When you’re going through hell, keep going.
Samus took a deep breath, running a hand through her hair, taking in all the freedom that she could. In the last three months she’d been tormented, raped, abused, experimented on… she’d been tortured, dealt with so much pain and agony and strife that it should have broken anyone. Samus, however, was a warrior. The pirates called her the Hunter… and she was strong. She winced as her mind raced through all the trials that she had been dealing with in recent times, the feeling of her bones snapping still fresh in her mind, even though the nanites had more than done their work bringing her back to full fighting power the phantom pain was constantly there, a reminder of how much harder she needed to fight to try to put things back to being right again.
But now she was in the eye of the storm.
She was furious at herself… furious that she had fallen into this trap, that she had left the pirates get to her, abuse her. The soreness in her body had mostly faded away, healed by the nanites. None of the injuries she had been dealt over the last months were permanent, but the wounds to her psyche were not nearly so easily cured… the memories of being powerless and weak, of being turned into a worthless, fuckable thing… those weren’t an enemy she could simply shoot. It wasn’t helping that she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She felt better off than she had in months now that Ridley was gone, but Samus still had the true architect of her suffering in front of her.
When you’re going through hell, keep going. She had… and now she was almost on the other side. She just had to make it.
The shuttle into Tourian wasn’t familiar to her; she had lost the comfort of what she knew a long time ago. Flying a pirate shuttle was far from the hardest thing that she’d ever done, even in recent history… it wasn’t anything too complex. The hum of the thrusters was ever present, and even if they weren’t what she was used to, there was something calming about them. It set her mind at ease that she’d put some distance between herself and the monster that had haunted her for so long.
Ridley had murdered her family, and now she was fairly certain that the Space Pirate general was dead… but she couldn’t be certain. Ridley always found a way to come find her again, no matter what, and even through her anger Samus couldn’t entirely shake a cold feeling that she would never truly be free of him. At least for now she’d bought herself some time.
Now all her focus was on what was ahead, and her heart started racing in anticipation. Tourian was starting to get closer, and after her ship had been scrapped for parts the ships here were the only way off this rock she had once called her now. She just had to get through Mother Brain to finish this. If she played her cards right, she would finally free the galaxy from the menace of that monster forever.
If only she knew how.
Samus was aware she was going to be at a large disadvantage here. Mother Brain had infested the whole planet… almost all life on this world was under her control. Samus wasn’t even sure the AI construct could be destroyed anymore… but since when had she gone into a situation knowing how she was going to handle it?
No, what she needed was to divert Mother Brain’s attention. She was present in basically every living thing on the planet, but Samus had already proven she couldn’t focus everywhere. If Samus could create distractions, she might be able to slip towards her more easily. She just wished she had a floorplan of the facility… the Pirates had changed this place so much since the last time she had been here, and passing through it in chains hadn’t given her much of an updated map. She couldn’t let that matter, however. This wasn’t going to be easy, and she didn’t have all the details, but she was good at thinking on her feet. Samus was nothing if not crafty. She had trusted herself, and that had gotten her out of captivity. It had gotten her this far.
It just had to get her a little bit further.
The ship’s descent had begun, auto-pilot taking care of most of the work for her. She was arriving now… and that meant it was time for her to get ready for war.
She gathered her suit together, putting it on piece-by-piece. The crystal flash had rebuilt her power armor from the instructions that the Chozo had built into her DNA, restoring her… even long gone, her adoptive parents were still protecting her, still ensuring their child would never be defenseless. The familiar sensation as pieces of armor clicked into place filled Samus with a comforting sense of power. She had been through so much, but armed like this she felt like she could take on the galaxy.
Once the helmet clicked into place the pressure sealed it around her body… her armor hugging her body so close that it almost felt like a second suit of skin. The armor’s bulk wasn’t even noticeable… the power assist in every movement and how perfectly it was shaped to her let the armor amplify her every move rather than restrain her. She was ready.
All System Optimal. Gravity Suit Online.
The hiss of her ship’s door opening matched with the sound of the blonde hunter letting out a final breath to calm her nerves. She ran a hand over her cannon gently. “One more target,” she whispered to herself with a nod. “Simple.” Samus had no illusions this would be so easy, but despite that the simplicity of her task put her at ease a little… pushed down the fear that had lurked far down every time she thought of what had happened to her when she had been defeated. Her brow furrowed and her face, filtered by the golden light of the helmet, gave off a determined expression. She wasn’t going to think about that… Samus was here to raise hell, and woe to anything that got in her way.
She checked her front window of the ship, seeing landfall in front of her. The massive facility lay right before her eyes, the gigantic metallic facility built into the caverns beneath Zebes. It was going to be a damned maze in there… who knew how long it would take for her to descend through that down to Mother Brain? Thankfully, it didn’t look like landing had raised too much suspicion. it seemed like the facility was mostly empty… which meant that her gambit had worked. Most of the pirates had been searching for her across the planet, radiating outward from the destruction of their Meridia facility. Of course, the Space Pirates weren’t stupid enough to leave the building totally unguarded… but if it had been defended as thoroughly as it could have been then there would be no chance of her blasting her way through.
Mother Brain had doubtless sent a recall command to all of them after she killed Ridley, but by coming here directly she had beaten them all back. If she did this right, by the time pirates arrived back at Tourian in force it would be too late.
