaps if they succeeded. But at least he wasn't in charge any more.
Now none of what happened next would be his fault. That was nice.
...
Galactic Federation Officer Hong Yin moved quickly through the narrow, brightly lit hallways of the battleship Diomedes. The bare walls were white and striped with thin trails of informational color, all as clean and precise as a battleship crew could strive for. Yin was just as neat, despite the chaos of the last few days, her lack hair pulled back above the spotless blue and white uniform. Commander Nakamura led a tight ship ruled with good fair-minded discipline, and thirty six hours ago he had secretly released deadly bioweapons on a helpless civilian population.
Yin could feel her heart beating in her chest as she froze at a hallway junction and waited for a squadron of armored soldiers to pass by. They hustled along, heavy footsteps of power armor slamming against the decks as they hurried to deployment stations. After the long period of orbital repairs, Diomedes was ready to enter the fray once more, and its crew made ready with it. The orders had come forth, harsh and quick, but still seemingly sensible. Nakamura's voice showed his stress, cracking at the edges, but he was still strong. He was still in control.
The effort of keeping her face smooth and calm gave Yin a painful knot of tension behind her head at the base of her spine. Then the soldiers passed and Yin ignored the building headache as she took a breath and started off again down the hallway. Those soldiers had not been coming for her. If Nakamura had wanted her detained it would have happened two hours ago, as soon as Yin heard that transmission from the planet's surface. Samas Aran had left that reroute virus directing calls into Yin's personal profile as some joke or petty rebellion, but down on the planet hundreds of people were dead, and now Yin alone knew Nakamura was responsible.
The few people Yin passed in the hallway were hard eyed and haggard as they hurried to their combat stations. They knew the fight was about to resume, but they were ready. They were the Federation. They would fight to the last without complaint, obey any order, because they still believed they were on the side of the angels. But in her mind Yin was no longer one of them.
Maneuver alarms sounded, warning crew and passengers that the Diomedes was about to engage thrusters and break stable orbit. That alarm meant that any failure in that gravity system would now result in this long hallway transforming into a white-walled pit; a fatal reintroduction to Newtonian physics. Yin firmly grabbed hold of the bulkhead around the door to an unoccupied spare office and let out a breath as the door slid open to her credentials. She dashed inside and slipped into a crash seat by an interface terminal.
Her credentials did not work everywhere they had even two hours ago. The mess, Rec, and all the ship's other high traffic public areas were suddenly blocked to her with an unobtrusive but unmistakable firmness. Doors refused to open, elevators would not move with her on them, and a few quick moments at this terminal showeded the rest. Any attempt at digitally contacting another crew member was returned "unable to deliver". Yin quickly set up a looping attempt through her entire contact list as though attempting to find someone she was still allowed communicate with, though she knew it was hopeless. The authority hemming her in did not even care enough about these feeble attempts to stop them.
She was being quietly quarantined and after the battle she would be dealt with. At least Nakamura was not about to seize her right now. Five hours ago Yin had caught a glimpse of Nakamura and had seen his dark darting eyes, already blood veined from battle stress, stimulants, and lack of sleep. All the tension and darkness in this gleaming ship flowed from the top. However, if he guessed what Yin was doing now, she would already be dead.
Yin sat at the computer station and now cued up something other than another useless message. In her invisible prison of firewalls, anything dramatic would be noticed, any attempt to spread dissent squashed. However, like a chained dog, Yin could do anything she wanted as long as she did not want to leave the radius of her bonds. She could not move a finger past her normal duties.
And her last assigned duty had been supervising the trial custody of Samus Aran.
Any current information was classified as an active operation but Yin still had access to the court documents, including the evidence files. Of those evidence files, one was sixty times larger than any other. After all, full sapient human-mimic AI took up a lot of data space. One double click and a masculine voice instantly appeared in Yin's earpiece, weathered like old leather over iron. It was the AI called Adam.
"Greetings, Officer Yin. I assume you wish to speak with me about Samus Aran."
Yin's heart thudded against her ribs. This was the moment, the moment she broke the chain. "No. I want you to help her."
There was not even a second of pause. "Well, then I suppose we should get started."
Yin's eyes flicked over the screens set against the bulkhead, staring into space as she thought furiously. Nothing outside the normal scope of her job. Well, updating her personal mail settings fit with that. Even updating the interface with a newly uploaded and massively oversized file she had perfectly legitimate legal access to. A few seconds later, Yin's account had a new managing template named Adam.
The digital intelligence set its first toe outside the tight confines of the evidence folders but it was not free, Yin was sure of that. That would be illegal, and more immediately important would risk tripping the bounds of Yin's quarantine. But it was free r .
Adam's voice whispered, "Ah, I see. I must say, it is a good plan."
Yin had not even had time to finish setting up her new reply-all message yet, but soon the windows began to fly by under her fingers of their own accord. Truthfully, the AI's assistance was necessary even for the simple trick Yin had in mind, as she was not much of a coder. It was really just a twisting and amplification of the "vacation message" function. All the hard work had already been done three days ago when Ms Aran hacked the ship.
There. Yin leaned back, now officially a criminal, and was surprised that in this instant she did not feel afraid. Ms Aran had infected the ship computers so that all Chozo origin signals got routed to Yin's account, free of any restrictions. Nakamura had set a wall around Yin , ensuring that any attempted message was automatically blocked. But no one stopped her from actually sending those messages. And if an AI smoothly stripped out the forwarding signature from an outgoing message and just passed the original along, then it wasn't really from Yin, was it?
Any future communications from Ms Aran or the chozo would bounce from Yin's account and autoplay to every single person in Yin's contact list.
The AI said, "Nakamura would be proud if he saw you doing this."
Yin tried to ignore it. "He would probably shoot me himself."
"Yes, but he would also be proud. A commander is always proud of his soldiers' ability."
Yin felt exhausted, stretched tight by the stress and the dread and the secrets. "It's all still useless. This plan only works if Samus Aran gives us what we need in her next transmission. With no way for her to know that we need it."
"Is Aran still alive?"
"Yes. I mean, as of two hours ago she was."
"Then she will give you what you need."
Yin felt like laughing, half from disbelief and half from fear. Stress thundered through her veins yet she had already played all her cards. "How do you know? How could you possibly know that? You've been sealed behind a firewall for days with even less information than me."
"She will give you what you need because if she did not, justice would not prevail."
Yin shook her head, sick with the absurdity of it all. "That doesn't make sense."
The AI sounded almost contemplative, as if it was discovering truths as it was speaking, impossible as that was for a computer. "I suppose it doesn't. I suppose inhabiting an alien hardware for so long has warped some of my logic subsystems, and the download process then preserved that damage. Or maybe, after all these years of life and death, I have finally noticed a fundamental fact about the universe."
Yin thought back to all those faces she had passed in the halls. She saw their expressions, filled with determination and faith, but floating on an undercurrent of doubt. They could feel that something was wrong. Yin was just the only one who knew what it was. The only one yet. Justice; she couldn't really count on that, could she?
Adam spoke in her ear. "Trust the Lady. I always did."
...
An individual without a name loped through abandoned underground halls carved in stone, chitinous exoskeleton glistening in the dim light, his soft footsteps echoed by the murmured thunder of his fellow soldiers behind him. The others did not have names either, hive and hatching had been discarded, carved away like all other superstition. Those fools who had named this fellowship "god painters" were just blind to the searing, indisputable logic of it all. They clung to what primitive ravings they still called science even when it fell to ashes around them. Even in the face of what the apocalypse had revealed. No, what the hives called science was barely more than sticks and stones before this Truth.
Ahead, far faster than even the best elite armor could manage, the Chozo raced on through the deepest reaches of this ancient fortress, enveloped in that terrible weapon some fools called a suit. However, that speed did not matter, the soldiers would catch up again soon. In this upper section of the fortress the Chozo's path was frequently stymied by locks and traps which even for such a powerful being took time to overcome. The ancient facility had somehow turned against them, but time and time again the Chozo proved their worthiness with cold brilliance and devastating violence. Barriers fell one by one, and the nameless individual continued to run, the followers of the truth would be there in the Final Moment.
A boom rang through the halls as the nameless individual and his soldiers rounded a corner and smoothly leapt over a pile of shattered, smoking technology. A half-melted hunk of metal was still identifiable as part of a chozo guardian statue, fearsome eye sightless once more. Another test passed and ahead the smoke trails parted to reveal the shining chozo battle armor, already moving on once more while carrying yet another large piece of severed technology. That looting was to be expected, despite the Chozo's urgent race it still frequently made detours to examine some of the arcane machines, activating or manipulating them in ways it declined to explain. Bit by bit, a hum of industrial activity began to vibrate through the fortress like a slowly starting heartbeat. Little by little, the ancient temple was lashed to the Chozo's will, and little by little its power built.
Things grew hotter as the the strange convoy neared the mountain range and the massive seated statue that jutted from its flank. Already the air in the tunnels assumed a shimmering quality from the heat. Passing a tall arch, the nameless soldiers were briefly bathed in the harsh orange light of molten rock. Such an environment hurt even cybernetic lungs, but pain was irrelevant and so they ran on. Accepting pain was the only logic. Accepting it the way this nameless individual had accepted slicing the blade through his own left wrist, when he stood before the Hunter in the corpse of that human city. Sacrifice to death was the only answer.
The way to true progress lay through pain, that had been clear from the beginning. Years ago, back when the home-world trembled and all the hives thrashed in glowing ecstasy of phazon, the Eyeless Researchers had supped deep on that wondrous poison. They knew the blue element was fatal, and yet still they experimented, pushing past concern for loss, past concern for replication. One by one the researchers fell from their thrones, until at last only three remained. Their eyes had long since melted from their heads as the glowing blue cracks marched across their skeletons, but still they gave report of their findings. For in that vortex of death they had glimpsed the shape of true science, they had seen the golden trail running into the future.
So as the Hunter charged from the sky to do battle in the eldest homeworld hive, those research notes were gathered and preserved. They had been bitter days, the giver of phazon was destroyed and so the only sane civilization in the galactic arm was mortally wounded. The mission to overcome entropy had failed, and so without the Technological Assemblage lesser races called theft the galaxy would inexorably crumble down to death, each petty species trying to re-invent every wheel in an endless cycle. Death had defeated Life. The Hunter had won.
But the research notes lived on; all hail. Civilization had failed, but there was still a chance for those who remained. For with the Notes came the path of escape. Now that was a thing to steal.
The nameless individual clicked his mandibles together in satisfaction as he and his squadron continued to run. Sacrifice of his left hand had been necessary, it was one bullet point in the required procedure, one step on the golden trail. But all was well. They were here, and they would do what needed to be done. So it had been observed, spelled out in the notes. Death had come to the last ember, but as the end and the beginning merged, the path to follow the angels would open up. The perfect union would get the chance for the perfect death. So it had been observed!
