Chapter 17

Living Skin

...

Samus stumbled at the realization of this temple's true purpose. Shock dulled her reaction time and an explosion threw her back, shields beeping in protest. Pirate soldiers poured blaster fire down on her position and she just barely got back into cover. However, The Last seemed to have forgotten that a battle was underway. He lectured from his hiding place.

"You cannot imagine my sorrow, when I awoke from that deathlike pause to learn that my people were gone. It was terrifying to think that some foe had broken our prophecy, shattered the Path in order to undo what could not be undone. But then I learned the truth, that my kin had done it to themselves. They who had imprisoned me for my work had built upon it until they could abandon not only me but this entire galaxy. You cannot imagine my anger."

A dark bipedal shape soared away through the air and Samus followed, springing down to the next lower level. The workshop here was less cluttered, and focused on a sole target. A full guardian statue stood in the center, a black metal Chozo mirroring the feathered one that now stood beside it. The Last's eyes squinted in triumph as a squad of fresh pirates formed up on each side of the room, weapons trained on Samus.

"But I shall let you experience a taste of that fury." He turned to the statue. "Perimeter breach. Alien threat in possession of stolen military hardware. Purify the sanctum."

The statue's eyes glowed red. Its fingers clicked as the joints jerkily twitched into motion, but there was already an incredible power within. Samus had fought such things before, terrible protectors, placed at geographic branches in time to close off a certain avenue of possibility. In the past, they had nearly killed her, with or without her suit. However, she had grown since then.

The watching Pirates cheered and howled as they saw the fearsome bounty hunter fall to her knees before the slowly advancing statue. However, The Last instead frowned. His foot slid back against the dusty floor, repelled by a new wave of uncertainty. Samus planted her fist on the ground, one knee bent as she lowered her head to the guardian statue.

Her Chozo parents had taught her that in any being there were many lifetimes; divisions where you could look back in time and see a stranger in your skin. Species were the same way on a grander scale, and any sensible Chozo would know that. The Last was consumed by his fury, and thus blinded to the reasons that shaped the people in the millennia after his imprisonment. But he was not the only Chozo in the room, and Samus trusted the Boneshaper would have realized that.

"You who are dead, hear my heart."

The guardian statue raised its huge hand, ready to send it cleaving down through her skull. Samus focused her mind. In a body, matter produced life, life rose to thought, and by the ancient secret, thought produced energy. Energy could be sensed, and Samus' was not alien. This was the true irony, that the Heart of the Chozo would manage to surprise the scientist who discovered it.

The statue froze. Then it lowered its hand. There was a reason the statues were made with the honored dead. For true permanence, you wanted a system to have some discretion. Samus rose to her feet beside the statue, looking back at the Last whose face was contorted by horror and disgust. Then the statue twisted to the side, red eyes focused instead on the squads of Pirate soldiers. They had just reached the next tier of its priority list.

One of the Pirates sadly clicked its pincher.

Samus sprang forward as the statue dragged its hand through the floor, ripping through solid stone like water as it flung the shrapnel at the Pirates. Screams and shrieks erupted along with blaster fire but Samus did not bother watching, instead focusing only on her target. The Last dodged back, leaping around to keep the guardian statue between Samus and himself. It was a strange dance they fell into, since the guardian refused to harm either Samus or the Last and yet was still very intent on tearing the pirate soldiers apart. Blaster fire rained down on it only to splash off its dark metal.

All Samus needed was one good shot, and soon enough her blaster grazed The Last's arm, throwing out a spray of blood. The Last screamed but stuck a hand inside his robe and pulled out three vials bundled together. Then he smashed them against the statue and everything vanished into a roiling cloud of smoke. He was trying to run, but Samus simply raised a hand to her temple, switching to infrared sight. She spotted the yellow blotch moving away and took aim, however at that moment her world chose to erupt into fire for the third time that day.

The black cloud had ignited, and though Samus' newly repaired varia system dealt with the heat easily it meant she was blind for a crucial few seconds. When the firestorm cleared, the Last was gone and the last few pirate soldiers were darting out a doorway, fleeing from the Hall of the Boneshapers. Samus was left alone with the guardian statue. Its red eyes watched the pirates' escape path but it did not follow. Such creations were meant to guard a single place, dissuasion did not require pursuit. However, this time Samus detected something else, the slightest shadow of frustration in that expressionless graven face.