She built her resolve up one final time. Then Samus stepped out onto the boarding ramp, her cannon raised in front of her to take care of any enemies that were ready to meet her. Her caution was well rewarded - she could see the dark-armored forms of Space Pirates already approaching, leaving the facility to check in to see who exactly was landing outside of their base. Her stealth wouldn’t last as long as she hoped… but at this point, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t let herself care if the whole base was on high alert. Her way off Zebes was on the other side of the Pirates here… and she had to reach it.
When you’re going through hell, keep going…
Samus didn’t hesitate. The moment the first of the armored forms came around the crates and spotted her there was a brief moment where the alien froze, staring at her in shock and terror. That lasted for a half a second before Samus put a charged Ice Beam through his skull. She didn’t even hear the alarms as they started to go off… she had other concerns. The other approaching pirates were swarming in seconds, sending lances of plasma racing for her… each of them aiming for Samus with intent to bring Mother Brain the greatest prize. Every single one of them knew what kind of reward… and fun… they could expect if they brought the Hunter down. Samus could practically sense their disgusting thoughts in every twitch of their armored forms, and she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of having even a second to enjoy the sick fantasies playing out in their heads.
The pirate furthest to the back fired in her direction, and the closer ones charged towards the ship. Samus moved, her armor making the slip to the side far faster than it would have been as she ducked behind the nearest of the ship’s landing gear, dodging the shot. The blonde raised her canon and returned fire, answering their blasts with a precise blast of ice towards those in the back. One of them screeched to a half, the joints in his armor caked with ice… Samus took advantage by sending a missile screaming towards the immobile pirate.
She didn’t have time to watch and see what happened, however… the runners were getting close. The claw-like pincers of their armor were extended and snapping, their long legs hurling them forward with each step. “Up close and personal is perfectly fine with me,” Samus growled to herself as she ran forward to meet them head on. “I’ll look every single one of you in the eyes.”
As the closest pirate reached her Samus met their pincers head on, gripping the first one and holding them open with sheer force of her power armored muscles. She swept her leg low to knock him off balance, and while the first one was recovering she aimed a brutal strike right to the neck of the second, breaking through the hard shell of his armor and exoskeleton, causing him to double over in a sudden struggle for breath.
The final one was the most crafty. Having seen what she was able to do to his companions, he decided to take a more defensive approach. Instead of grabbing for her, he kept his pincers closed and swung his armored claw almost like a mace. Samus ducked the swing and counter attacked… baited into an attack. She struck back with a kick that would have ripped the helmet off of his insectile head if he wasn’t ready for it. The Space Pirate quickly stepped back, dodging, and lunged back towards her.
He seemed so confident that he had just managed to trip her up. It was almost a shame that he had completely underestimated what Samus was capable of in her armor. The spinning kick hadn’t even finished by the time Samus let the spin carry her into a second, lower kick aimed directly at the alien’s gut. The impact sent him flying back, and the bounty hunter was pretty sure she heard the crack of chitin beneath the dented armor. Then, as the alien that was on the floor from her sweep started to recover, she simply stomped down, hearing the sound of a vicious crack as she dealt with him without even a glance. While the final of the three was still reeling from the blow to his stomach, Samus wasted no time, pulling her blaster out and following up her strike with a blast to the head that sent the alien’s cranium into a thousand pieces across the wall behind him.
And finally the sounds of the alien who was struggling to breath had finally come to a stop. A violent end for a group of violent pirates. Samus wasn’t going to lose a wink of sleep over what had happened to them… not after what she had been through, not after seeing what they were capable of.
The brief encounter had still given the bounty hunter the shakes. She could feel her fingers vibrating inside her gloves… a movement that thankfully the armor was intelligent enough not to replicate. This fight hadn’t even been a challenge for the well-equipped warrior, nothing but a warm up for what was to come… and even so it frayed at her nerves.
Utterly unfair.
She was armored, studier than ever. It was mostly just adrenaline rushing through her veins. Certainly, that was it. The conclusion of a hunt like this one always hit hard. The blonde submerged herself in routine… She checked the heat levels on her canon… the bright blue light from it showing its core was still cool. Samus leaned down and picked up an access card from one of the pirates she’d just killed. She took a deep breath and allowed herself the smallest of smiles. Then she braced the canon against her arm and slowly started to walk forward towards the entrance of the facility.
“Just stay out of my way, Mother…” She whispered to herself, stepping up the stairs one by one. The proximity reader beeped happily and opened the door in front of her without any fuss, reading the card she’d taken and granting her access to the facility.
Inside was exactly what she had expected. A horrifying array of endless metallic corridors that would eventually lead into the darkest depths of a cave system leading deep into the planet. She narrowed her eyes, scanning the room for any indication of life forms, but luckily enough for her, there didn’t seem to be any in this particular room. There was a table with three chairs pushed out hastily, which was likely the only pirates that were stationed here.
She detected two doorways on each side of her, electing to start on the left. She held her wrist up and activated her mapping protocol to start the process of keeping track of her steps, in case she needed to return anywhere. The room in front of her filled out in only a moment, and then into the door she went.
Immediately it seemed like the facility had gotten darker, the light sources strewn about the room far less prominent… likely due to the natural predator vision many of the aliens shared. She flicked on the nightvision on her visor so that she hopefully wouldn’t be caught off guard by anyone trying to use the shadows to their advantage.
Her footsteps were almost deafening in the empty corridor. She descended a ramp, taking her deeper into the facility, torn between competing desires for caution and haste. There was no chance of stealth… she could watch every security camera in his place swiveling to follow her. She was more worried about walking into a trap or an ambush if she hurried along. She was going to be meeting resistance any second now, she could just tell. She knew that Mother Brain was tuned into just about everything inside of here, which meant that she almost certainly knew that Samus had killed the sentries… that she was here.