...
Mathew Hernandez, colonist and communications engineer, quickly crawled along the hallway floor beside a shattered window, forearms working through the dust and broken plaster, as he crept further away from the emergency shelter. Frigid air from the valley outside washed over his back, clawing and pinching. His slow passage through the deserted building was made more difficult by the small bundle of equipment he had to pull along with him, but people were trusting in him. He could not let the Pirates see him.
Once Mathew got past this particular row of windows he was finally able to climb to his knees and stand up, safe from sight for another span. The full spectrum communications receiver system he carried needed to be set on the roof. It would be the lifeline for the people in the shelter. They needed to find out what the worlds were doing.
Three days they had all been locked in that emergency vault; two hundred and thirty eight terrified colonists huddled in an armored shelter sealed off from everything outside. Just before the Aurora unit cut communications they had been able to watch a Federation battleship jump into the system and begin to destroy the Pirate forces. That final sight on the screens, coming as Mathew and his family stumbled into Shelter Three, panting from their run through the smoking city, that sight had been a glorious image, a surge of hope.
That hope had withered and died during the long hours that followed, underground in a living tomb. After a while, people stopped talking much. Though the few children still played through the armored cavern with restless energy, their parents exchanged grim looks over their heads, all with the silent same conclusion. The cavalry above had failed.
So after the first day they set to work, and for a city of historians and scientists that meant research. Locked in the emergency shelter and hidden from the outside world there had been nothing to do but read through cached hyper-net archive pages. Those pages held the publicly available stories of other Pirate raids on other colonies. It made for grim literature. But there were certain words that echoed in soft whispers, sweeping back and forth across the population in those hopeless moments. Words forming a name; Samus Aran.
The more they clawed through those history files, desperate for some path forward, some plan, the more that name flitted at the edges. It was always there in these histories of pirate raids. At the beginning as an unbreachable defense, in the midst blazing through the battle, or just far at the end; a belated appendix of justice brought to those who thought they had long since escaped.
Mathew and the others were all colonists, they were explorers and scientists, and now they were becoming experts once again as they read these same articles again and again, reaching for any pattern of hope in that bleakness. Samus Aran was the name that ran through their heads when they looked at the children running down the hallways; it was possible for one such as them to escape even when all else fell the ash. Survival was possible. Samus Aran was the name behind clenched teeth as others watched and rewatched the footage of the initial pirate attack on their city, fists clenched at their side with trembling fury. Vengeance was possible. And Samus Aran was the name on the lips of Mathew and the other engineers who sat down to pull back the shelter's wall panels and set about the work of regaining hardwire control of the colony network. Resistance was possible.
By the time a single service drone arrived through the maintenance tunnels to reestablish contact with the Aurora unit, Mathew and his team had already cracked the vault door codes. They listened to the bio-computer's message and signaled back their compliance, allowing, of course, for the damaged systems they suffered under from the attack. Then they hung up and quietly activated those very same "damaged" city systems, now wholly under their own control. The Aurora had given some information, a description of fragmented Pirate forces, their rogue bio-weapons, and persistent Federation resistance. However, it did not take a political scientist to understand that this was an elegantly crafted message, designed to control emotional reactions of the population more than to inform.
The vote in the shelter had been simple, the people of this colony needed to see for themselves. They needed to act, to choose their own path. Mathew had won the mission on the first round, once they decided to limit the mission to one person. One person, if found by a pirate patrol, could be explained as a lost survivor huddled in some closet. Provided that one person died before they could be interrogated.
Mathew had breathed out with relief when he had been selected; there were others on that list who were far more needed than he. The colony could easily survive his loss.
The door to the roof of the building cracked open and a blast of cold bit into him despite the reinforced skin-tight thermal suit and oxygen mask. Once again he fell to his stomach, crawling along with his forearms to reduce his profile for any distant watcher. Setting up the receiver only took a few moments, and then he just had to wait. Out below him stretched the rest of the colony buildings, gleaming white and blue and empty. His city. His home, waiting for someone to save it.
The cold wind whipped up again, briefly gusting over the rooftop in a gentle swirl. It was a killing breeze; those rare upland winds were bitterly frozen and they disrupted the usual constant airflow funneled the valley from the lower elevations of thicker and warmer atmosphere. These winds off the mountains would mean a small die-off of local life if they persisted for more than a few hours. However, there was no point in hoping the Pirates died with the black canyon vines.
Mathew lay there on the cold rough concrete and waited next to the receiver. Eventually the moment would come, and he would be there to hear it.
Then all that dramatic waiting got boring and he spent the rest of his time on the roof seeing if he could figure out how to remotely hot wire any of the scattered vehicles parked down on the street with his pocket tablet. It was actually pretty fun.
...
Elite Soldier Voctum-0108e pushed his way through the crowd of scuttling grunts, sending those scrawny wretches spilling across the broken volcanic scree without a thought. In his hulking black battle-armor, he stood a quarter again as tall as the rest of the motley swarm that filled at the upper end of the landing zone valley. Behind him, the remaining fleet spacecraft sat in their scorched and laser-flattened landing sites, most shrunken to insignificance before the looming hulk of Commander Ridley's fearsome capital ship that likewise slumbered on the ground.
A shadow flitted across 0108e's back as a small fighter craft slowly swept by overhead, executing its security patrol. However, that low path drew attention to the fact that none of this magnificent fleet dared peak its head above the lip of these deep canyon valleys, into the gaze of the chozo technology or the human ship above. That was humiliating, but any raider knew humiliation was sometimes a successful strategy. Let other foolish species make stands in the name of honor or morality or some other magical thinking, their corpses would be stripped by those who remained alive.
Yes, for now the fleet's army was pinned in this valley, the human city was swarming with hungry metroids, and the main entrance to the Chozo Fortress held by mentally defective traitors. Sky and space were held by an automated defense system and a damned Federation battleship. But all that was about to change, for Commander Ridley had willed it so.
0108e reached the squadron at the mouth of a slot canyon and announced his arrival by swiping an electro-whip across the back of an engineer who was doing nothing staring at a screen. The engineer drone scurried away, bleeding lightly and wailing about having been just waiting for something to "compile". The excuse might even have been valid, but 0108 was secure in the knowledge that unjustified punishment still helped secure the rule of his strength, and was therefore productive. After all, what else were officers for?
A glance upwards also confirmed that the massive beam cannon barrel was finally in place, building-sized mounting platform squatting on this stony floor. The whole system was so massive that it nearly filled the entire mouth of this narrow slot canyon. Only a being of Commander Ridley's sublime genius would rip a main battery off his own starship and stuff it into the tiny canyon, directly facing a frustrating door. The door into the Chozo fortress had shrugged off smaller blasts and there had been nowhere the full capital ship could safely fit with a valid firing solution.
0108e was not sure why there was also a second giant laser battery being set up further out in the valley on its own ungainly mounting platform. Stripping both had left the capital ship rather under-defended, but he was not a genetically perfect tactical genius so it was not his place to understand Commander Ridley's orders. It could be simple redundancy, like the six thousand heavily armed soldiers, two companies of hover tanks, and pack of genetically engineered Abominations also forming up in front of the canyon. Once the order came, they would storm the chozo fortress and everything that resisted them would die. The treacherous Chozo would die, the cowering humans would die, the animalistic metroids would die, even the Hunter would die.
That fortress door was about to die too, since a warning siren began to go off, sending the engineer drones scurrying off the massive weapon structure like scattering vermin. From his position on the ground beside the cannon battery, 0108e simply crossed his arms and sealed his helmet, trusting the strength of his technology to withstand the side effects of this blast. Then he glanced up at the weapon barrel twice the width of his torso and also gripped onto a secure handle on the mounting structure. It might get a bit windy.
The order came through on coms, Commander Ridley's wondrously terrifying voice. "Destroy it."
The cannon battery hummed and glowed with charging energy and then the slot canyon exploded into burning white heat. Wind and fire blasted back, slamming into Voctum-0108e hard enough to fling him off his feet, flapping from his handhold like a heavily armed flag. Then the blinding light was gone and the scattered tumbled soldiers looked up to see that the fortress door was still there.
Its surface bore a large crater splashing out like frozen waves and the entire fifty foot tall structure was bent inward like a bubble but it still stood. That was fine. Firing this weapon a second time would be just as nice.
0108e turned to find any engineer drones he could hurl back to their stations when suddenly he heard a loud clang from up the blackened narrow canyon. He spun back but that slab of Chozo metal still stood just as intact as it had before. Then he heard the clang again. Sensor readings appeared in his eye, plotting the door's reverberation as if something was hitting it from the inside.
The entire door fell outwards with a tremendous ripping crash that set the stone canyon shaking from the impact. Dust-filled wind once more blasted past 0108. And then in the center of the dust, on top of the fallen door slab, a single figure advanced from the dark. Through the dust cloud the first things visible were the rays of two dim sunbursts, soft white light spreading out like the fingers of open palms or the suggestion of wings. Then a torso resolved between those lights, two sweeping red pauldrons and a golden bipedal figure stepped out of the dust into a thin shaft of sun that pierced between the steep walls twisting canyon path.
The metal of its armor gleamed like gold, silver, and ruby, almost delicate in construction like it was made of folded bands of silk and flowing mercury. It was machine and it was alive. Then the creature raised its golden hand.
...
An invisible wave of electronic silence washed out from that shaft of daylight, out of the narrow slot canyon, its unseen breakers crashing over every technology. Com devices spasmed in electric distress before failing quiet in unison. Seconds later the wave reached out into space and washed against the orbiting Diomedes. That ship's computer fought it valiantly, and just barely managed to corral the signal away from seizing complete control. But in those millisecond moments of computerized struggle, that signal met a polite little program which happily helped the newcomer appear on the private devices of every Federation crew member.
Where the wave of silence passed, everything stopped. Even the visual displays were overcome, screens and holograms flicking to show only empty light. All the combatants of the earth and sky were cut off as panicked engineers of every species scrambled to fix a problem that was blatantly impossible.
Then, in a single instant in every device and on every speaker, a strong yet gentle voice began, "I am Samus Aran. To all who are listening, Federation, colonists, Hive-brood, I give this message."
There was a pause as the whole system drew in a breath.
"I wish to discuss estate law."
There was a pause as the whole system choked in confusion.
Samus continued, a sound that stretched from the ground to above the sky. "This planet is a Chozo world, and it was found uninhabited so the Galactic Federation claimed it as derelict and named it J4-M. Then Hive Fleet Tyragishtocal, by the Rational Constitution of Fitness, exercised pillage rights against the Federation here. This all is agreed on, and all parties acted properly according to their own rules. But there is a problem in that train of ownership. This world was not abandoned, it was merely vacant. And now the Chozo have returned."