She moved to run after the Pirates, but before she took more than a few steps she turned back to look at that silent watcher, destined to stand in this hall until the planet crumbled. Samus bowed her head to it. Then she spun around but as she did so there was a loud crack that rang out behind her. The guardian statue had reached up its large hands and with casual force split open its own head. Inside was a solid block of technology, glimmering with crystalline webs and shining metal muscles, and the center the barely visible bone of a chozo skull. The statue knelt down and Samus reached out to place her gauntlet in the wound. Light shimmered as the suit consumed the offering.

"Friction Modulators Restored"

It was the system that allowed the statues to strike with such incredible force without sliding backwards. Traditionally Samus had used her own to jump off walls. The Last was getting farther by the second and even this offense against Newtonian physics was unlikely to help. But the dead had offered it and so Samus bowed again. The statue did not move. As she stood up, Samus trialed the fingers of her gauntlet through the drops of chozo blood The Last had left on the floor. The suit quietly began sequencing the genetics but she dismissed the results. Then Samus turned and walked out of the hall, leaving the countless dead to their watchful slumber.

The Pirates' trail was not hard to follow. Several of them had been wounded and despite their cybernetic trauma kits still left faint trails of ichor droplets. One of them must have figured that out, because at the next intersection of corridors two Pirate bodies lay slumped against the wall, half melted by blaster burns. It was classic Pirate mentality: identify the problem, then eliminate it. However, the air in this deep section of the temple was incredibly still, which meant ionized particles lingered, tracing back blaster paths to the particular corridor where the firing squad had been standing. Samus turned and followed down that trail.

As she jogged after them, Samus noticed a change in the temple architecture around her. As she moved to this new area, the design aesthetic had altered in a subtle way that would be invisible to a foreigner. If the previous section had been dedicated to knowledge and preservation, then here the energy was turned more outwards. The engravings flared and the columns were thicker, sturdier and more angular.

Then she turned a corner in the corridors and saw that its exit was surrounded by the remains of a heavy duty shield generator, still clouded with the mist of discharged energy meant to supply its operation for a thousand years. The Last had not been patient, and unlike in the rest of the temple his ancient knowledge did not serve to pave his road. The Chozo imperial military tended to change their security codes more frequently than that.

Samus flicked her eyes up to the suit displays projected across her visor. Her shield levels were starting to get low, several of those Pirate soldiers had been good shots. However, missile seed ammunition was still plentiful. She could work with that.

A few moments later, a charged super missile streaked through the doorway to explode against the floor a few steps inside the next chamber. The shock wave should deal with any ambush immediately inside and even Pirate eyes needed a second to adjust to that blinding flare so Samus was inside the room within the instant, almost riding the explosion as she jumped back to land on the wall above the door. She perched there for a brief second, newly acquired friction systems allowing the metal skin of her suit to stick on polished stone. From there she beheld the bad news.

This room was an armory. The huge round chamber stretched out in front of her, capped by a vaulted dome over green shaded walls covered with technology. All around this expanse, Pirate soldiers scattered for cover. They were right to, because Samus was hunting them once again. With a blast of suit jets, she charged.

One Pirate, braver than the rest, instead of scrambling for cover ran the other direction. He reached the wall and a great, long barreled Chozo weapon that hung there. He grabbed it and tugged it free, arms trembling as he struggled to lift it. Despite its great weight, he managed to turn and aim the barrel, every fiber of his effort focused on holding it steady. Samus emerged within his sights, clear across an empty room with no cover in sight. The Pirate grinned, an expression which faded as he noticed Samus made no effort to alter her charge in light of this new development.

His weapon trigger depressed with a sad click and useless silence. The Chozo did not like other species playing with their toys.

Samus slid to a halt through the shower of smoking exoskeleton shards, turning to survey the rest of the room. Then she finally found the Last. He was at the far wall, crouched down beside a bulging table of some control mechanism. There was an empty pedestal in front of him that appeared to be hooked up to some sort of retrieval system for the many weapons across the room. Samus did not take the time to scan it, she already knew she had to stop him.

The Last shouted out, "Soldiers, die for your angels!"

A group of pirates ran to oblige him, shielding the Chozo with their bodies as Samus' attacks hammered against them. Then she changed tactics, aiming her missile blasts to their side to simply blow them out of the way instead of wearing down all their shields. In fact, it worked better than she had expected, many of them must have already been very weak, since even with a glancing impact several of the pirates hit the ground and flopped limply where they fell.

Samus had her firing line, but it was too late. The Last stepped up onto the pedestal and the air around him began to shimmer, the sign of things hidden behind the world. Really, Samus should have known. There was only one weapon a person like him would have come here to get. She fired again and again, but the armory machine blocked all her attacks, refusing to let anything interfere with this nearly sacred acquisition. Then the light faded and the Last stood on the pedestal once more, clad in a Chozo battle-suit.