Unfortunately, being careful was also being slow. Any other pirates in the facility would be coming to stop her, and that made every step she took important. There were almost certainly thousands of them behind her somewhere… closing back in on this facility, returning from their hunt. She couldn’t waste time; the advantage of striking the facility while it wasn’t full wasn’t going to stay in her favor for too long.
The sudden sounds of proximity alarms whirring shook Samus from her rigid stance. That was an approach alert… another pirate transport must have arrived. An army of her former captors would be dogging her steps before too much longer if she kept up this pace.
The armored blonde broke into a sprint, running down the halls… the need for haste winning over her caution. She allowed herself only an occasional glance over her shoulders, always expecting to catch the sound of footsteps behind her. Most of her time, however, was focused on desperately scanning for the ambush she felt sure would be coming.
Yet, it didn’t.
Samus was confused. She had gotten here quick and caught Mother Brain off guard, and she was moving through the facility fast… but she had a hard time imagining she had caught her that off guard, or that she was moving that fast. She’d expected other pirates would have made an appearance before no-
The door in front made a harsh hissing noise, opening as she approached it… too early. It was just a second too early, but the proximity scanners shouldn’t have reached her running form yet… that door had been opened manually.
Samus swiftly fell to her knees and down into a slide, falling forward underneath the swinging pipe that suddenly appeared in front of her. She cursed under her breath, regaining her footing as soon as she lost momentum from her slide, emerging into the middle of the ambush that had been set for her. The Space Pirates had been caught off guard and she came up next to one of the… two of them.
With a crack of her energy whip she immediately grabbed the pipe from the alien, throwing it to the floor beside him. The alien shrank back as her visor menacingly swiveled to him… They weren’t even wearing armor. They were maybe mechanics based on the tools adorning their bodies. She had no time to consider further as a few other aliens were getting ready to attack her… with the most primitive weapons that she’d seen in ages. Chains, pipes, and wrenches.
While she was distracted, the disarmed one quickly changed his tune, as he ran forward and tried to jump onto her back to throw her off balance, only to be met by her armored fist instead, his face caving slightly from the full force of his jump into the unmoving knuckle and within seconds he was back on the floor, drool mixing with the blood from his concussed head.
It only took a second or two. If Samus thought seeing how little effort it took her to dispatch one of the unarmored aliens would give them second thought, she was disappointed. If anything, seeing their comrade injured spurred them to action… the full force of the makeshift militia charging towards the huntress. With a swift step backwards, she heard the positive chime of her inner systems locking on to two of the aliens, and Samus let a missile fly, the whistle of the tiny torpedo rocketing through the air, just slow enough for the aliens to realize just how doomed they were when they noticed it.
With a roaring boom caused by the small explosive, she tapped on her systems to load the next rocket as she watched the giblets of the aliens in front of her scatter across the room. Now caked in the gore of their friends, the remaining pit crew looked at Samus with absolute terror in their eyes. Despite that fear, they continued attacking her… Samus fired and fired and fired again, shooting them one by one as they attempted to kill her in almost mindless rage despite the panic she could see in their gaze.
Then the one-woman army was alone with a pile of corpses.
Samus lowered her smoking canon, breathing hard… She had been attacked by unarmed and unarmored support staff? How could they have gone after her like this… did they not comprehend just how powerful she really was, or were they just too horny and angry to care? No doubt they were driven on by Mother Brain… unable to retreat, or to stop. And she had slaughtered all of them.
No warriors. Mother Brain was using non-combatants to stall her. Samus didn’t feel bad for their deaths… She was pretty sure she had been raped by every single pirate on this planet, and she was absolutely certain that no one had offered her even a whiff of mercy or comfort. Without a touch of sympathy, she looked at the corpses across the room, feeling a sense of catharsis… that she was capable, that she could defend herself.
Samus looked around the room that she was in. It was a massive workshop of some sort, all sorts of half functioning ships and tools strewn about the place. The only thing special about it through her eyes was the gunship. Walking up to the fairly small fighter ship, she appreciated its dark cobalt blue metal shell and the silver guns attached to either wing. It looked like there was actually a box of munitions beside it. Inside were a few explosives that were small enough to fit in her suit, about the same firepower as her rockets. She smiled at her luck, swiping the mini rockets and tucking them into her suit, a few extras to keep on hand in case anything were to come up. They weren’t the models she was used to, but they fit all the same regardless. Unfortunately, the ship was too disassembled to be usable for her escape.
The space pirates would be catching up. Even if she killed the ones chasing her down there were likely going to be others soon enough. One by one she looked through each of the doors leading out, eventually settling on the one that led to a ramp down into the lower levels. The further down she went, the closer she got to Mother Brain, and the sooner she would be done with this whole mess.
Eventually after descending for a few minutes down the long hallway, she finally reached the other end, the proximity scanner beeping once again as the door slid open in front of her. It was another workshop, though this one worked on smaller gear. Fixing up the alien’s weapons, armors, and even some of the appliances in the base, she could’ve sworn she even saw something akin to a food processor. After a brief scan of the room, checking for the heat signatures of any aliens that might have been hiding, she came up clean, not a single life form in sight.
Before she moved on, she noticed that there was a datapad lying on one of the tables. Her visor scanned through quickly, drawing on its messages… finding dozens of vulgar comments clearly directed towards her. Ones that detailed how they “couldn’t wait to put the Hunter bitch in her place” or have their turn “giving her a white shower.” Reading them made her tremble… and not entirely with rage. She couldn’t believe she had let herself fall prey to such monsters.