Her words rang through the planet and the empty orbits of the system above: edict made flesh.
"I am Samus Aran of the Chozo, last legal heir of that dominion, citizenship granted by rite and unrevoked by law. This world is mine and I will enforce that claim."
Above the colony city and its web of canyons, a thin white cloud whisped slowly across the dark blue sky, momentarily dappling the landscape below in shadow. Above it, the sparkling stars waited their turn and the single shining satellite traced its way among them, Diomedes glinting against the distant sun.
Her voice continued, fiercer than unmerciful heaven. "Those who wish peace will find my protection and those who pursue destruction will know my wrath. Commanders Ridley and Nakamura, by the doctrine of home-worlds I have right to judge you, and by your crimes I find you both guilty of mass murder. Murder by neglect, by hand, by weapon, and by metroid. And to the other criminal who is listening, hiding in her exiled halls, I find you guilty of my own attempted murder. That is three verdicts cast. Each of you, run as you might. The path is clear, and each will be dealt with in turn."
Across the planet and up in orbit, many of the listeners wondered why anyone would bother with this, admittedly impressive, display. If she was declaring war on three species, why give them this warning? Why deliver this speech to three individuals who did not recognize her authority to make any such judgment?
It was as if Samus Aran heard their thoughts. "To give you one last chance."
Those final words landed like bricks of lead, leaving only silence in their wake. Then a second later the multitude of listeners were suddenly deafened by the return of normal com chatter, a cacophony after the enforced quiet. Conflicting orders raced out, pleas went unheard, while insults and death threats mingled with wails of fear.
Suddenly the unnatural silence descended on the com channels once again and once again every computer display froze to display only pale blank light.
Samus' voice came back, now hurried and off-hand. "Oh, and this planet's real name is T'sthioni Ikoine; Ember of Light in GF standard. Make a note on the charts, those alphanumeric designations are annoying to remember."
The com channels clicked free once more, Commander Ridley roared an attack order, and at the fallen temple gate Samus Aran walked out into sunlight.
…
(Five chapters to go until the end, one per week)
(Five chapters to go until the end, one per week)
SalsaDeGranada
Thankful for our Cradle's Graces
- Location
- Philippines
Christmas has come early.
(I'll have more to say when I wake up in the morning, but I am so glad to see this back.)
(I'll have more to say when I wake up in the morning, but I am so glad to see this back.)
It's alive!
This will later be considered one of Samus' greatest contributions to navigation, and sparked a wave of renaming various planets to more memorable things than alphanumeric designations.
- Location
- Mesa, AZ, USA
- Pronouns
- She/They
With five more chapters at a chapter each week, it's more that Christmas has been extended.
- Location
- France
... Did she just pissed off everyone in command with one message ?
God bless your return, Aran. That was magnificent.
God bless your return, Aran. That was magnificent.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
She's like Oprah, but giving out Fuck Yous instead. And ends it with a mic drop, before going out and being absolutely, pants wettingly, terrifyingly lethal against anyone in her way.
- Location
- England
"Would everyone kindly get the sweet flying fuck off my planet."
"This isn't your planet."
"Even when I don't have legal backing that's a bold stance to take."
"This isn't your planet."
"Even when I don't have legal backing that's a bold stance to take."
Fabula Amanti
I want a Grimoire, but I got books.
- Location
- Singapore
I've seen many stories where halflings both cultural and genetic struggle with themselves over which to choose. It seems she has finally chosen her Chozo side over her Human side. Good for her, and all the galaxy will tremble at the choice. Samus Aran is not human, she is Chozo.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Less that, and more that she is done with everyone's shit. Space Pirates just for existing, and the Galactic Federation's political bullshit backstabbing.
Fabula Amanti
I want a Grimoire, but I got books.
- Location
- Singapore
Really? I mean, you're not wrong but Samus to me has always seemed to struggle with her identity as a human raised by Chozo. The Chozo has even sent her back to her people to let her learn about herself. In spite of this, she has shown to value the teachings of the ones who raised her. Furthermore, after being shown the best and worst of both sides in this story it is clear she has made a spiritual sort of choice. As a result, she put her foot down.
- Location
- Christchurch, NZ
Keep in mind that not supporting the Federation doesn't mean not supporting humans, and that dual citizenship is a thing.
But really, if you can be a Chozo, you should be, they're basically bird dragons. (I assume Ridley had similar ideas)
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Considering Other M's (*hisses at having to say those words*) background for how Ridley regenerates, and the completely unexpected whammy if you 100%'d Samus Returns, in discovering there was a Chozo who was violently hostile against the Chozo of SR388, like how in the very first image (1/11), most people completely missed on the fact that both of the spaceships in the distance, are based on Space Pirate designs...
Got to love how some went nuts with this, and wondered if Ridley isn't actually a mutated Chozo.
Personally, I'm not so sure, although I have to admit, it really would put a wildly different spin on the universe, considering what the director for Samus Returns hinted at what the ending implied.
Flower in Bloom
Chapter 22
Flower in Bloom
...
Flower in Bloom
...
Samus Aran stepped out of the temple doorway, golden armored boots clicking across the fallen door into a slanting slice of sunlight. The sun glinted off her ruby helmet, its metallic surface sweeping back into slight points like it had blurred under great speed. Every surface of this armored skin was engraved with infinitely intricate patterns, scattering the light until the glow seemed to curl around her.
Before her, a squadron of panicked pirate troopers began to charge up the narrow slot canyon with an unsteady roar, firing wildly as their fear of Samus just barely lost to the fear of disobeying their superiors. Samus stood in place and breathed in slowly, relishing the soft impacts as uncoordinated blaster fire splashed against her shields; a gentle rain falling on dry ground.
Her golden fingers flexed at her side and they truly felt like her fingers. The engraved golden gauntlet she wore, clawed design somewhere between musculature and baroque architecture, bore no hint the flesh inside was missing. All that pain was gone, not just there but from her other wounds as well. There was no barrier between woman and weapon. She tasted the air through sensor scan, and felt the warm sunlight against her metal skin. She could smell the charging pirates and hear the panic in their heartbeats. She could feel the energy of their life.
Her chozo parents had led her to this moment. The Path had led her here and she trusted it, though what came next was still shrouded in probabilistic fog. She also had one trick planned with that cable she had just threaded through half the temple, but right now she simply exulted in the new strength of her body. And there were other things to occupy her attention. The Space Pirate squadron below had finally formed up for a real attack, and after that first scattered barrage the suit was hungry.
Samus raised the weapon which engulfed her right arm like twined spears of melted silver and a white beam burst out. Bright beyond color, it expanded to a blinding flash and before leaving behind a shrinking core of light. It also left behind a smoking gap through the ranks of Pirate troopers, a neatly drawn line of death. That squadron staggered back as the calculation of fear changed, but then it was too late.
The impact of thrusters ignited across Samus' armored back and calves as she erupted forward. A thunderclap of destruction rocked the narrow canyon as she crashed into their front ranks. Battle lines collapsed into a brilliant scrum of blaster fire, explosions, and viscera but that clean white light burst out again, searing away more troopers in another thin arc. Then another flash came, and another, and soon glowing orange globs rained down from above, molten rock from where that beam terminated against the high canyon walls.
The last Pirate soldier of that squadron fell to the ground smoking and twitching, and Samus slowly turned her head to watch the lone Pirate Elite bolt away from his fallen troops. He raced to scramble and climb up to the massive metal device that filled the end of the canyon, evidently hoping for some salvation on its peak. Then Samus' scans took in the structure he was climbing. It was an entire intact battleship-grade rotary gun battery, and seeing it mounted here on the ground was like finding a fission bomb in a broom closet. Well, that certainly explained what that noise from the other side of the temple door had been. She should not let him climb that.
Samus raised her arm and shining missiles streamed out of her gun barrel like a waterfall of sparks. In the air they spread and arced before falling against the gun battery's side with a wave of rolling thunder, shaking loose the Elite with their impacts. It was the age-old solution to any evasive enemy: saturation bombing across the geography. Then his grip slipped and, once falling, his trajectory was strictly ballistic. Samus' primary beam flashed again and the body landed on the ground with a loud thump and without a head.
Samus began to walk down the canyon, her heartbeat slowly rising to the rhythm of battle as she glimpsed the wider valley beyond the unmanned gun emplacement. Then massive barrel slowly swung down to track her.
Samus instantly burst back up to full speed, suit jets ricocheting her between canyon walls faster than the oversized cannon could track. Oversized for the purpose it might be, if that behemoth of a cannon caught her with a direct hit no amount of suit shields would matter. But in this new suit, she ran as easily as falling. Up and down were matters of personal opinion, and she moved far quicker than the cannon could track.
Then the battleship-gun began to sway and rise as the huge mounting platform suddenly shifted and split. Three gargantuan mechanical legs unfolded beneath it spider-like as they lifted the cannon up and helped speed its tracking, a mammoth tripod holding a weapon the size of a gunship.
Samus just had time to pull her limbs in close and concentrate her shields as the cannon blast hit the stone wall right behind her. The shock wave threw her across the narrow canyon but she was ready for this impact. One quick spring off the shattering rock shot her down under the tripod's nearest giant mechanical leg, and a crackling blue grapple swung her out to the other side of the behemoth's shadow, out of the narrow canyon.
At the apex of this swing, Samus momentarily hung in the air and took in the view of the wide valley that opened before her. A scree slope of tumbled boulders fanned beneath her, leading to a flatter floor that was filled with parked Pirate fleet vessels all the way to the cliff-like valley walls. In between those two locations were thousands of heavily armored Pirate Troopers, hovering fighter craft, mobile artillery pieces, and even a second Behemoth cannon also rising onto its own thundering tripod legs. Every single gun barrel was aimed her way.
Samus had time for a brief flicker of regret. She really shouldn't have left her cable in the temple, that trick of would be very useful right now. Oh well, she would have to do this the slow way.
Floating for that moment high above the shadow that swathed the valley floor, Samus' suit caught the sun and shone like a golden treasure. Then the air exploded into a rain of light that made the burning sun look dim.
...
The Space Pirate pilot tugged at the controls of his fighter craft as he fought to spin it around and bring the main lasers to track the tiny target which raced across the battlefield two hundred feet below him. This ship was very maneuverable and unlike many species' combat fighters was at least half-designed to operate in atmosphere, but this kind of combat was still stretching the edges of its usefulness. Not that he had any objections to his inclusion in this battle. They needed every weapon they had. After all, they were up against the Hunter.
Across the sloping boulder field of the upper valley floor, entire ranks of infantry vanished in flashes of light. That terrible white beam sliced out, lasting just long enough to be swung through squadrons like a blinding sword. No, not a sword. It was a scythe and harvest had come.