He raised his right arm, marveling at the sleek weapon barrel that encompassed his long forearm. The shoulders bulged up on each side of his head just as they did on Samus. Then he turned to her, eyes only just barely visible through the V-shaped slit of the helmet visor.

"Now the contest truly begins."

Samus ran through the temple, dodging blasts by instinct honed through decades of combat. What she could not avoid was the idea that she was being herded. It could hardly be helped, Aurora had provided her a map of the temple complex but all the Federation's work had still half the rooms were labeled with question marks. The Last had lived here. This was his home.

Well, there were a few things that had changed since then so Samus tried to head up, choosing each passage and shaft that led closer to the plateau surface above. Aurora's map indicated that there were a few places up there where the temple structures poked free of the surrounding rock.

Her shields screamed as a glancing hit clipped her. A wave beam blast cut the corner, reaching through solid rock to materialize on the far side and predict Samus' movement. The Last may not have been a warrior by trade but that suit was the essence of war. In her current state, it was certainly made up the difference in skill.

The Last vaulted up out of a shaft and so encountered a precisely timed super missile to the face. That threw him back and bought Samus a few precious seconds to reach her destination. Her best hope was to use the Last's lack of experience against him and hope that the Federation scientists' label on the temple map of "Possible High Energy Communications Array" was accurate.

As she darted through a final door, pauldrons scraping the edges as it struggled to open in time, Samus was suddenly confronted by sunlight. From high above, shafts of light stabbed down through windows sealed against a frigid atmosphere that would be unpleasant even for a Chozo. Outside, the high plateau above the canyons stretched out in each direction, bare lifeless rock waiting on the slopes of the great ancient volcanoes. From higher up the closest peak, the massive Chozo statue still looked down at them, jutting from the living mountain.

The large octagonal chamber was dominated by a huge central pillar of machinery that looked like much larger device which had been crushed down until it telescoped. The room was scattered with pieces of remaining Federation research tech and Samus touched her helmet's temple, initiating the scan to grab whatever they had learned.

Samus had just begun her coded transmission when the outer door exploded, and through the dust and smoke walked The Last's gleaming armor. He vanished from sight as Samus ducked around to the other side of the central pillar but his voice continued over the radio waves.

"Such a sad imitation you are, trying to ape my people through the cloud of ignorance. You are lost in this place. You can't even recognize the wonder when you see it."

There was a tone of rapture in his voice, an artist standing before a masterwork. In that breath, Samus could see his mind clearly and burning energy began to charge up in the barrel of her gun. Then she sprang around the pillar, firing the blast before even her eyes could register what she saw. But the Last was exactly where she predicted, standing at the pillar's control panel, one hand stretched out to touch it.

Samus allowed herself a smile as the full power shot hit him directly in the head. Even through the suit shields, that impact world set his brain ringing and fuzz his thoughts for a precious second before his implants took over. And all the while, Samus's scan continued to transmit a string of numbers with one particular set of ears in mind.

The Last stumbled back from the hit, off his balance, and Samus was already charging the next attack. However, even as he reeled The Last made no effort at counter attack and continued to talk as if nothing had just happened. "It is honestly amusing, to see you try to fight me here. This facility is mine. Even after my capture, they could not help but make it a temple to my work."

Samus noticed that the lights on the control panel had changed color. The Last had done something there. Well, first things first. She shot him in the head again.

The Last straightened up in his armor, not trying to block or dodge this time either, merely accepting the hit. But as the blast erupted from Samus' weapon, the air between them glowed. Ribbons of shimmering light grasped at the blaster shot in mid air and tore it to pieces bit by bit. By the time it reached the Last, his helmet was merely brushed by warm air.

Suddenly the chamber shuddered as vast systems grumbled back into operation. Dust fell from the roof as the room itself began to grind upwards, up into the light above the surface. In the center, the pillar of machinery began to slowly unfurl and grow.

The Last gestured with his gauntlet. "Thank you for allowing me to calibrate the device. I am afraid I would not have been able to attack until you did so, or my weapon would have been blacklisted as well. This facility is dedicated to understanding energy, and I am its master. Why do you think I led you here to the spire?" He raised his weapon as he walked back towards the control panel. "And cease that pointless broadcast of what I assume are our coordinates. You know now that this is not a communication array."

Samus shrugged. "No. But the humans thought it was. So they brought their own to check."

