Samus

A sonic boom cracked across the vast horizon, and above the grey clouds the powersuit rose. It left a faint trail of smoke which didn’t seem to bother the pilot, Samus, much as she used her auxiliary thrusters to steady her flight and set her course to the distant horizon, beyond shone the heart of the setting sun. Its warm glow made her battle-worn suit glitter like gold, but the flashing symbols on her visors wouldn’t let up.

“Power Low” It said. The boosters were leaking, and she was far from home.

Home. Why does that word sound so superficial, now? “tch” The disgruntled woman cringed at the memories flashing before her. “Mother Brain.” Her brows furrowed and she bit her lip to keep her from uttering that name again. It did little to ease her welling anger and apparent headache. Beep-beep.

“Perimeter clear, no signs of hostiles” the monitor alerted.

With a few eye movements and voice commands, Samus deactivated overdrive and started to decelerate into the stratosphere. “I have no home,” she muttered, “ever since Ridley took it away from me. Mother, Father…” she glanced at her right arm. The cannon’s plasma chambers had lost their glow. “That suit is my legacy to you. Join me and I will show you your true potential!” Mother Brain’s words pierced through her like a dagger. “Lies! I am not giving in to your lies, Mother Brain.” Tears welled up as she tried to gulp down her sorrows. She took one quick glance at her altitude and velocity indicators. Will I make it? Should I? Her boosters sputtered and within seconds the lights in her suit went out. It was quiet, finally.

---

Before the forces of gravity began to pull her out of the sky there was a rare moment of peace. Samus feasted her eyes upon the infinite dark of space. The planets never shone so brightly; the stars called out to her. But space was far and beyond and Earth was getting ever closer. She truly had nowhere to go and even if she wanted to, it was much too late now. She closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift.

“Samus!” It was her father’s voice calling in her head, suddenly, so clear.

“Daddy!” Her own voice never sounded so joyful. A child’s call, so true and innocent. “I… I remember now.” The soft grass on her bare feet, the wind on her face. “Am I dreaming?” She saw her father waving at her and his face spoke of true happiness upon seeing her.

She leaped into his arms. “I have to leave, Samus.” He could see that his words broke her heart.

“Why, daddy?” was all she could say, as she caught a glimpse of sorrow on his face.

He quickly smiled and reassured her. “Oh, it’s just a routine call, I will be back before sunset.” His hug and smile was enough to erase every worry she could muster. He always kept his promises. “Bye Samus, my sweet bumblebee.” He patted her golden hair and kissed her forehead.

“Bye Daddy.”

---

Thunder. It felt like minutes, but only seconds had passed since her suit stalled. The wind was cold, shuttling past her, or was she shuttling through them? “Visors” They had opened and malfunctioned. She manually shut them, struggling against the atmosphere as she re-entered the thick clouds of Earth. Thunder and lightning. She braced herself for turbulence. Her suit has lost its life support functionalities, including heat, so frost gathered and blocked her vision. Crystalline ice crept into her suit, her own exhalation betraying her: she couldn’t breathe.

With her strength sapping rapidly, Samus raised her right arm and wiped the frost from the plasma chambers, the hand she lost, replaced by a useless hunk of metal, dark and cold. Samus let out a sigh before her world turned black. Thunder had never been this terrifying. Crack. Bang. Crash.

---

“Samus!” this time it was her mother, her face spattered with her own blood. “Hide!” she screamed with her last breath as she was violently heaved through the air by the dark form.

Samus was choking with fear, but she couldn’t bring herself to run away. Her eyes strained in the dark, unable to find even the remains of her mother who had vanished in one swoop of the demon’s sharp claws.

“Run, child” His voice was thunder. Ridley. She would only later know that name. “Run.”

She only wanted to cry. Where was daddy, what did it do to Mommy? But now wasn’t the time.

Heart racing, she screamed and leapt out of the way just as Ridley’s claw crashed devastatingly close to her. Samus cried out like a cornered animal as she made a desperate dash into a deep crater dug up by a crashed alien ship. Smoke, dust, and darkness engulfed her, and the beast breathed fire in his fury. The helpless girl rolled and hid under the rubbles as flames swallowed the air above her, illuminating everything except her hiding place. Everything felt blazing hot, especially her right arm, and she looked down only to find half of her arm gone, to find only mangled flesh and torn sleeve remaining. Every ounce of her wanted to scream but she kept quiet in fear.

The heat of his breath became so unbearable that she curled up into a fetal position. Then, there was silence. Not a peaceful one, no: a silence characterized by a world ceasing to exist. The pain in her arm kept her conscious.

Why is it so hot?

“Low altitude.”

Samus opened her eyes and flashes of light filled her visor, before she could gasp in panic as well as relief. Power! Why? How? Still, her right arm felt like it was on fire. She looked down and was surprised to find that her cannon was alive. The suit had rerouted itself, sourcing power from the plasma generators of her gun. “You can’t fail me now!”