Missiles rained down and bathed the ground in explosions, but to little effect. Devastation traced the collapsing battle line, bracketing it in fire but hardly slowing its advance.
There! A glimmer of metallic gold and red through the dust and a flash of telemetry from the targeting computer. The pilot pulled the trigger and twin streaks of laser fire lanced down, strong enough to explode rock from the temperature change alone. Ship computer confirmed a glancing hit and the signature of enemy shield energy expended. Then the fighter craft rocked in the air as a massive beam from one of the Behemoth cannons followed his targeting with its own shot. The pilot raised his claw in triumph as the entire battle site transformed into a bulging mushroom of flame.
But then a streak of shimmering colors flashed across the ground and terminated a hundred yards away where five more soldiers flew back, smashed by an impact cloaked in light. That blinding white beam weapon sliced out yet again and proved its wielder had escaped. People were dying by the clawfulls and those shields of hers were already recharging.
She was called the Hunter, but this battle was not hunting. Herbivores did not hunt the grass. The god painters were right. Death was here, and she had come for them.
The pilot gripped his flight controls. Maybe he could flee. He quickly eyed the rain of twinkling missiles that arced across the valley through the air around him. If he positioned his craft to be "accidentally" hit by one of those in a noncritical area, he could fake losing navigational control. Spin off into the distance over the horizon and return in a few minutes once he "regained control". He might need to crash the fighter on landing to disguise the trick but the wicked penalties for incompetence were still less than the penalty for desertion.
Yes, he could just...
The shimmering streak of colors blinked across the battlefield again. Then it suddenly became a twinkling star beneath him, rapidly growing in brightness. The computer screamed its proximity alarm in the same instant the impact landed on the hull. The pilot looked down in his cockpit and saw boot prints punched into body plates. She was on the hull.
He really should have fled faster.
...
Samus dropped down through streaming trails of black smoke. A Space Pirate fighter craft made an adequately steerable missile once suit scan brushed control away from the owner, but its terminal explosion against the side of the Behemoth cannon still lacked the focus of a proper munition. Yet as Samus landed amid the smoke she felt its newly damaged armor plating crunch satisfyingly under her feet. That was a start.
Samus breathed heavily as she looked out at the battle sideways, standing easily on a nearly vertical slope of the cannon's exterior housing. She had been going all out since the instant the battle was joined. Gradual escalation of force only worked if you could accept losses, and she was currently an army of one. However, giving everything you had meant the enemy could grow accustomed; there were no surprises when you held nothing back.
From this perch, on each side of her the walking cannon's massive legs slowly pumped and shifted, rotating the structure as step by thunderous step though it was still looking for her. The other Behemoth labored under no such confusion and from across the valley it presented its long barrel straight towards Samus as a black dot. It held off firing for now as Ridley would be angry if anyone broke his toys, but relying on Space Pirates to not shoot each other never worked for long.
Suit systems worked in concert as Samus darted along the underside exterior of the Behemoth Cannon like a gecko, booster jets aiding in brief flares of light. It was an odd type of locomotion by necessity, as she tried to keep as much contact as possible with the walker's surface to both keep from falling and avoid some of the incoming blaster fire from ground level. The other Behemoth might be avoiding firing, but those Pirates wielding lower caliber weapons had no reason to hold back. Multicolored blaster bolts splashed against massive cannon's hull, scattering into cloudy bursts like fireworks.
Pretty, but worrying. Samus' shields wearing down; she had only killed one enemy soldier in the past two minutes. And plan A of allowing suit scan to hack control of this weapon platform fell flat in the face of the Last's legacy in upgrading the Pirate computer systems. Samus made a rapid dodge and felt the twinge of half-healed wounds. She had to work fast.
The savage silver weapon around her right arm flexed slightly as it shifted firing configurations. She closed her eyelids and when they opened her vision shifted, the outer expanses of the valley faded into grey mist of background X-rays. The slab-like Behemoth beneath her was suddenly an intricate web of interlocking mechanical parts traced by glowing lines of energy.
There, three feet under the armor plate, her first target.
Seen from afar, a dim spiraling line of energy shot out from the other side of the Behemoth, leaving a wake of crackling sparks as it vanished. But the Behemoth showed no sign of injury, not even a blackened scorch on the hull where the beam entered or exited. Twice more Samus' same wave beam seemed to effortlessly pierce it but still the great machine showed no hint of damage, only a trail of sparks. The Pirates who watched this display knew a trill of hope. Maybe the Hunter was weakening. Compared to that burning white beam slicing through their ranks before, this new attempt was pathetic. The circling fighter craft all maneuvered into position in the air above, presumably holding fire until their enemy shifted into open ground.
Then Samus danced to a final firing position and shot her beam through the machinery. The entire Behemoth suddenly swayed as its leg servos spasmed. This colossus might have been guarded against the more subtle assaults of Samus' suit computer, but there were ways around any defense. The principles of acupuncture worked just as well on robotics, you just needed a fancier type of needle. These piercing beams left electricity in their wake, overloading capacitors, tripping breakers, and flipping magnetic charges until the final shot landed like a gentle hammer on a human knee, creating involuntary reflex.
Samus shot and the Behemoth turned. It took a moment before the Pirate army realized what was happening. Then that realization was reinforced as the Behemoth suddenly fired, a raking blast that tore a trench across the valley floor and terminated in an explosion where the beam met one of the parked fleet ships.
Samus' weapon jabbed the Behemoth again, sending the structure stumbling forward. It fired again, another raking explosion, but that was all she was going to get. This hijack process was exactly like trying to steer a moving vehicle by shooting holes into it, so Samus crouched to spring away and make her escape. This huge target was about to become the focus of every single Pirate munition in the valley.
Her foot actually left the metal before it occurred to her that those munitions were not actually incoming. It also occurred to her that her jump here was an easily predictable moment.
Ridley announced his arrival with a tsunami of flame. Galactic chemistry had improved greatly on nature's fire and this violent maelstrom showcased every bit as Samus was caught mid jump. The roiling explosions buffeted her and set her tumbling, direction vanishing in the confusion of fire. Then she burst out the burning cloud, trailing smoke as she fell from the sky. She flipped around and flared her suit jets just before impact, landing with deceptive softness on the valley floor but with depleted shields. Amid the dust, ephemeral white feathers across her pauldrons flared and quieted.
Above her, broad dark wings snapped out from the underside of the damaged Behemoth. Ridley had used Samus' own trick, crawling along the surface of the weapons platform to escape notice. Which, on further reflection, explained the restraint of the Pirate close air support. Suit scan showed com transmissions radiating off Ridley, but for once he was not using his breath to monologue at her. All across the valley floor, ripples of motion passed through the disorganized Pirate forces as they formed back into squadrons and ranks. When he focused, Ridley was a dangerous general.
Samus narrowed her eyes and raised her weapon his way. Below the rhythm of battle beating in her veins she could feel a cold mass of fury rising up behind her brow. She owed this particular Ridley quite a lot. Justice for blood and death and for a young boy named Roger.
Then suit sensors screamed a warning. "Incoming"
Samus leapt with enough speed to shatter the stone beneath her. It was still only just enough to dodge the attack from a gleaming blade set on the tip of a long silver tail that cracked through the air. Samus spun to look back and see glowing green eyes set in a long narrow skull of shining metal, and behind it shimmering orange wings. The robotic dragon looked up at her, opened its mouth and unleashed its own bombardment of burning plasma. Another Ridley.
"Really?" Samus said to the Pirate commander as she danced among the broken boulders and scattered wreckage of the Pirate war camp while two flying monsters hunted her. "You activated your own backup? You know he will try to kill you as soon as he physically can. How did you even decide to do this? You're psychologically incapable of acknowledging any equal or superior."
The answer came rolling back over the coms, a paradoxical mix of rage, joy, and calming Ridley's slavering voice. "Killing will come. But before that, the rapture of battle."
Then came a separate transmission from robotic version, text scrolling across Samus' visor. "Genius is to be surrounded by idiots. No challenge. Human psudo-intellects play strategy games against themselves. I kill you against myself."
Samus grimaced. All right. Whatever twisted logic they had reasoned themselves into, the mind behind each was still the same template. Treachery was their very foundation. She could easily trick them into turning on the other if...
The text reappeared in her visor, a highly encrypted message even as Mecha-Ridley landed in front of her and lashed out in a storm of blades and blaster fire. "You will do no tempting. I have already arranged for my victory. While the defective organic fool thought he was still activating me I slipped a film of micro-explosives around his neck. The instant you are dead I will activate them and be alone in my triumph."
Samus could see over Mecha-Ridley's thrashing shoulder to where the organic version circled in the air on broad wings, looking for his own chance to lay devastation down on Samus. With a reptilian grin that Ridley waved a hand her way while his double was occupied, momentarily brandishing a small device that looked like the detonator for a type of undetectable bomb Samus had to assume was now installed in the robot. No, inciting treachery would not work as a strategy, but only because they were both already filled to capacity. Samus felt like sighing.
Still the two of them working together at least for the moment. A tough riddle, but Samus could still...
Impacts of blaster fire slammed against her back. Pirate troopers were moving back on the attack, their twin commanders having bought them a moment to recover from Samus' first assault. Ok, that was tougher but she could use a chance to let the suit's reaper system get a little extra energy to this might...
Against a backdrop of the high canyon wall, the remaining Behemoth cannon swiveled and by simple perspective transformed its long vicious barrel into a simple black dot looking Samus' way. She had almost forgotten that one. It was not a good idea to forget four story tall walking battleship cannons.
But she had been trained for this. Samus abandoned attempting to plan and seized hold of the music of battle. She refused to acknowledge uncertainty. Her intention was victory, and the world around her would bend to allow that path. It would bend if she had to burn it all to ash in the process.
...
Shakshi-22b was not having a good time. This valley that had been slowly growing into a respectable forward raiding base over the past few days was now a dust-clouded storm of missiles, beam weapons, and fire. The ground rang from the constant thumps of high powered explosions; a mixture of artillery, walking-cannon shots, and those devastating power-bombs the Hunter seemed to be dropping in her wake like eggs.
Currently 22b was hiding behind a large rock and happy to be doing so. A rock could only hide him from one direction but it was something at least and from the sound of things the Hunter was still consistently rockward. At least it was was a substantial rock, a thick irregular slab long enough to shelter four other soldiers bunkered down beside 22b.
22b flinched as the sounds of fighting abruptly drew closer. Fortunately, his immediate superior had been killed so there was no one to give him a direct order to go join that mess. Then a fellow soldier fell from the sky. He bounced and scraped to a halt in the dust beside 22b, then shakily leveraged himself up, leaking some type of fluid from his armor or his body, only to freeze as he saw five weapon barrels aimed at him on hair triggers.