At the end, however, there was one interesting comment… a note about the hyper beam, and its installation. The beam had been moved out of the testing phase, she saw… and it had been taken down to Mother Brain’s chambers. It was live… and in use. She sighed, turning away from the data pad and dismissing the data. She had to keep moving… no need to risk a conflict if she could avoid it. She had to save as much power from the suit as she could for when she finally met with Mother Brain. The weapon was just one more thing in her way.
The next set of rooms that Samus traveled through had nothing of interest in them, either abandoned bedrooms, hallways, or break rooms that contained nothing important, or that would further her own strength. She made sure to mark off each of these rooms on her generated map, helping make sure that she wouldn’t be turned around by the absurd amount of rooms that filled Mother Brain’s warrens, unsure of how much further down she would have to go… it felt like she had been hopping from room to room for hours.
The monotonous design of the base was starting to drag her down; she’d hoped for some sort of change in scenery, but every room had the same designs she recalled from her youth only corrupted by the messy, sloppy science of the Space Pirates. Most had the same setup as each of the last, or some limited variation of it. It was always functional for a large group of people, but an absolute nightmare to navigate through.
Finally when she began to descend to the lower levels, a new problem arose as she made her ways through yet another hallway. The doors no longer accepted her stolen security clearance. Either the pirate wasn’t permitted to go here, or else Mother Brain had managed to determine which security code she was using and shut it off. She hadn’t come across another security card to replace it with, either. That sort of obstacle, however, was not going to be the type of thing to hold Samus back.
Not when she had a fully loaded rack of super missiles ready, that is.
She loaded a reinforced rocket into her canon and took several steps back to keep as far away from the explosion as possible. Samus heard the chirping of her weapon charge up as it got ready to let loose the artillery, and after a moment, the pushback of the heavy explosive firing sent her arm back a touch as she watched the weapon soar through the air and into the door. Not even the reinforced steel could hold up to that… it tore a ragged home right through it, just big enough for Samus to squeeze through.
The opening was just between what she would need her morph ball to get through and what she could just crouch through herself, and ultimately Samus elected to keep her weapons at the ready. She got stuck for just a second pushing her way through the strange, uneven shape of the blasted opening, but it didn’t take her long to pull her way through. It did, however, give her just enough time to get a good look at the room in front of her.
It wasn’t anything like what she expected. Behind the first reinforced door, she thought that she would see guards, or some kind of threat, but instead it was a pen filled with all sorts of alien animals. They looked mildly spooked, likely from the explosion and sudden intruder climbing through the door, but otherwise were wholly docile. It was strange to be sure. She wasn’t really used to Space Pirates keeping pets or even trained guard dogs really. None of them had red eyes… possibly this was wildlife being infected by Mother Brain’s molecular nanites to add them to her network, or being studied for their resistance to it.
She finally kicked herself free from the door, landing on her feet as she started to slowly move around. She was able to get a better look at each of them. Their sizes varied from as small as a rabbit to the size of a black bear, none of them being excessively large or feeling like they just didn’t fit in the room.
All of their eyes were locked on her as she fell into the room though. When she looked into the eyes of the animals she felt strange. Not only was their gaze solely fixed on her, which wasn’t too strange considering she just entered, but there was something that was off about them and the way they stared. It wasn’t with vicious intent, but with interest, and she couldn’t quite place why that was.
Her curiosity compelled her to get closer to them, her non-weaponized hand extending slowly towards one of the dog sized animals to see if it would react to her. It seemed totally still-faced, focusing on looking at Samus and seemingly ignoring the hand. Samus felt the pang of some kind of fear for the briefest moment. As she looked deeply into their eyes she put it together. This wasn’t the look of an animal. There wasn’t the same curiosity or innocence, they were too intelligent.
She knew exactly what was wrong, and just as she reeled her hand back, she could see all the animals almost emotionlessly swarm around her. The room was silent aside from the menacing sounds of countless feet marching towards her slowly, no growling, no roars, barks, or anything that would denote violence. That’s when it all flooded her mind. As one of the animals brushed against her, she could practically feel it inside of her skull. The sounds of laughs from what she could only assume was Mother Brain.
They were all infected.
She started to feel her breath quickening as she looked around. The animals were all around her, enclosing her. One of the larger ones reared up on its hind legs and slammed its body forwards, not caring about any of the other animals, just attempting to pin Samus down. All around her, the once docile herd was transforming into a swarm. Nanites emerged from some of their skin, or from their mouths or eyes… quickly forming robotic parts. These weren’t even animals anymore… they were totally consumed and added to Mother Brain’s neural network.
Samus reacted as quickly as she could. She was just barely able to push herself through some of the smaller creatures to clear enough space and dodge the large animal, but the impact made her shudder. In all truth these animals were no match for her, but there was some guilt running through her mind at killing them all. But the unfortunate truth started to settle into her mind. There wasn’t much that she could do at this point to save them. They were practically a hive mind. They hadn’t asked to be turned into this. What they would do to her if she didn’t kill them, however, left her with no doubt of the necessity of what she was doing.
Several of the animals started to try to grip onto her with their paws and talons, none being able to grip true on her armor. It didn’t even seem like they were trying to kill her, just hold her down.
She sighed as the scope of the problem really sank in. The whole world was like this. Even if she destroyed Mother Brain and got through to the escape ship it wouldn’t end anything… she would be back. For now, however, she couldn’t focus on that… these “animals” were another hurdle in her way, and while she didn’t want to do it they needed to go.
