...

The wide, steep-walled valley that housed the human colony was formed from the merging of three chasms that flowed down from higher up the atmosphere-piercing volcanic peak that dominated the distant sky. Of those lava tubes turned canyons, the west-most was deep in the Pirate militarized zone while the center passage merged with the main door of the temple complex, now controlled by The Last Chozo and his pirate rebels. The third gorge was a nature park.

That arithmetic made choosing a direction easy. Luckily, Samus was now in possession of a map of most of the Chozo temple that showed a smaller side entrance far uphill in the nature park. Unfortunately that map also showed a similar side entrance over near Ridley's landing spot, meaning all three factions had their way into the temple. Fortunately, that door had never been successfully opened and so should still stymie the pirate commander's forces.

All this supposed that the map Aurora had provided her was accurate. However, Samus was willing to bet that it was. The same cruel logic that led to preserving a trove of metroid science projects over federation citizens meant that Nakamura and his man-made servant wished to give Samus every tool that might aid her in fighting Ridely and The Last. There was something in that temple, and Nakamura would rather burn this planet to ash than let such enemies get it.

Unfortunately, The Last probably knew what "it" was and Samus certainly did not.

She had a headache.

With most of the suit's automatic functions turned off, Samus struggled to properly dose her brain chemistry as she ran across the expansive and deserted Research Center campus grounds. In the last forty-eight hours she had gone through hyperspace, free-fallen from orbit without a ship, been pumped full of pain hormones and stimulants, been fed on by a metroid and a chozo reaper system, overdosed on raw life energy, fatally irradiated herself, and then overdosed again. Her poor mammalian cells had no idea what was going on anymore.

At least the metroids that had been released back during the first Pirate attack were probably still laying low this early in the morning. J4M's nights didn't get nearly cold enough to kill them, but it certainly would reach the threshold of uncomfortable. The creatures were probably bunkered down somewhere until the sunlight had a few more minutes to sink into the rocks. Samus would have to make the most of that head start.

The wall around the Research Center campus was fifteen feet high. It might as well have not existed. However, even Samus had to admit that the next barrier was worth considering. The Research campus stretched across most of the three canyon mouths, however, here the border of the nature park made its own impression.

The metal fence was thirty feet tall and stretched not just along the valley floor, but all the way up the canyon walls to the rim of the volcanic plateau. Intuition told Samus that such measures were probably not installed to keep humans on this side. That was a nice sign, Samus always had a soft spot for interesting wildlife.

Then her scan opened the main barrier door and revealed behind it fifty yards of nested trenches and electric fences stretching across the entire canyon floor like the fortifications of a particularly heated warfront. All right, this wildlife might be very interesting.

Just on the other side of the defensive line, Samus spotted the half shattered remains of one of the pirate drop-pods amid some blackened bushes. The manacles in its exposed cargo chamber were empty, the sacrificial prisoner having long since been devoured. Ridley had chosen to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for first wave of metroids released back during the first attack, leading the creatures away from the Research Center to prey on the humans and the local wildlife instead of his troops.

As if on cue, a new transmission crackled through the spectrum, Pirate frequency as clear as day. After a moment a small boy spoke haltingly, as if reading lines from a script. "The fearsome Hunter runs. Samus Aran runs." It was Roger's voice.

Samus froze, but then she kept moving. She had no idea where the child was being held so rescuing him was currently impossible. She would have to rip the information out of some Pirates or wait until these taunting transmissions slipped up and revealed something.

Roger continued, his voice painfully monotone. "You are listening. You hear me. You wish me to fight The Prisoner while you hunt us both. You wait while more die. That strategy is cruel. I like that strategy. I will like killing you."

Samus continued her march into the nature preserve canyon as Roger's transmission clicked off. Ridley was using the boy as his personal translator, a ploy to anger Samus enough that she might charge straight towards the center of his army. Ridley was always manipulative. But to play this hand he had needed to give something away. Roger was at his side, and Samus knew this now. That slip up had come quickly. The frequencies were quiet and Samus was left in her helmet with her own thoughts

Then the breeze shifted and a low flute-like note drifted through the dawn air. A second later, more joined it to make an undulating chord. Samus looked up from her path and saw, high above, several carved faces of giant Chozo jutting out of the canyon walls just below where these massive ancient lava tubes bent inwards towards a long lost roof. These monumental statues were chiseled just so to catch the winds funneled down the canyon and transform that air into music. The Chozo always loved to make the world itself a building block. In this valley the ancient dead were still singing.