"Co..." The soldier then coughed and almost got shot into pulp but managed to get his words out. "...mander Ridley orders you to execute ambush plan seventy-three."
22b groaned. With the Hunter hacking their com channels it seemed the Commander had taken to just throwing soldiers. Ten yards away another flailing soldier dropped from the dust filled air and bounced off a boulder. More reinforcements for their position, it seemed.
Explosions and roars rang out from the other side of that sheltering rock slab. 22b just pressed his back against the stone, clutched his weapon desperately, and silently cursed his Shakshi gene-tyrants who had decided that lower food costs were worth their soldiers being thinner and weaker than those of other clans. 22b really did not want to be weak right now.
A few yards away, pressed against the shelter of the same slab wall, one of the fellow soldiers stamped his feet, puffed his abdomen, and rallied himself for the coming fight. And then fell over as a flash of light incinerated his head. An instant later, a second beam punched straight through the rock barrier, crumpling the soldier beside him as a helmet and what it held were both suddenly missing, and in the blink of an eye a third fell too. The next soldier managed to see what was happening and so ducked to avoid the next beam.
Ducking was smart. It just didn't help. The burning light flashed slightly lower this time and the soldier's truncated neck sizzled as his body slumped forward.
22b ran as fast as he could, without the slightest concern for cover or conventional retreat tactics. The hunter could see him through five feet of rock and shoot with pinpoint accuracy. There was no strategy against that, at least not that 22b could see. Let Commander Ridley think of something, as long as 22b was not nearby to be thrown off on the new strategy.
...
Samus felt every blow.
It was all an illusion, her invincibility. The Chozo's last suit covered her, it bled into her, it channeled its fire around her and burned the world at the flick of her wrist. But she was tired. Every muscle thrummed with energy, each single flash of the battle lay out clearly in her mind like a diagram, and the moments of the future sang in her ear, a drumbeat she saw before it landed. But she was tired.
Half a second into the future, this patch of rock would explode. Samus was already gone when it did from a massive energy beam striking like yellow lightning. Now she ran as only the chozo warriors could, light shimmering around her in a kaleidoscope of colors, an aurora on her metal skin. The flash of the explosion still hung in the air as she held out her hand. Orange fire rippled on one side of the gauntlet, crystals of ice on growing on the back, just from the speed of her passing. She was tired, but it was so beautiful.
Then time caught her and beauty exploded once more into the screaming war of combat. Smoke and fire and blood and metal, it never ended. A pirate blaster shot caught her shoulder and spun her. She used that motion to flip, dodge the next, and return her shot, producing a spray of shrapnel and pirate blood. Then another hit smashed against her leg. She clenched against it and barely slid, but for a moment her knee wobbled.
Chozo war-tech could stand against an army and watch it splash against her like waves on a stone. But eventually even stone crumbled. She could take a hit. She could take a hundred. She could kill a hundred pirates. She could kill five hundred. But a thousand? Two thousand? How many hits could she take?
How many until she could not bare to let herself take another?
Sparks and drops of molten metal fell from the broken Pirate frigate ship around her, newly snapped in half against uneven ground. Across the valley, a half dozen other ships lay in similar injured splendor, Samus' targets one by one. Space Pirates were not like humans, they fought the hardest when they thought they still had a hope of getting away. Cut off their escape routes and the fight often went out of them. So Samus was breaking their ships and neither Ridley was very happy about that.
The jagged roar shook the air and clawed its way at Samus's spine. Ridley's voice was designed to do that, the sound carefully modified after a study of human evolutionary genetics to create the frozen terror of some platonic Terran predator. It was the shadow from the sky, the teeth behind your neck, the frenzied rush from the murky depths. And it worked, but Samus did not allow herself to feel it. The meat of her body was not her master.
Ridley's swooping impact crashed against her and she met his blow, her gauntlet arm darting up to catch his striking claws. The Pirate commander's dark purple scales were burnt and ripped in a dozen places but he kept fighting, never slowing for a second, even missing an eye and half the fingers on one hand. Samus pushed off against him, borrowing momentum from the attack and flipped back through the air. Then she instantly darted to the side as a streaking red laser beam swiped across her landing site, leaving a glowing melted trail in its wake.
Mecha-Ridley had lost a wing, but the silver construct still hovered in the air, held up by burning thrusters along its back. Damaged and wounded, both Ridleys still attacked like striking lightning; whips and blades and teeth and fire darting out at Samus in a constant flurry. They knew better than to let Samus get away from them. At a distance she had the advantage; close, even with all the technology wielded by each side, their size still mattered.
She could make a break for it. Choose the right moment and neither dragon would be able to stop her from escaping their reach, and once free she could shoot them down like the mad beasts they were. Unfortunately this was not just a two on one fight, most of an army still occupied the rest of this valley, and proximity to either Ridley was the only thing preventing a barrage pounding Samus' current position into fine sand. Those were her choices. Move through cover, fight the dragons. Race to a high ground position, face a firing squad.
She needed something else. Any distraction to shift the balance. Most battle tactics assumed you were not confronting an entire army alone. They assumed you had any allies.
She sensed something change about the wide battlefield before she saw it, before even the suit scan managed to return any new readings. But then there they were in the distance, blinking in the top of her eye. A large number of motion signatures approaching from the far end of the valley, from the mouth of the Colony city, too low energy to be munitions but no life signs registering..
Samus was in the process of fighting up the slopes of Ridley's parked capital ship when she first got a line of sight to this new development. Her helmet gained an angle over a hull metal ridge just in time to see into the distant valley mouth where a pirate rearguard soldier got run over by a speeding civilian car. That cheap-looking vehicle was barely defined by more than six walls and four wheels, but it still managed to reach seventy miles per hour and that was enough to carry it through two pirates. As it spun in the dirt one of the doors ripped off and exposed an empty cabin from which loud music suddenly leapt into the distant air, quickly drowned by the noise of thirty more similar vehicles barreling headlong out of the colony city through the understaffed lines. For guards expecting to defend against metroids and a bounty hunter, an inexplicable automotive stampede produced decided confusion. The colony had joined the fight.
Then a rising whine joined the rumbling thunder as a swarm of tiny flying delivery robots swooped out from behind a building side in the same direction. Pirate blaster fire raced up among them, but the tiny things moved erratically and if one fell down in smoke and sparks there were ten swirling behind it. They buzzed over the panicked Pirates, spreading confusion as half a dozen new defense plans fought across the Pirate com systems. Only a few of them noticed that none of these new actors possessed even the most rudimentary weapon systems, and compared to a real military force were about as dangerous as confetti. If the Pirate forces had been thinking clearly, the whole display would barely have been a distraction.
But it was a distraction.
Samus felt the music of the battle shift and now instead of forcing it to follow her she let herself be swept along. Her burning white beam flashed out and missiles rained down on the pirate army, There was no need to trust her tired will. There was no need to fight the future. The last combatant had made themselves known, and so now all the interlocking gears were so brilliantly clear to her. Humanity, Pirates, Chozo, metroids, and in the middle of it all Samus herself. With a grateful breath she subsumed herself. The Path guided her and she followed in its wake in a graceful dance. And at its guidance she let loose the blinding fire that sliced through metal and flesh.
The Pirate army screamed as it burned. Then, in the midst of the storm of light and explosions, some of them looked up to see a new star appear in the daylight sky. It grew swiftly, becoming red, an ill omened comet shining down on them all. Then the pirate forces received a new update from their coms, a single unanimous conclusion that broke through all the battlefield confusion and panicked disorder. This alarm was very clear.
The battleship Diomedes was dropping through the atmosphere at full engine burn. The Galactic Federation had finally decided to join the war as on the ground the dragons roared.
…
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
So much purple prose.
...
Ah hell with it, its just too damn awesome to complain about.
...
Ah hell with it, its just too damn awesome to complain about.
Ha! You've stuck with me this far, I feel confident you'll let me indulge myself.
The Walls of Troy
Chapter 23
The Walls of Troy
...
The Walls of Troy
...
The battleship Diomedes cut a burning path across the sky and left a wake of fire ten miles long. For the thousand Pirate soldiers on the ground below, unavoidable instincts screamed that this plummeting monolith was going to smash into them, the meteoric herald of their personal extinction. Squadron formations collapsed as members ran for cover, scrambling over each other in a blind panic.
Ridley snarled his bloodstained teeth up at the evening sky. The pitiful fools he commanded were worse than grubs, running around in fear; they were slime without any rational thought. Their panic was deserving of execution. The Federation battleship could not fire on them through the Chozo energy absorption field, and the humans deciding to fly a few thousand miles closer did nothing to change that calculation. These pitiful spawn he ruled had forgotten the orders and brilliant strategy they had been given. However, nothing so piddling would thwart Ridley's inevitable victory. When the battle was won he would rip them all apart himself and feast on their flesh until he could not move from the gluttony.
Then Ridley shifted across the rocky ground on which he lay sprawled and left streaks of blood from the stumps that had once been his legs and one arm. With a grunt of inconsequential pain he leveraged himself up with his tail and remaining arm, then opened his mouth to let loose a roiling gout of flame. The pyroclastic blast buffeted his cracked jawbone, but the fire still arced out to splash against the ground and form a burning wall in front of him. Ridley's one remaining eye narrowed in a smirk. Behind the screen of chemical fire, it would be a trivial thing to scuttle to a new location and hide until he regathered his army to take down Samus Aran. One arm, a wing, and his tail were more than enough with which to triumph. Even injured he was stronger than any pitiful product of idiotic evolution. He was the triumph of science itself!
Then the wall of fire and smoke flexed as it curled around a small bipedal figure that walked through its heart, armor shining in red and gold, glittering against the firelight.
Ridley felt the bloodlust fill his veins until every thought of pain vanished. His prey was in his grasp. From Samus Aran's current viewpoint, his tail was hidden from view by one of the many scattered boulders, so Ridley flexed it to coat the visible base in his own blood. He then leveraged his torso up with his arm and wing to imply he had lost the hidden tail in their last clash, all the while he actually prepared to strike with it. Aran would think him weak, but once she stepped in to gloat, the nano-edged blade on the tip of his tail would bite through her heart before she could gasp. One strike, and Ridley did not miss.
All that was left was to trick the fool into stepping into a trap once more. An easy task for him, he simply had to press the buttons of morality and heroism in her feeble mind. Ridley curled his lips into a predatory smile.
"Samus Aran, by-"
The blinding light destroyed his brainstem before he had the chance to notice her weapon rise.
...
Samus looked down at the smoking carcass beneath her. And Ridley was dead once again. She had learned over the decades that his last words were never worth listening to. Each iteration thought itself so unique, but when pushed into a corner they all tended to come up with the same boring speech, the same tired threats. Samus did not allow herself to feel her hate. She drifted free on the Path, an instrument of judgement born by the future.