The Last whipped around to look at the blinking lights across the scattered Federation equipment, particularly the tall blue and white spike that was now clearly a high energy transmitter. Then Samus' suit crackled with the faint sound of an established communications channel.

Nakamura's voice was filled with static but growing clearer by the second. "Coordinates received, Aran. Diomedes orbiting into position."

The Last turned on Samus, his eyes narrowing behind the suit visor. "You called in an orbital strike on your own position."

His foot slid back across the stone but Samus was already moving. A crackling whip of blue energy sprang from the back of her gauntlet arced to fasten onto the Last's suit. It seemed she had been right, this new protective system did not consider a grapple to be harmful, or it fell under the high energy threshold. Burning light built up in the Last's weapon but Samus was suddenly at point blank range. Even if she had to fight hand to hand, he would not escape.

The Last fought back against blow after blow, struggling to fend her off. And all the while, Nakamura's voice came back to echo across the radio spectrum. "Samus, I... The forces I deployed on the planet are terrible, but they were a last resort. You know full well, sometimes friendly fire is unavoidable when you must stop an infection. After all, you did the same on the BSL. Please, understand. Sometimes there is no way to win, only to control your losses."

The shafts of sunlight grew and stretched as the spire chamber continued to rumble up higher, unfolding into full operation, a tower above the hidden temple. All through it, two battle-suits were locked in combat. The Last might have known technology, but he was not practiced at fighting hand to hand against an expert opponent. Even with his suit systems at full power his breath was elevated the next time he spoke to Samus.

"Disappointing. Despite everything you have seen, despite all your posturing, your blood still compels you to trust the other humans. Well, let us put that to the test. They have just given me enough information to see the path."

A screech of feedback rang through Samus' ears as the Last tapped the side of his helmet. Then he flung her back across the room but no follow-up strike came after. He was only looking at the Federation communications spike. Samus launched her own scan assault but the Last knew the programs better, he had seized control of the transmission channel. She readied her suit grapple again case he tried to flee the room now that she could not retarget the orbital strike but now the Last seemed content to completely ignore Samus. He looked upwards at the chamber's rising ceiling, turning off towards the horizon where Diomedes was rising up behind the blue sky.

"Human ship Diomedes, I present to you an alternative."

Samus was locked out of the transmitter, but the Last kindly let her hear the entire conversation. In return she tried a firing a missile barrage at him but the missile seed's energy sheath was apparently similar enough to trip the spire's detectors. Shimmering ribbons of light tore the projectiles apart in mid air.

The Last was using a variant on the Pirate translation software to transform his words to human standard. However, in tweaking the settings to more echo his natural voice it transformed the synthetic human pronunciation to something hideous, groaning and whistling all at once. "I am the last true master of this planet, and as such I offer you terms. You do not wish the other species to share in your looting, and I am willing to accept that. I even respect your commitment, your willingness to release the artificial lifeforms dubbed Metroids. Make no hostile action against me and I promise I will make none against you, nor remove any technology from this place. I will join you in exterminating the other forces and then depart, leaving you the planet. To indicate acceptance, transmit to me your full files on the hybrid called Samus Aran."

There was a stretching moment of silence, filled only with the grumbling mechanisms of the still rising spire chamber. The Last turned back towards Samus, gloating in his certainty. Then the Diomedes transmission returned.

A soft but strong female voice said, "What did you do to Ms Aran?"

The Last's confidence slipped as Samus let her smile flicker onto her face. His speech, designed to bring Nakamura to his side, had not been calibrated for GF Officer Yin. When Samus had coded her redirect prank, she had not felt any need to identify her transmissions beyond 'Chozo battle-suit origin'. Samus had decided not to warn the Last about that.

Then Nakamura broke back onto the channel. He was panting, as well he might. A member of his crew had just found out he loosed the metroids on Federation citizens. "Unidentified Chozo individual, this is Federation Commander Nakamura. Your terms are acceptable. Samus Aran, cease hostilities and stand by his side in the rising tower. I know how much you trust me." He sounded defeated.

The Last said, "The optimal decision from your perspective. It is refreshing to find a primitive species behaving logically."

Samus had already started running. She knew exactly how much she trusted Nakamura. But she also knew that he knew it too. Then Nakamura joined back in the channel, a bit of cockiness reentering in his voice. "Well, then one last bit of education from this primitive. A reminder really. While your transmissions are securely encrypted, you helped the Pirates break ours."

A new broadcast rang across the spectrum, deep and slavering, the sound of a long tongue over many teeth. "My enemies standing together, betrayed by their own. How very nice to kill."