From here Samus could see three of the stone musicians high up on the canyon walls and from the distant sounds that now picked up they continued far down the valley at long intervals. This nature park was not nearly as narrow as the first slot-canyon Samus had found herself in after her fall from space, and it was even more lush. Wherever the valley floor became flat for a few yards it was covered by low, black leafed succulents, and the lower third of the canyon walls were coated with crawling blue vines. Here and there, twisted thorny trees grew where pockets of soil were especially deep. Their bark was smooth and dark red.

Samus ran along a foot trail, keeping an eye out for whatever had necessitated the giant fence across the valley mouth. Of course, it was possible that whatever it was had already been eaten by the metroids. In that case she was keeping an eye out for metroids. It was only a matter of time before they destroyed all this nature.

Metroids preferred to consume animal life, but they would move on to plants soon enough. Without anything to stop them, they would spread and multiply until multicellular life in the area was stripped to dust. Even that wouldn't stop them forever. A metroid couldn't starve. They just fell into lower and lower levels of activity until eventually some unfortunate living thing touched a hibernating husk and was instantly devoured.

As a creation, the metroids had not been one of the Chozo's brighter ideas. They were adept at hunting down X-Parasite clones, but their innate adaptability that was meant to aid in that fight let them to soon break the guiding directives their designers had tried to instill. However, the phantom temptation of control remained. They were artificial beings of incredible power, created to be used as tools. Surely it was just a matter of someone clever seizing the reins once again.

On the backs of those words, whole planets had burned.

However, as terrible as the metroids were, in this present mission they were an ancillary concern. The Chozo of this world were long gone like everywhere else but they had left behind a dangerous secret. Samus just had to figure out what it was before anyone else could get their hands on it. She raced up the canyon, passing branching paths in this web of dark plants and lichen covered tunnels.

A bit of motion pinged on her heads up display and Samus quickly spun to give her gun the best angle. Then a little herbivore poked its head out from under a bush before scurrying away. It was the same species as that first local Samus had killed back at her reentry site. This thing was intent on fleeing and luckily Samus' suit was no longer desperate for life energy.

Not desperate but... She traced its path for a moment with her gun, eyes flicking up to the "94% energy" in the corner of her visor. Then she lowered the weapon.

Samus paused for a second without realizing why she did so. Then her self meditation techniques revealed the answer. She had gotten used to the Adam-shade within the suit commenting on her decisions. She now realized that it was some foreign program wearing memories from the fragmented AI backup but those inscrutable messages had been a good tool for self reflection.

No, that thought was an intrusive paradigm. Samus cleared her mind even as her heart began to beat harder. The program had already begun to shape her thoughts during its short time active, seeking to create a mutualistic framework in her perception of it. It was dangerous. It was trying to mould her. To what end, she didn't know.

The answer most likely had something to do with this planet. She had seen her first strange message while still up in orbit. "Welcome" which suggested the program was of a Chozo nature. Then, which Chozo was the question. She had just escaped from the Pirate Command ship where The Last had been waiting, for all she knew one room away. He was a scientist, he could have implanted it somehow.

High above, more of the stone musicians let out a droning chord as the deep canyon caught another gust of wind rolling over the volcanic highlands. Several blue lizard-like creatures with huge flat feet crawled along the walls just above the blue leafed vine cover, rushing off to somewhere downhill. Perhaps fleeing Samus herself.

She refocused her thoughts. She was letting herself get distracted by the abstract. The personal threat to her was not a priority. As she ran through the branching and narrowing wild canyons, Samus opened and began to skim through the data Aurora had given her on the Chozo temple. True to the AI's word, there was a lot. Obviously not nearly everything, but Nakamura clearly still saw Samus as an ally against the Pirate threat at least. How he planned to deal with her once the other enemies were gone was a separate question.