She pointed her hand cannon towards the ground beneath her feet, strengthening the shield systems at the bottom of her suit, and didn’t hesitate much longer as she leaped as far into the air as she could, firing an explosive rocket beneath her. The creatures didn’t even try to escape, didn’t move away, didn’t attempt to shield themselves or anything. Samus didn’t fight the shockwave and let it carry her away, slamming her against the wall with a thud that would have been heavy if she weren’t in such heavy armor… and the creatures that were there a few moments ago now simply weren’t.
They had no armor protecting them.
Samus let out a sigh. She didn’t have a choice. They had been infested with parts of Mother Brain… there was no question that if even a single cell of her being was left alive that the AI would continue to try to kill her. Today, tomorrow, next week… it would never be finished. Still, she couldn’t look back at the carnage she left behind as she strode through the door… it just fueled her need to destroy that evil monster.
Samus was making quick progress.
She was continuously surprised by how little resistance she met as she went further down. She ran into the occasional group of nearly unarmed and untrained Space Pirates, thrown in her way seemingly just to stall her for a few seconds before dying. Beyond that, however, as the doors started to get more difficult for her to blast her way through, the number of encounters diminished severely. The biggest thing that stood in her way were more rooms filled with infested animals… and now that she had shown she wouldn’t hesitate to respond when attacked, the rest had seemingly been given the order to swarm her immediately. It didn’t matter… even at their full strength, the animals couldn’t do anything to stop her, other than to buy time.
The Hunter left destruction behind her. Only one thing stood in her way as she charged down through the doors, deeper and deeper into the compound. She entered an observatory so that she could open the blast door leading to what she assumed was Mother Brain’s lair… but there was a side door as well. Samus hesitated. She was starting to run low on her explosives, so she needed to conserve what she had left… but she had to check it out. There was a glass viewing window over the control panel; she stepped forward, looking through the pane of glass. She had been dreading what she might find, an odd feeling of concern rising up.
It was worse than she had expected.
The room was covered with clones of her. Hundreds of them. Clones standing, kneeling, laying down on the floor… dirty, abused, and almost every single one of them had filled, pregnant bellies. Beyond that, they were absolutely filled to the brim… and fucked relentlessly, being used by breeding stock.
By Metroids. Hundreds and hundreds of metroids.
Samus stared in horror as the living bioweapons, the species considered so great of a risk to the galaxy that the Federation had asked her to try and wipe them out, used and abused copies of her. Seeing her body - bodies - being so thoroughly violated through a third person perspective was somehow even more disturbing to her than any of her memories of what she’d been through before. She could almost feel phantom sensation as she watched one of her bodies being used as a toy by a hulking Omega Metroid… like she was in there, completely at the mercy of the sexually aggressive aliens.
Mother Brain had told her about this, showed her some of it. That her clones were being used for her breeding program. Mother Brain told her that she had imprinted all of the damned things on Samus… between genetic alteration and behavioral training, the aliens wanted to breed Samus down to their cells. The psychotic AI no doubt considered it a suitable outlet for her psychotic hatred and obsession with Samus Aran.
Despite that, however, Mother Brain was not here. Samus scanned the room, searching for any exit… and found none. Thankfully, she wouldn’t have to enter that hellscape. Instead, she let the sight serve as a reminder of why she could not fail… why she had to succeed and close the books on this mission once and for all.
She turned back to the vault door - her mapping software told her this headed toward the center of the facility. She had been naked and barely conscious the last time she was here so she couldn’t be sure, but she felt certain that this was where Mother Brain waited. She didn’t know exactly how she would destroy the creature, but she knew that she would. It was her or that lunatic AI, and after everything she wasn’t going to let her win.
Just one more push and finally, she would be free of this place once and for all.
She left the room as the sounds of blasted machinery turned to silence behind her, replaced only with the heavy footfalls of her own steps back towards the blast door. She felt herself growing heavier, not from fear, but from anxiety at what was to come next. She winced as her brain jumped from memory to memory, reminding her exactly of everything she’d gone through from childhood to only her most recent days. Every day was just another challenge to overcome, another bounty to hunt… until that hadn’t been true. Until she had become the prey.
Now that was done. Samus wasn’t deterred by her defeats, she was strengthened by them. Every struggle she just got stronger, more durable, more resilient to the dangers of the galaxy. No matter what happened, she would never let them break her, she’d been through far too much to lose to some evil brain now. The anxiety began to be replaced with anger and rage, her thoughts racing. She had already begun the process of proving to everyone that she was the predator here… now it was time to erase any doubt.
She entered the hallways… It was time. The floor was covered in sand-like dust… she remembered this from the last time she had been carried through here. This was almost to Mother Brain. Her destiny was calling… shouting to her, really. Samus felt the goosebumps rising up on her skin.
The blonde took one final moment to check her weapons, making sure everything was locked and loaded. She was fighting at as close to full power as she could manage… and she was finally going to make that psychotic monster pay.
The sand crunched under her feet… no, not exactly sand. More like… ash. She kicked cautiously at the sand under her feet, making sure it wasn’t covering some kind of hidden trap as she soldiered forward. She had only taken three steps forward when a huge animal rose out of the sand… a Sidehopper. That normally wasn’t much of a threat… Samus had been forced to blast her way through a half dozen of the predators already. This one, however, was different. While most of them had patches of Mother Brain’s mechanical augmentations on their skin, this one was completely covered… wearing it like a thick suit of armor. The first three blasts of her ice beam simply deflected off the armored form.