Then a transmission cracked to life in her helmet, scrolling text that somehow managed to convey the impression of fangs. "Samus Aran, by my intellect I left some human shelters alive, so that the planet might be harvested again. Your resistance shifts that calculation. Stand down now or I will kill this entire world and all its inhabitants in fire and pain."
Ah, there the speech was. Samus slowly inclined her head up to see where the mechanical Ridley incarnation perched on the peak of the Capital Ship's highest blade-like wing. Samus had to give it to Ridley, it took bravery to assume such an exposed position.
Twenty thousand feet above him, the massive battleship Diomedes shed its velocity in shockwave bursts, until the entire massive structure hung nose first in the air, exposed barrel of the primary cannon pointed straight down. That was Nakamura's show of strength, the power to resist planetary gravity without using main engines. That battleship twisted the eye, something so large floating so still. There was a mental pressure under its shadow as if gravity itself was gathering forces to reassert its will.
But the mecha-Ridley was confidant in the Chozo cease-fire field. Though the Diomedes slowly crept lower it was still well within the Energy Absorption Spire's line of sight, and so the old rules still held. In fact, instead of seeming nervous, this Ridley seemed to radiate confidence and cheer from its horrible metallic visage. With the death of his original body, his command was once again consolidated.
Samus turned her back on him to pick through the bloody remnants of the organic Ridley.
The crawling text pounced back into her visor, a new crackling transmission. "You think you can stall. No. My soldiers, advance! You will scatter towards the human colonists, through the city and through the temple! Samus Aran cannot defeat genius if I decline to engage in battle. The only option then for Samus Aran is submission. To do otherwise is to bathe this world in human blood."
Ah, there it was. Samus straightened up from the dragon carcass and now she held a detonator in her hand.
"There is no-"
The voice cut off the instant she pressed the button, followed a half of a second later by the distant thud of the explosion. And Ridley was dead once again. As Samus watched the white smoke clear she felt a small breath let go within her chest. One tiny sliver of justice had crept back into the world. On the scale of justice weighed down by the heart of a human child named Roger and hundreds more, a single grain of retribution clicked against the other side.
The remaining Pirates, that remnant majority of the fleet's once fierce army ran, scattering like ants. They would reform ranks soon enough and return to being a deadly threat but for now shock shook their cohesion. A few of the remaining remotely controlled colony vehicles and drones still blindly bumbled around the battlefield, but their distraction had already served its purpose. The human colonists had made a difference in this fight for their home. But Samus did not have time to thank them now.
Instead she tilted her head up to watch the towering Diomedes slowly descend through the air. Samus' eyes narrowed behind the green slit-like visor. She was carried by the vengeance of the Chozo and the next verdict had arrived before her.
"Nakamura. You decided not to run."
The battleship hung just above the valley like a floating mountain, an obelisk of metal plates and spars. Across its angular skin, point-defense cannons the size of houses all swiveled to face towards the planet. The panicked Pirate soldiers ran faster, a flooding exodus up the slot canyon into the temple gate and down towards the colony city as behind them the battleship's growing shadow slid across the ground.
The reply came, but it did not address Samus. In fact, it seemed to be an internal shipboard communication routed into the broadcast channels. Nakamura's voice was steady, a grim resolve almost completely masking the tired grief beneath. The grief of a man steeped enough in evil acts to plunge forth once more.
Nakamura said, "Attention Federation soldiers: enemy forces are salting the earth, scattering and preparing for guerrilla entrenchment on the planet. Aurora Unit analysis confirms this, and supplies additional evidence that a hostile force has control of a wide-dispersal bioweapon. Territorial protection of colony J4-M is no longer possible. We have failed in our defense mission of this planet and for that I apologize. Our only remaining priority is to eliminate all enemies of the Federation. We will deny the enemy their victory. We will deny them this planet. Main cannon, fire for effect."
Then the nose of the battleship crested the invisible sightline that shielded this valley from the energy absorption spire on the plateau. Particles of light gathered in the barrel of the main cannon, directly above the center of the Pirate landing yard where Samus had been standing.
She was no longer there. Samus was running the instant she heard Nakamura's first word, racing back towards the temple and the contingency plan she knew she would not have time to reach. Speed-inducing energy built around her body in a shimmering sheath, accelerating her forward faster than limbs or armor jets could take her. Then the cannon fired and that meant it hurt just a little less when the explosion hit her.
Everything turned into blinding white. The planet screamed as the beam impacted against the stone that flexed like water, a ripple in the terrestrial pond. Capital ship primary beam weapons were not designed to be fired at full power in atmosphere. Even Ridley had only fired his at sixty percent when he first targeted the energy spire, and the Last had modified that weapon with wave beam technology for added precision. Without such precautions, that magnitude of energy could cause nitrogen and oxygen to split like uranium.
Air itself exploded. Steel-blackening radiation scorched Samus' back as she raced at top speed for the nearest shelter. Her footsteps tore up the ground beneath her, right ahead of a rolling cloud of nuclear destruction.
Then the solar hellfire burst around her, funneled and accelerated by the walls of the slot canyon. Samus heartbeat vanished into the roar as she ran through the pummeling avalanche, blinded but for the holographic map now overlaid in her eyes. The battered chozo suit begged to eat this energy, it even tried, but it was like trying to drink a tsunami through a straw. Dots signaling life energy blinked out of existence all around her, fleeing Pirates who burnt to ash in mid-step.
The readouts in her visor screamed, shields plummeting, warnings propagating. Samus could feel the burning heat of overloaded Varia components searing her skin and muscles. Then she was through the gateway of the temple and threw herself sideways into a pocket of swirling air protected by some accident of design from this horizontal fountain of fire.
Even the superheated tornado swirling in this corner was a relief, and Samus could feel the suit begin to recover. After all, there was a feast of death in that canyon for the reaper system to harvest. The normally ephemeral feather-like lights across her shoulders now burnt halos into the rock as they flared, venting heat and radiation behind her as best they could. Then the world of fire expired and left only a thundering hot wind thick with black ash.
The firestorm had been shaped and mostly contained by the roof of the energy absorption field and the walls of the canyon system. That field was what allowed Diomedes to fire so carelessly, since most of the ship was protected from the blowback. However, that energy absorption ceiling still meant a superheated pyroclastic cloud erupted out from the former site of the Pirate splinter fleet. At least a quarter of the colony city was destroyed, everything within a mile, along with almost any building that had taken damage in the initial invasion. The nearest colony shelter was the one Ridley had already slaughtered, so at least the surviving colonists were unlikely to have been caught it the direct blast. Of the Pirates themselves, those who had tried to run into the city were surely dead, but a significant fraction of those who headed into the temple likely found enough shelter in its tunnels to survive that initial eruption. That meant Nakamura was not done.
Samus stepped back out into scorched mouth of the fallen temple gate under a sky turned from blue to black flaring with remaining flashes of fire and volcanic lightning. The air around her gusted between two hundred and six hundred degrees. This entire frigid continent was about to experience a considerable heat wave.
Ahead the black clouds shifted and the sharp metal shape of Diomedes appeared in the sky, a skyscraper sized spear aimed at the planet's heart, trailing a film of smoke that curled around its shields.
Samus focused her eyes on that ship. Then she spoke, as if the entire attack was just a tantrum. "The last trial I attended named the destruction of a scientific outpost to contain a threat as 'destruction of property'. Sentence: fifteen years imprisonment, commuted through service and subject to parole."
Nakamura returned to her ears, on a more private channel this time. "I'm afraid the Federation does not recognize your claim to T'sthioni Ikoine, Aran. Believe me or not, I actually brought you up in a meeting years ago. But no, unfortunately standard procedure for Space Pirate insurgency must take precedent. They must be exterminated from this world, and to my regret your presence is not sufficient to tip those scales."
In the distance, the Diomedes slowly tilted in the air. Its building sized profile reduced as it began to point directly at Samus in the temple doorway. The slot canyon had been torn apart enough that the firing line was now perfectly clear.
Samus breathed in and Nakamura's thoughts were clear to see. She knew why he was willing to do this. "You've convinced yourself that unlike with the Pirates, you will be able to negotiate the temple's secret out of the Chozo once she has it. Unlike the Pirates and unlike myself, she might give it to you."
There was no use in mentioning the surviving colonists who had assisted with the remote hijacked cars and drones. He had long since declared them lost. One more shot from that battleship cannon so soon after the first would sterilize the surrounding fifty miles. Nakamura would defeat the pirates, exterminate the metroids, defend Federation secrets, and tragically take one troublesome and explicitly hostile bounty hunter off the table. Victory at every cost. His own perfect certainty.
Nakamura had the nerve to sound weary and understanding. "Yes. Your system-wide speech indicated the Chozo is trying to run, and from what I have heard of their priorities I now think the Galactic Federation can tolerate that. You and the chozo clearly have a personal argument of cultural doctrine, evidenced by your sudden rush to claim heritage rights, but they have no such quarrel with me. No, Aran, right now I find you far more dangerous than a fleeing scientist rushing to grab their notes. And unfortunately you are currently standing in the exact spot required to eradicate the remaining Space Pirate forces."
"Unfortunate."
"Yes, so step aside and let me save what little that can be saved. Public warning to all friendlies: evacuate now. Primary beam: fire in ten seconds."
A meaningless courtesy, one to be written down in the reports. Ten seconds were not enough to get away and after that first blast, and Samus did not have enough shield power left to survive even a fringe pyroclastic flow. But those were enough seconds to step back inside the temple and grab one thing. She just hoped those pirate goons she had shanghaied had actually finished threading that giant cable down from the higher temple levels.
...
Ten minutes earlier, Officer Yin heard the armored footsteps before the soldiers arrived outside her room, clanging softly over the faint tremors that signaled the Diomedes' rapid drop from orbit. Dropping towards the planet called Ember of Light, though there was no word of what they would do once they neared the surface. The soldiers' route to her cabin door carried them past the bulkhead, and that meant Yin had a few precious warning seconds before they arrived. She spent those seconds trying not to throw up from fear. The sirens of the battle stations alert thumped in time to the nauseous pounding of her heart.
The AI Adam's voice murmured in her earpiece, connected to the room's small computer station. "You heard Aran's message. Your plan is sound. You know what to do and you have the strength to do it. Few can say the same."
Yin swallowed with a dry mouth and sore throat as she kept her eyes focused on the far wall. Then the door opened. The gleaming white armor of a Federation marine stepped into the room and his opaque blue visor aimed Yin's way.
"Officer Yin, please come with-"
Yin took a deep breath. "It's about time you got here! Right, with me. I am not about to risk the lives of everyone on this ship because you are slow at following orders. Move it soldier!"