The Last caught sight of movement out the spire's windows, a distant shape rising up over lip of the plateau. It was huge and dark, bristling with vicious metal. Ridley's command ship was no longer hiding in its valley landing site, and the planetary bombardment capable starship was now aimed squarely at the Last's position from two miles away.

Nakamura's broadcast returned. "By now Aran should have blocked your exit." The Last spun back, in time to see Samus wedge herself in the doorway. From somewhere in orbit, Nakamura just continued with the same self assurance. "She may not like me, but I have always trusted her assessment of the Chozo. Sorry Aran, this is the best I could do. I would not have been in position for a proper strike for another two minutes. Ridley was closer."

Ridley's transmission growled with inhuman pleasure. "Close enough to taste your ash. Fire!"

The atmosphere erupted into flame as the Pirate ship blasted its massive wave-beam weapon straight at the spire, igniting what little oxygen there was above the plateau by the force of its passing. By starship terms it was point blank. That made it all the more surprising when the fireball cleared and the spire still stood, surrounded by flickering ribbons of light. Thin floating auroras trailed back toward the Pirate ship, tracing a line even as they began to fade from sight.

Inside the spire chamber the central pillar glowed and shone with the energy absorbed, even as the structure trembled from what managed to slip past. The machine's light spread out, washing over the two battle-suits in a shifting maze of reflections. The Last's face was invisible within his hemet, but Samus could still taste his scorn and disgust. "Blind, pitiful creatures. My life's work was understanding the transmission of energy and you think to threaten me with those sticks and stones? I programed these automated defense myself. Now, I have had enough of this charade."

He took a step towards the central control panel. On the coms, Ridley roared with fury and frustration. He shouted a command and the main cannon of his ship began to glow again as it charged for a second attack. The ship accelerated, pushing closer to the spire to close its range. However, this time the incinerating blast did not even brush the tower, instead it was picked apart by a web of light just outside the ship.

Then Nakamura's voice returned, almost casual in tone. "I admire your persistence, Commander Ridley. That new weapon of yours is truly powerful. However, you drop your ship shields when you fire it. Also, I may have misled you on my orbital effectiveness."

A pillar of blinding light lanced down from the blue sky, stabbing into the back of the Pirate ship. However, once Samus' visor tint adjusted she saw the characteristic shimmering ribbons beginning to reach up towards this new attack. Ridley's roar continued on the coms, but in one breath it smoothly transitioned to a chuffing, gloating laugh.

"Those who do not value fury do not understand it. They see me charge and they think they will kill me. I only wished to be near the tower. Now I have traded a scratch on this one ship for the humans' weapons to be targeted by the Chozo defense as well. You are now locked in space. Thank you, fool, for wanting to kill."

Inside the spire, Samus suddenly shouted and sprang forward, suit jets rocketing her across the room towards the Last with her weapon raised to strike. The Last was startled by her abrupt battle cry and stepped back, easily dodging out of the way. However, that just allowed her to hit her true target. The heavy bludgeon of her weapon arm smashed down through the energy mechanism's control panel, reducing delicate engineering to shards and smoke. The Last raised his own gun but Samus kept him off balance by only straightening up and starting to speak with her back still to him.

"The blacklist is set and locked, covering any energy with line of sight to the spire, range two hundred miles. Now no one gets to play outside."

The Last twisted his head back around as he noticed the federation transmission spike was no longer slaved to his control. That long period of back and forth conversations had given Samus plenty of time to sneak past The Last's hastily applied firewall. Now everyone had heard her message.

The following moment of silence stretched out across all transmission channels, on the planet and in space. All four parties waited to see if anyone else was going to unveil yet another trump card.

After a few more seconds, Nakamura said, "...All right. Well then, Aran, since you can hear me, Aurora has been freed to give you unrestricted aid. Do what you do best and eliminate all the hostile forces on the planet. Once the immediate threat is gone, we can have our own discussion. Nakamura out."

Ridley, never one to let someone else have the last word, chimed in too. "Samus, you failed in our deal. You are too weak. Now I will march my forces across this world. They will tear you and your chozo out of your skin and I will lick your living bones."

Samus only waved vaguely in the distance as Ridley's ship slowly turned around and limped back to its canyon-shielded landing site, trailing smoke as it flew. Then she turned back to The Last, wondering how he had been so quiet lately. Usually he loved to talk. Then the microscopic trembling across the surface of his armor gave the answer, the faint, nearly invisible tremors. He was frozen with a rage a being like him had likely never experienced before.

Then he threw back his head and screamed.

...