Her fingers twitched, switching to her most powerful missiles, but didn’t let any go. This felt like a trap. Samus wasn’t sure how much security lay ahead, but this monster really wasn’t all that threatening… she had avoided them in the past, and she could avoid this one. Clearly they wanted her to waste her ammunition on decoy targets. She smirked, turned, and sprinted away, with the skipping creature right on her heels. She turned, looking over her shoulder and making sure that she was losing it… and when Samus looked back, she was staring into the open maw of a Torizo.
Samus raised her cannon and snapped off a shot on reflex… but she didn’t get what she expected. The frost beam blast ripped through the monster with no percussive impact, no strong spray of energy. Then, a second later, the creature collapsed into dust and ash, falling down to the floor with just a few frozen chunks where the Ice Beam had struck… the same sand-like ash that coated the floor.
Samus stared, confused… her cannon pointing at the dissolved creature, not certain what to expect. Part of her thought it was going to reform and come at her… but no, there was nothing. Motion at the top of her visor pulled her out of her reverie as the massive sidehopper lurched into view, still chasing her from behind. She had to keep going; she didn’t have time to figure out the mystery of the sand, she had to-
She heard the threat before she saw it, and she felt it even before that… a chill that drilled straight through her heart. From the ceiling a colossal shape descended… tearing through the air as it rapidly floated down. A metroid… a truly enormous one. It looked just like a normal infant metroid, but most of those were just a little larger than Samus’s head… this one was far, far larger. Samus was pretty sure she had fought Omega metroids smaller than the floating creature.
A greenish glow filled the room as it pulsed, its eager fangs twitching as it raced… not for her, but for the sidehopper. The armored creature barely had a moment to shriek before the metroid was on top of it, the terrifying predator muffling its desperate cries with sheer bulk. Half of the insect disappeared inside the mass immediately, and the rest shed great swathes of flesh and chitin as it tried to escape the newcomer’s iron grip. Tendrils of gel-like fluid pressed against it, forcing their way into any visible openings and cracking it apart from the inside. In a matter of seconds the sidehopper fell limp, a colorless husk robbed of life, and dissipated into the amalgam of sand.
Samus felt the sand shift beneath her feet, and felt sick to her stomach. That was what it was… the drained remnants of metroid victims. That sense of disgust, however, paled in comparison to her growing terror - she had walked into a trap, alright, but not the kind she had been expecting. This whole chamber was a metroid feeding area.
The creature had no eyes, but Samus could still feel it as the giant metroid turned towards her… she felt its attention as its sightless gaze fell on her armored form. Its fanged twitched, and it hissed out a high pitched scream… the precursor to an attack. Then it flung itself at her, a terrifyingly quick advance for a creature twice her size.
Samus backpedaled so fast she tripped on her own heel. The instant her body hit the ground she activated her morph ball and boosted, darting forward and under the swooping predator, avoiding it by the width of a finger as its gnashing fangs sailed overhead. She quickly unfolded herself, raising her cannon and tracking it as it took a few seconds to shed the charge’s momentum and turn towards her again. Samus took that time to use the strongest attack she could… charging up a devastating blast from her Ice Beam and unleashing it.
The thick, blue beam streaked through the air with a sound somewhere between a high bell and cracking ice, and it hit the Metroid dead-center. The creatures were weak against the cold, she knew… victims of their own frenzied metabolism. In a moment it would freeze solid, making it a perfect target for missiles, and then-
The Ice Beam did nothing.
One second, the frigid blast of energy was lancing directly towards the Metroid. The next second, it splashed off of an energy field just a few inches short, the energy dissipating into nothing. Samus stared in horror… that creature was shielded! The Metroid zoomed at her unabated, sliding along the ground to cut off her last means of escape. There wasn’t much time to think… Samus started charging another attack and jumped. Her armor replicated the movement, amplifying it, and she sailed over the creature… tucking herself into a rapid somersault as she went. The predator’s fangs missed latching onto her by less than a foot but its mass still clipped her legs, knocking her out of her even spin. She corrected in mid air, enough to land on her feet at least… but several of her energy cells shielding the suit were emptied by even that brief touch… the Metroid’s vampiric nature had sucked them dry in an instant.
It was clear to her that she wouldn’t be able to avoid the thing for long, and that her suit wouldn’t hold up to any sustained damage from it. At least that made her path forward clear. With defense no longer a viable option, Samus redoubled her efforts on speed and damage. She ran along behind it, trying to stay out of its attack zone as she peppered it with beams and missiles both. She hit it with everything she could think of, to no avail… It shrugged off everything. The creature didn’t even bother to try to dodge… her missiles exploded away from its skin, and none of the cold seemed to so much as chill it. Nothing in her arsenal so much as knocked it off course.
This shouldn’t be possible. Samus had fought hundreds of metroids, of every variety… all of them had shared several key weaknesses, including the cold. None of them had been able to project an electromagnetic shield anywhere near this strong… certainly not an infant. Then again, she had also never seen an infant Metroid so large and powerful, either. Mother Brain had been experimenting, making this monstrosity into a perfect menace. After several passes trying to blast it away, Samus had come no closer so figuring out how she could hurt it. The monster, however, was learning… it was quickly adapting to the way she dodged, and with each pass its fangs were getting closer and closer to her body…
And then her luck ran out.