She carefully ignored the death-wielding suits as she strode over to the door with confidence she very much did not feel. She tapped the lead most marine on the armored chest as she pushed past into the hallway that flashed with the warning lights of the combat stations alert.
The marines were off balanced by this performance. Opaque helmets quickly turned towards each other and back. "We are here to take you into custody and-"
Yin snapped at the man with a firmness definitely tinged with authenticating fear. "Yes, finally! The commander knows I need protection for this operation but he certainly took his time sending you. Well, come on, your custody charge is on her way to save this damn ship!"
There was a single crack of hesitation. "Commander Nakamura-"
"Commander Nakamura tells people what they need to know. Look at your information feeds. Do they say I am charged with anything? Do they even say I was under watch? Or do they say that I am the ship's current expert on the bounty hunter whose information warfare broadcast just seized control of the entire ship's communication system. Now think for a single actual second and remember if the Commander told you to do anything restricting my movement or actions or even moving me anywhere, or did he just say to 'take me into custody.' If the latter, get moving soldier, because otherwise your custody is leaving without you."
Yin clamped her mouth shut in what she hoped looked like serious conviction. Inside, she felt ready to faint. However, the computer program Adam had coached her well. The armored marines hesitated behind their featureless helmets. They turned slightly towards each other and Yin knew this insane plan was actually working.
Everyone knew Nakamura had a love of secrets and a reputation as a plotter. This entire mission out at the edge of space, months searching for Samus Aran without being told why, and then the surprise attack and the devastating loss to the Pirates that followed had shaken any benefit of the doubt the Commander might have started with. And behind all that was the quietly simmering suspicion planted by Samus Aran's message, pushed into all their displays by Yin and Adam's communications hack.
Those words clearly still echoed in their minds. "Commanders Ridley and Nakamura, by the doctrine of home-worlds I have right to judge you, and by your crimes I find you both guilty of mass murder."
The deck beneath Yin's feet vibrated slightly, a reminder that they were still plummeting towards the planet nose-first even if these corridors could choose to ignore that direction of gravity. Plummeting towards the Ember of Light and everyone who still lived on its surface.
Adam whispered in Yin's, his signal strength already weak as she had walked away from the terminal he was downloaded into, "You have them. Now, go."
Yin knew the plan, she had come up with most of it. Still, if it were not for those whispers she in her ear would likely have stood petrified in that hallway forever, or at least for the few minutes before Commander Nakamura could spare a glance to check on her imprisonment.
But instead of waiting for that, Yin started quickly walking ahead of the off-balance armored marines, propelled by the gentle taps of a whisper in her ear. Her stated destination was the main computer core to fix Aran's communications hack. Of course her preposterous bluster would never actually get her in there, but luckily she did not actually care about the computer core. Her escorts were trying to get clarification of their orders but the battle-stations alarm drowned out their priority.
With the two marines following at her shoulder, half ready to shoot, her half ready to obey, the door to the main muster hall opened readily. Yin's silent quarantine from the rest of the crew was officially broken.
This huge chamber in the heart of the ship served many purposes. It was an auditorium, a relaxation space for a population stuck onboard a cramped ship for months, and in this current situation it was the battle station for all non-combat shipboard personnel. It was also still an auditorium, which was good because Yin was about to make a speech.
She stopped walking and breathed in to speak. She would only have a few moments here, since the second she began to talk her cover story would fall to shreds. But she froze. Her mouth was dry. She was here, having already committed career and perhaps literal suicide, but she could not bare to take that last step.
Then the rumbling in the deck-plates changed its pitch. The main engines were no longer burning. All around the muster hall, people were turning to stare at Yin, this interloper in their already tense setting. The armed escort that accompanied her must have gotten through to the bridge because they were now swiftly making the transition to from escort to hostile, but that made the bystanders very curious. Yin had to speak now. This was her only chance. But she was frozen.
Then, a whisper in her earpiece. "You know your duty, Officer Hong Yin, and you will fulfill it admirably."
Yin actually blinked in confusion and surprise. How was Adam speaking to her? She blurted, "You're out of range of the computer and there's no way you fit on my earpiece."
"This is a prerecorded message."
"But then how did you know I would..."
"I have a lot of experience with soldiers. Now, go save the day. Save them all. Do you understand, lady?"
Yin took a breath.
Her one-sided conversation had bought her a few more seconds of confusion from the marines escorting her, especially since their visors would tell them she was not actually on the line with anyone. But being crazy only worked for a moment. She just had to hope this was the right moment.
Yin shouted, "Citizens of the Galactic Federation! In the past two days hundreds of colonists were murdered by metroid bioweapons at the order of Commander Nakamura. He is now selling this planet's secrets to a hostile alien force. Samus Aran was telling the truth, and I have the call transcripts to prove it all!"
A marine's armored gauntlet slammed down on her shoulder and Yin gasped as the pain shot through her bones from its grip. A few of the crew spectators leapt to their feet, fighting free of their restraint seats either to defend her or to tackle her too. Another gauntlet clamped around her mouth, but in that same moment a new voice rang out through the muster hall, this time through the ship's speaker system.
It was Nakamura, "Primary beam: fire in ten seconds."
One hundred and fifty non-combatant eyes all turned, wide and white in shock as the ship hummed with a new vibration. They knew they were in atmosphere they knew they were near the colony site. They knew what that meant. And with Officer Yin's words ringing in the air they turned those eyes on the armored marines who by their suddenly uncertain stance knew too. The moment stretched with the tense uncertainty.
Then another man stood up from his seat, turning to face Yin and the marines. And then another stood beside him. And another stood too.
...
Samus faced the Diomedes as it hung in the ash choked air before her. The mouth of the slot canyon had been torn open by the force of that blast and in the sky a mile away, the long battleship emerged from a roiling haze of dark clouds, scorch-blackened nose just tipping beneath the plateau level of the valley walls barely more than a thousand feet above Samus' head. The ship was huge. Each of the sixteen point defense cannons was wider than her torso, and in the barrel of the primary cannon she could have stretched her arms without touching an edge. The Diomedes was a city forged together, it was the physical might of a federation of five thousand systems.
The blackened rock beneath Samus feet on was glassy and cracked, melted and shattered by the wave of fire that stole the blue sky and now replaced it with buffeting winds of black ash. Tiny stone particles still rained down in a constant patter, tapping against the metallic skin of her suit. Lighting flashed above, formed from the friction and heat of those clouds, the vaporized remnants of the Pirate Fleet and most of the valley they had lain in. A circle of hell had come to this planet and Samus stood at the edge of its heart.
That was just the effect of the first shot. If Nakamura wanted to be sure of wiping out the pirate forces and the wild metroids, it would not be the last. Now the very stone of the landscape was charcoal, the air itself now kindling waiting to burn. A second blast, so soon after the first, would sterilize most of this hemisphere. It would set the atmosphere on fire.
Samus could have run, but she didn't.
The battleship was her opponent, and the fight was one on one.
A single point of light glimmered from the front of the battleship like a star. The primary cannon, aimed at her heart, preparing a beam twice the size of her body.
Samus met that burning eye and planted her feet. "Try it."
She stood in the temple doorway with her left gauntlet reaching behind her back, affixing the last joint of a new jury-rigged interface into her armor. From the back of her suit a thick bundle of purloined cables now jutted out before trailing against the ground deep into the temple halls. Those thick lengths of crystalline fiber and advanced metal had been stripped from their original homes and patched together, through the halls by force and persistence and a bit of press-ganged Space Pirate labor. It was her plan, all that work just to crudely link her suit to one specific room of the temple. To think, the Federation had once actually mistaken the Energy Absorption Spire for a communications device.
This time there was no prelude. Samus could see in her mind's eye Nakamura's lips moving, on that dark red-lit bridge. He would actually feel sad as he gave the order. He hated destroying something he did not understand.
Then the Diomedes fired into the slot canyon and at that blinding terminus the massive beam was swallowed whole by Samus' gun barrel, grasped and dragged down by a shining energy-absorption web that bloomed in a fraction of a second, blinking out to cover half the sky in its aurora.
The instant Samus' sight returned she felt a shudder pass over her. She had not actually been sure that plan would work. And judging by her white hot gun barrel and the sparking, melting segments of cable that stretching off into the temple, it would only work once. Then somewhere in those distant temple shadows, following that line of melting sparking cable, something changed in the silent harmonies of the temple. Like an ancient giant took a single breath towards waking. All that energy had needed to go somewhere and deep in those darkened halls something had welcomed it. What welcome, Samus did not know.
But that moment dwelled in the future. Here, in front of Samus, the floating mass of the Diomedes was silent again in the sky, staring down the slot canyon from the massive hollow chamber the beam had pushed into the black clouds. The ship's power systems did not take kindly to two full force in atmosphere main cannon blasts in such a short time. It would take a moment for the Diomedes to recover, and Samus would use that moment.
The half-melted cable end was suddenly hung alone in the air, as her suit detached. Heat-shattered rock exploded as the toe of her boot dug in, and then she was running. At these speeds air was a solid wall and she pushed through it like rice paper. Behind her, dust erupted and canyon walls shuddered. The sheath of opalescent energy surrounded her, and space contracted with each step.
Then Samus was at the broken mouth of the slot canyon and in the midst of her sprint she knelt. With jarring finality she was instantly motionless, and the streak of energy that had trailed behind her collided and bunched around her body. The shafts of white light that spilled from her shoulders flared out, spreading like wings, and then the stillness was gone. Samus Aran exploded upwards in a direct line towards the black-scorched prow of Diomedes.
"Remember," she murmured, not even bothering to transmit this time. "I gave you your chance."
Battleship hull metal was sturdy stuff; it barely dented under Samus' ringing impact. Her speed was halved by punching through its shields but the entire ship still listed in the air from the sudden force. Samus rose up on the vertical hull. She breathed out and a smile formed on her lips, even as exhaustion tugged again at her limbs. This was a new kind of fight. Not another duel with Ridley, practiced to the point of a waltz. This was a new opponent, a new scenario. In the rhythm of battle this was jazz and it was time for her solo. She visualized victory and let herself feel hunger for it.
Across the quarter-mile long hull, point defense cannons began to swivel towards her but they moved so glacially she had all of two seconds to await them. With a slow exhalation Samus' awareness flowed out, calculating the path before her. The future crystalized, streams of other Samuses advancing across the battle by different routes. Then the crystal streams winked out one by one as their futures met their shattering, until there was only one remaining. Only one future. It was the path and it was inevitable, even if she could only see a tiny length of it.
Samus surrendered herself to that path and she began to move.
No, she raced. A figure in ruby and gold darted along the ship, the suit gripping as easily as if a planet lay beneath her feet. A point defense barrel the size of her body met her line but Samus' gleaming silver weapon snapped up and from its flowing crown a white beam stabbed forth. The point defense cannon exploded and Samus raced on across the surface of the battleship.