With a new surge of hope, Samus clenched her absent hand. “Activate main boosters, switch to manual control” With that the suit deployed its heavy thrusters and began to spin wildly. Samus struggled to control her descent and bearing, but at the last moment she managed to accelerate and pull up, avoiding the tree-line beneath her. She let out a sigh of relief as she regained altitude and saw the cityscape far off, pristine against the setting sun. Truly, looks can be deceiving.

---

The cloud of noise was unbearable. Cars honking, sirens screaming, aerial vehicles buzzing about. Home sweet home. Samus nonchalantly stepped into her crammed apartment-turned-mech-workshop. The door automatically closed behind her and it was thankfully quiet once more. She walked up to the window and watched the city beneath.

“This city has no idea of the danger that’s on its way.” Samus had merely bought this planet some time, but Ridley would surely be back once his ship became operational again.

The tired and disappointed girl took off her helmet and slumped on her crammed bed. The monitors on her headrest lit up and instantly gave her reports and readings from her suit, and it had indeed suffered an untimely malfunction during her ambush of the space pirates, denying her of the best chance to strike Mother Brain and Ridley before their armies could gather and launch their attack on her civilization. Samus shivered at the thought of the inevitable invasion, but she was proud to have managed to set off the bombs to incapacitate their main ship and do significant damage to their stockpiles, effectively stalling their advances.

Nonetheless, she had just escaped death by a whisker, and she need to recuperate and fix her suit. Samus pressed a few buttons and twisted her cannon, slipping it off her right arm. She raised her abbreviated appendage and inspected the metallic device encasing it. “Mother Brain must have known all about this device, perhaps better than I do.” she thought as she unscrewed the covers to access the transmitters and chips inside. “Why won’t you function when I need you most, I could’ve blasted them easily,” she muttered, talking to her stump. Samus quickly found the busted components. “The Brain must have known the limits of my weapon, why else would it have been so confident?”

As Samus skillfully replaced the melted parts, she was surprised at the growing sensation in her phantom limb, the sense that it existed there, somewhere, even when it didn’t exist here. Strange as it sounded, it almost seemed as if the memories and visions she had succumbed to earlier had triggered something between her lost arm and the cannon that took its place. “Maybe Mother Brain wasn’t far from the truth. Maybe I have yet to learn what I can do with this suit.”

Slowly, Samus watched her cannon’s readings on the monitor change with every movement she exerted on her non-existent arm. The cannon glowed and so did the device on her stump. While she was relieved and amazed, she was also exhausted, and the hero of the day couldn’t care less about the sea of wires she had left on her bed, and simply slumped on top. She absent-mindedly slipped the device off her stump and rubbed its rounded end, the heat having subsided and the feeling of her missing hand vanished too.

She had blocked the sun from her eyes with her good arm and was about to doze off when the door opened and in came her clumsy boyfriend who was pleasantly surprised to find her in bed so early.

“Honey! I thought you’d come much later, I bought stuff to cook for dinner!” He placed his grocery bags on the table and walked up to her. “Are you alright-nmmmm,” she kissed him quiet.

He smiled and hugged her. Looking around, he found her usual clutter, but no sight of anything alarming, like a battle torn mech suit maybe, or a gigantic cannon, no. He rubbed her back and patted her. “Tough day at work?” she nodded and couldn’t bring herself to tell her why it was such an understatement. Why can’t he know? Why hasn’t she told him the truth about the suit. He caressed her cheek and kissed her. “All that matters is that you’re home, here with me. I missed you” he crooned, scooping her up and lifting her back into bed. Oh, she kissed him then like nothing else mattered, and they made love until the evening came.

---

City lights and smog drowned out the stars in the sky and Samus stared out of their skylights. She felt her boyfriend firmly grasping her stump, his way- their way of holding hands. “What are you looking out for?”

Space pirates, she wanted to tell him. “The stars,” she replied simply.

That got his attention, propping himself up. “You still thinking about home?”

She touched his face softly with her stump and he kissed it in return. “Yes. I always am.”

With that he wrapped her closer. “You leaving me here, then?” he jested.

“No silly, but I don’t want to live here forever.”

He had a smug face on. “Let’s move out together, then.”

At that she giggled and kissed him. “Say that again,” she demanded. “And where do you suppose we go?”

He kissed her like he was the most confident boyfriend. “To your star, wherever that is. Anywhere with you, Samus.”

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This story was made possible with the help of Cafter Homme . He proofread and edited so that it is more readable and enjoyable. The idea was by SOUTH3RN from Deviant art. This was commissioned some 4 months ago and i hope it was still worth the wait.

Hope you like this piece guys, certainly brought me back some good memories. Good ol metroid universe!

PS.

Updates will be posted on another post later today. Thank you so much guys!