The metroid’s change of direction during its charge caught Samus off guard, and in mid-leap she had no way to make an adjustment. It crashed into her like a cannonball, and while its membranous body had a strange amount of give, Samus felt the full brunt of the charging impact anyway. Her body rattled inside the suit, her head nearly concussing her against her own helmet, and she tried to tuck into a ball as she fell so she could at least land without shattering anything. But the Metroid recovered far more quickly than she did. It plucked her out of the air, grabbing her by one ankle and sucking her into its fanged maw.
Suit Integrity Warning
Power Surge in Energy Cells
Shield Levels Dropping Rapidly
High Frequency Energy Fluctuations Present
Energy Grapple: System Offline
Charge Beam: System Offline
Morph Ball: System Offline
Samus fired wildly at the predator wrapping her in its bulk… her energy cannon unleashing its frozen fury again and again. None of it made any difference. The energy was seemingly absorbed by the creature as fast as Samus’s powersuit could produce it. Even several point-blank missile detonations failed to accomplish anything more than making her teeth chatter.
Her suit displayed her decreasing energy with an ever-more-emphatic series of colors, warning lights, vibrations, and dire language, and Samus began to panic. After everything she had done, everything she had been through, it couldn’t end like this. For the life of her, however, she couldn’t think of what to do… the blonde bounty hunter seemed truly almost out of options. As a last resort, she tried redirecting all energy she had left into the grapple system, trying to bring it back online… and the instant the indicator light came on green she fired it at the nearest wall and yanked, using every bit of strength left in her limb and suit to reel herself to safety.
The Metroid and the suit tugged at each other, wavering in midair but unable to move in either direction. Samus grabbed onto her cannon with her free hand, trying to use her own muscles to pull her closer to the wall as though it would save her. In retaliation the Metroid pulled her ankle even deeper, sucking her entire calf into its viscous interior. She kicked at its nuclei, hoping it was more vulnerable inside than out, but moving inside it was like swimming through hot gelatin. Nothing she did gave her any momentum, and as it continued swallowing her leg, she resorted to axe-kicking it anywhere it wasn’t covered in fangs.
She twisted as feeding tendrils emerged from inside the Metroid, grabbing her legs and restraining them as it pulled her further inside its body with a wet, disgusting sound. She screamed in frustration and, if she was being honest, fear… pounding on it with her bare hands, hoping her punches would succeed where all else failed. Hanging upside-down with the waist down buried inside a massive floating biological weapon, her back dragging against the ground. Samus’s hands sifted through the sand, looking for some weapon or bit of a corpse she could use to fight back, something she could stab into it. If she had a moment to act, she was going to use it… But a moment could be all she had. The metroid flexed, his body squeezing hers, and Samus sucked in a breath and braced for death.
But its fangs gripped at her armor but didn’t pierce it.
Once she started moving, so did the Metroid, shifting her inside its body to spread her legs apart. The familiar movement sent a chill up her spine, one that took hold in her brain… reminding her of what Mother Brain had told her. That her Metroid breeding program had been programming them to see Samus as a breeding toy for them.
Those tendrils grabbed onto her armor, yanking at it… tearing at pieces, ripping them away from her body. No no no, not like this… Samus fired again and again, and the creature seemed to simply absorb the blasts. She thought she might have seen it actually grow a little larger. Then a panel of her armor on her thigh ripped away, and the creature's tendrils pushed inside, squeezing through the gap and entering the powersuit.
The moist, squishy tentacles felt alien as they climbed up and down her legs, squeezing between her armor and the body that filled it. Samus almost jumped when she felt the first brush against her folds, pressing between her spread legs. It was a slow push, intended not to attack but to explore… not that that comforted her much. Looking up she could actually see the fluid change inside the metroid’s body, watch through the translucent liquid as tendrils pushed through the entrance to her armor, and her pussy felt it in time. Knowing exactly what it wanted, her frantic scrambling increased, but no escape presented itself. She could only watch as the Metroid pulsed and pushed its cytoplasm against her pussy…
And into it.
It slipped inside her easily, from its natural slickness rather than her arousal. It didn’t hurt, but the humiliation was more than pain enough. Samus planted her hands on the creature and tried to push herself free, but her waist didn’t move at all… remaining steadily embedded into the metroid’s gooey body. The tentacle filled her slowly, feeling more like a liquid than a solid. It didn’t suddenly force itself into her deepest parts or expand to split her in two. It took its time, prolonging her torture as it slowly grew in her hips. It wasn’t fucking her… it was more like it was draining into her.
The pressure soon gave way to discomfort, and discomfort to pain, but shortly after that started the creature pulled back, the pressure reducing. Then it started building again until it reached some kind of threshold a second time. To her horror, Samus realized it was testing her limits, checking over and over to see how much of itself it could fit inside her body, and each time it pushed itself in and out the extra mass passed by her lips in a manner not unlike a more solid object sliding through them.
The Metroid’s fluid pushes in and out grew steadily in both speed and volume. Now that it seemed to understand the threshold for what she could fit, the process began to almost resemble thrusting. Its cytoplasm flowed into her pussy, giving her all the friction of a phallus pushing into her with the unique sensation of an inflating object expanding her from within, then flowed out, letting her body relax for a second before the process repeated… and all the while she saw the energy cells of her armor continuing to drop as the creature fed on the power contained in her suit. Once that ran out, it could very well be her life energy it took next.
The tentacle drove in and out of her, spreading her, trying to get her body to make more room for it to fill her up, filling her with whatever this new, modified metroid needed to use to breed her… feeling out her body, learning what her limits were through trial and error. These didn’t feel like the actions of a normal infant metroid, not a dumb or simple predator. More than likely, this was a new breed of Metroid, one she’d never seen before, one created from Mother Brain’s breeding programs. It was stuck in this area as a test run, and now she had become part of the test.