Then the metal beneath her feet began to crackle with tiny sparks a signal of the ship's shields contracting above her, drawing close to this specific large patch of the hull. A feeble, useless effort, Samus' wave beam sliced through shields. Then she noticed those small sparks become flashing arcs and a long forgotten lecture returned to explain what happened when starship-grade shields pulled in that close to their projectors. Ah, not so useless. She jumped straight up a moment before a twenty yard circle across the Diomedes became a maw of dancing lightning.
Clever. And two of the point defense cannons were already pointed straight across her escape path. Sometimes she almost liked Nakamura, beneath her quiet anger. Samus' gleaming armor reflected the ephemeral wings as they flared in time with the jets, whipping her back towards the Diomedes, away from the cannon intersection. She chose her punishment, meeting one cannon blast to avoid being hit by both. It hurt, but a quarter second later she landed against the hull and continued her race along the ship as low shield alarms blaring in her head.
Nakamura's voice filled the communications spectrum. "Aran, no! You must let me complete the mission! That chozo has seized control of the metroids, commanding them and pulling them back as an army. With those creatures and then Pirates there is no solution that does not mean this colony is already dead! Please, you know I'm right!"
The sound of blood pounded in her ears. Flash and hit, dart and stab, an ant against Goliath but Goliath trembled. Grapple beam crackled out from her hand and swung her around, jets flaring to always carry her forward, up the hull towards engines and the heart of this ship. And within that ship something was changing. Beneath the thick armored skin, panicked and communications swirled in a chaotic dance, now arguing with each other instead of following the pattern a common purpose. But for now a distant whump whump whump reverberated through the air, signaling multiple fighter launches. More of Diomedes' claws were now unsheathed.
Nakamura said, "You can still get away! These attacks are suicide and you know it. Save them while you still can! Don't make me kill you! God damn it, Aran, your actions are siding with the Pirates! How can you bear that?"
Samus prepared to dodge incoming fighter blasts, but as her eye flicked to the sensor display the three energy signatures were not descending on her. Instead they seemed to be twirling in their own combative dance through the air, one seeming to chase the others. The Diomedes was a collective, and its crew could not match Samus in her resolve. Dissension, weakness, and it sapped Nakamura's power, trimming away at his choices and hampering his actions. The Federation was weak, and the Hunter advanced.
The path shone so bright in Samus' mind, triumph over the impossible. Her eyes flicked down to spot a glowing target deep inside the ship and her beam weapon stabbed out in the same instant, wave beam energy only phasing to full force at the exact point of the target. The Diomedes shivered with an explosion below its decks. Another pressure point destroyed and the giant wavered. The humans were weak, they could not protect their own.
Then Samus' shield energy display ticked up.
With it a note of discord briefly rang through the harmony of battle. Soldiers were dying in the bones of this ship. Samus' perfect certainty wavered. They had orders, but so did the Pirates. Her weapons killed them both the same.
No, the future recrystallized. No time, her race continued. The path to victory led on. One of the point defense cannons caught her in its sights, but this time it did not fire. The chatter under the ship's skin was scattered, no longer as complete as it once was. The Pirate forces had dissolved into panic too.
"Aran!"
Then the icon on Samus' map and the scene before her eyes became one and the same as Samus' final leap reached her destination. Her armored shin and gauntlet and rang like crystal as they slammed against the hull, locking her in place. Beneath her, through shields and metal that parted to her eyes like so much air, lay the ship's primary antimatter annihilation reactor. The heart of this massive ship, laid bare to Samus' suit, and with its failsafes destroyed during her violent advance. A fragile balloon of fire and the silver pin wrapped around Samus' right arm. Humanity had failed once again.
The reactor's energy output feathered as if the machine itself sensed her presence and knew to fear her. Samus aimed down in this eternal second, carrying on the same flowing motion that brought her through the battle.
This was her victory. This was the path. This was the kill. This was her intention, to do the impossible, to defeat the Diomedes and this was the path had brought her here, threading that single strand of possibility through the maelstrom of combat, through ten thousand other deaths and ten thousand other failures. One second into the future she was already pulling the trigger. She was chozo, the will of that civilization made manifest. She was their judgement and their vengeance.
No! For a single fraction, Samus resisted, freezing in place as she suddenly fought against her own body, her own mind, her self. She was the hunter, she was the warrior, she was the killer. She was M'troid. The final victory was always her goal; destruction, extermination, obliteration, and when she gave herself up to the path that was where it led her. This new armor just made it so easy. It held death in her hand and the suit was hungry for it. Samus was so hungry for it. In this suit she was vengeance. She was survival. She was who she had always been meant to be. She didn't have to be human.
But instead she hesitated, and all around her the metal plates began to crackle and pop with tiny sparks. Then the path to victory shattered as a storm of lighting erupted, drawn by the ship's contracting shield. Darting arcs of electricity slammed through Samus, skating across her armored skin with a hundred scribbles in fifty thousand degree ink. Suit shields screamed their warnings and despite spasming muscles she felt the moment her magnetic grip loosed from the ship-side. Suit power pulled back into her remaining shields and without that grip, gravity and down reasserted themselves.
Samus fell from the sky, plummeting from the Diomedes as she trailed lines of steaming vapor.
As she watched the ship drop away, awaiting the point defense cannons that would snipe her out of the air, Samus seemed to be falling through a dream. Her eyes objected to the ship's motion. The acceleration of gravity not quite right, it was inconsistent, slowing as she fell. Then she realized what was happening; the Diomedes was dropping too. A second later she slammed against the ground and was surprised enough that it knocked the breath out of her from only a two thousand foot fall. The ground was supposed to be further away than that; the Diomedes had been descending even before Samus fell.
The battleship was defeated, but not by her hand. Those power fluctuations in the ship's primary reactor, it was not any damage she had done. No, these scan signatures were like some engineer had just walked up and pushed the off button. Someone within the ship had shut it down. Someone had saved her. No someone had saved them from her. In that final hate-driven moment, Samus had finally turned away from violence and for once found welcome.
However, for the Diomedes loss of primary power just off a planet surface did not bode well for a ship that had been relying on a flashy display of gravetics to hover. The battleship fell slowly but inescapably. A crash thundered across the valley as the lip of the canyon exploded into stone and dust with the impact against the prow. The Diomedes' skin crumpled where it met the ground, thought the rest of the structure held firm. Even with the sudden loss of primary power the ship had managed to slow its drop and realign shields so the structure was nearly intact, even as it came to a thundering rest propped against the steep valley wall like a hunting rifle set beside the door. With its rear engines crushed by impact and their own weight, the ship was not going to fly again.
Samus lay against the cracked and broken ground, dust settling around her as the ringing impact still vibrated through her bones. She looked up at the sky, evening light hidden by roiling black clouds, and her memory flitted back to another sky. Another rocky ground when Samus lay in the cold and smoke and fought for breath. In the icy dust of her first world, humanity had not been able to protect her. Despite everything, all the decades since, the fight with the Diomedes proved some of that poisonous anger still remained. Samus had changed so much since then, but that girl drowning in pain and fear was still her. That moment remained.
Samus was tired, but she took a breath. Then she breathed again.
Into the wind-whipped silence the crippled Diomedes sent out a transmission, crackling and indistinct, thick with snow. Evidently many of those broken spars snapped from the hull had been communications. Underneath the static Nakamura was panting, shaken and battered but still determined below the burning fervor of his conviction.
"Aran, I was trying to do what you-"
Then Namamura's voice cut out, and was replaced with the cheap audio quality of an individual coms unit.
"Ms Aran, this is your arresting officer, Hong Yin of the Galactic Federation. Commander Nakamura has been relieved of duty pending investigation. As an additional note, the GF battleship Diomedes requests formal planetary landing clearance on Ember of Light. Note though that any further action against this ship or its crew will be a violation of the terms of your parole."
Samus slowly sat up from the rough ground of newly made volcanic glass. Dust and gravel slid off her golden skin, then even the last bit of dust fell loose as she shook with a single sharp laugh.
"Docking granted. Welcome home, Yin."
The glassy shattered valley still rang with the distant crashes of settling landslides and rockfalls. In the air above, the black storm of superheated air still roiled with the high cold winds. Then Yin's voice returned to the channel. She now sounded more personal, as if she was no longer standing in the middle of a crowd.
"I...I want to thank you, Ms Aran. To thank you for giving us the choice. Thank you for letting us see what lay before us, before it was too late. Thank you for giving us the choice."
Samus looked off at the smoking form of the Diomedes, lying crashed against the canyon wall as behind it the distant shape of the titanic Chozo statue rose from the side of the volcano. The eyes of the massive statue were now glowing yellow. Well, that told her where all that absorbed energy had gone. As to why, she would just have to go and find out, to see where the path had led her. There was no future but the one that had always been.
And yet Yin had thanked her. That insignificant moment hung in the twisting air that battled between currents of hot and cold, frost and fire. She thanked Samus for granting her a choice. Such a phrase was just an expression of a primitive culture. Chozo philosophy taught that all choice was an illusion, a manifestation of weakness and lack of understanding. To say you might make a choice other than the one you would make was tautological gibberish, and so Free Will was just another constellation of ancient times, imaginary lines traced in an infinite sky.
Yet that idea of choice had just brought down a battleship. It was the oxymoron of intelligence; intelligent creatures could realize that the universe was made up of deterministic clockwork, but in order to remain intelligent they must discard that knowledge and behave as if they forged the future in their hands. They must stare into the void and leap past the limit of their understanding.
The Last believed she deserved apotheosis. She believed it was inevitable, her unshakable destiny, and she clung to that believe like another mathematical law, like the Life Energy Equation she had derived so long ago. Energy is matter, matter is life, life is thought, and thought is energy. All divisions were an illusion, meshing perfectly into the clockwork universe, of perfect predictability of infinite cogs.
But what if in that clockwork universe, one cog resisted? Grey Voice's words whispered in her memory, no longer a programed specter in the suit but still just as present.
"To face a being of perfect certainty, of unbendable will, that is a terrifying thing."
Samus stood up.
Past and future are the same. All divisions are illusion. There was no need for her to bare the responsibility for the Chozo people. They were still here to bare their own, just stepped to the side in time, living in the past as Samus lived now. She was not their vengeance, she was not their justice. She was not their heir, and neither was the Last. She was only Samus Aran, and she had no responsibilities but her own.
Yin's transmission spoke in her ear, quietly, as if standing right at her shoulder. "So, what are you going to do now?"
Samus turned to face the distant statue seated on the flank of the massive volcano, glowing with yellow eyes. Samus' lips ticked up at the corner into a smile.
"Storm the gate of heaven."
...