It jolted into action, pushing an undignified shout of surprise from her as it rammed as much of itself as it could into her pussy. She didn’t even have time to inhale before it pulled out and pushed what felt like the same amount back inside, filling her more than she thought she could take. The nearly-liquid tentacle repeated this again and again, making Samus’s hips rock back and forth as she fruitlessly tried to resist the assault. The blonde could feel her insides shifting with the pressure, making room for more inside of her.
Then, with a beep, the contents of her last energy cell drained.
The fang that was wedging her in place suddenly impacted against the metal of her armor. No longer held back by the energy field surrounding it, the tooth ripped through her armor just below her breasts, the very tip of it just inside her skin. She could practically sense it as a trickle of blood leaked out across that fang, dripping onto it, and she definitely wasn’t imagining the way something grabbed onto the energy inside of her and yanked and…
And the metroid screamed.
One moment the tentacles inside its body were fucking her in its odd, inflationary way. The next moment, it stopped entirely, freezing. Then, without warning, it dropped her… the armored woman sagging against the ash-covered ground as the metroid zoomed away from her, still shrieking. Her still mostly-armored lower body hit with a wet squelching noise… the thing had pumped that part of her armor full of fluids.
But it had left.
Samus rolled away as best she could… with her energy cells dry, the armor now resisted every movement. She wanted to rest, to relax, to get her heart rate back down to normal speed and regain some level of cognition and the ability to think… but she wasn’t out of danger yet. The blonde bounty-hunter pulled herself up against a wall on shaky hands, pointedly not thinking about the sand she was standing on as she activated the single backup powercell she had, reactivating dead systems in her armor as she turned and searched for the metroid.
She found it easily enough. It was right there… hovering in a high corner of the huge room, as far away from her as it could get… its body wobbling back and forth warily as it made a small, odd trilling noise… like it was afraid of her. Why? It had her… metroids didn’t show mercy. It had been draining her and…
It had stopped the moment it sensed her life.
Her blood froze.
That trilling… she recognized it. She had heard it a thousand times, that soft trill and the chirp that followed it. She had heard it aboard her own ship. This creature wasn’t some horrific monstrosity bred through Mother Brain’s breeding program from the Hatchling… it was the hatchling. Somehow mutated to enormous size and power in violation of its normal lifecycle… but still the same creature.
She cursed in surprise… and fury. Samus had left the Hatchling with the Federation scientists because she hadn’t been in any position to take care of an alien child. They were the best equipped people in the galaxy to study it responsibly, she had been sure. When the research station had come under attack, she had raced back, and found the metroid that she had hatched taken by Ridley… and been ambushed in turn. The pirates had kidnapped both of them, taking them back to this damned ghost of a place.
The pirates hadn’t created some perfect machine, some deadly and unstoppable engine of war. They had stolen and manipulated and hurt her metroid and turned it into this… thing.
She set her jaw so hard it hurt, and Samus felt like if she squeezed any tighter her teeth would start to crack. No wonder Mother Brain had put it in her path. The AI had probably laughed about the idea, delighting in the irony of breaking and killing the great Hunter with her own hatching.
The pirates had taken her hatchling. If she could get the obviously terrified and confused creature to come back with her, they would come for it again… steal it again. Samus couldn’t just stand guard over it forever. What she needed to do was finish them off, for the good of the galaxy and, yes, for a bit of revenge as well.
Behind her, the large door hissed, and began to open, and thick grey-green mist poured into the room. “That’s so disappointing,” a voice – her voice – came through the fog as it swirled. “I was hoping it would finish you off. But I suppose it’s just as well.”
Samus pointed her canon towards the swirling mist… she was reluctant to leave the metroid at her back, but what choice did she have? Her visor’s HUD quested across her vision as it scanned frantically for any pattern in the mist, anything to target. “I confess I’ve been excited for this moment,” Mother Brain said. “You can’t imagine just how difficult that it’s been stifling my own impatience, wanting to come and find you myself! But I knew that if someone didn’t bring you to me, that you’d eventually find me yourself.”
The signature finally left the thick haze of the smoke, giving her a clearer target. She raised her weapon, pointed it… and hesitated as the shifting hues of the form became clear to her. “You… Why are you-” She couldn’t gather her thoughts fast enough, and she was too caught off guard to spring immediately into attack.
After all, she was staring at herself.
The clone of Samus was entirely naked as she stood there, confident as could be. Her body didn’t look exactly right – she had very obvious circuitry criss-crossing her body in many places, doubtless parts of Mother Brain’s nanites constructing additional infrastructure inside and outside of the clone body, making her a more ideal agent… and weapon.
Her brain was having trouble wrapping itself around what she saw. It shouldn’t… Samus knew that Mother Brain had infected her clones and made them part of her neural network, after all. Samus had seen her use one of the clone bodies like a puppet to make the propaganda videos she had broadcast out to the Federation. Still, it was infuriating. Why did she have to take a clone just to fight her? Was it to taunt her? Almost assuredly. She wanted to prove that she was superior to her “daughter” in every single way. She should have expected this.
But she hadn’t.
“Come to me, daughter,” the not-Samus said with a smile. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Samus was done. She was done letting Mother Brain dictate terms to her. She was done letting her hurt innocents. She was especially done being angry at herself for how she had been captured and abused, and done blaming herself for it. The only people she was going to blame, the only person she was going to be angry at, was the malevolent AI standing right in front of her.
And, to her great pleasure, that was something she could shoot.
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