Samus hopped over a vine that had grown across the intermittent trail at a narrow part of the floor. She had crossed into a shadow as the canyon tightened and twisted away from the sun for a bit, and the vines here were thicker, twisting down from the walls and choking out some of the smaller bushes.

The files revealed that the humans had also translated the facility's Chozo name: Temple of the Ultimate Hunter, Tradsiak M'etroid. The interior map and reports which came under that heading were heavily redacted but Samus was able to infer a lot of that information by the outlines they left. This planet had been an old Imperial center of research and creation, one that may have been on the forefront of the discovery of the Life Energy Equation itself. She had already guessed as much, it explained the Last's attraction to this place if he was part of the original team as he claimed.

She pushed past the thin red trunk of another leafless tree as she kept reading. There were more trunks like it around her, showing the changing vegetation. The canyon was quite narrow here and grew darker as the old lava tube still retained some of its ceiling for a hundred yards.

It seemed that after the retreat of the Empire this planet had found a new purpose. It was that purpose which was most redacted, and so presumably was what Nakamura was trying to protect. Which didn't fit with the timeline of The Last's imprisonment in stasis that Samus had been guessing at. How would he know about a project that began after-

Her boot came down on another vine that lay across the path and it snapped up to wrap around her ankle with enough force to splinter the bones of an unarmored human.

The expected yank came and Samus was already aiming as the trick vine as it flipped her upside down like a snare trap. Her first shot went wild as she had no idea what she might be shooting at but the muzzle flash lit up the shadows enough to show what had grabbed her.

It stood high above the canyon floor on tall thin legs, like a red spider-crab on stilts. Samus groaned inwardly as she realized she had pushed past one of its legs, the thin branchless tree. The creature's back sprouted out into a great number of long tendrils that stretched out to and down the rock walls, colored and textured to look somewhat like the genuine blue vines that they mingled with. The mimicry was not close enough to trick any species with real intelligence, unless of course they had just fallen from space and no idea what anything on this planet was supposed to look like.

Still, she should have realized that less light should not mean more plant life. She had no one else to blame on this one.

The grasping tendril whipped her back and forth, smacking her armor against the rock walls in a series of tenderizing thuds. The tall stilt-like legs began to shift one by one as the central body slowly walked forward, opening exoskeleton plates on its underside to reveal a wicked beaked mouth.

Samus' next shot also went wild. The fact that she had disabled most of the suit's automatic functions was being made abundantly clear to her, as the creature decided to smack her against the rocks again several more times for good measure. Her armor and shields could easily take a great deal of this treatment, but it was certainly not helping her headache.

The creature began to draw back the tendril that had caught her, detaching it from the wall to reel in its dangling prey right up under its body. The predator moved slowly, evidently an ambush predator that relied on low energy expenditure to allow it to maintain such a large body in an extreme environment. It was so specialized, such a species might only exist on this one mountain range.

Samus' gun began to glow as it charged, pointed straight up past her foot as she hung upside down. She had never been much of an environmentalist. The Stellar Ecosystems Protection Agency had listed a bounty on her head for twenty years.

A earsplitting shriek rang out in time with Samus impacting the canyon floor, a piece of sizzling tendril still wrapped around her ankle. She was quietly impressed, the spider-fisher had taken that charge beam shot like a champ. Spots of blood rained down from the mangled mouth area but the creature backtracked its spindly forest of legs as the tendrils detached themselves from the walls one by one. It braced claws on each side of the narrow canyon as it climbed up off the ground and jerkily scuttled away around a rocky outcropping.

Samus sat up, the blood mixing with dust to splatter her armor. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered if these sort of events were surprising for other people.

A mile further and up ahead the bright morning sunlight shone down into a small open valley. Several of the lava tunnel canyons had crumbled together here crating a large glen that was bursting with plant life, feasting on the sunlight and the thick air trapped in by these steep walls. The cliffs around it shimmered blue as the thin needle-like leaves of the vines shifted in the breeze that caught on the lip of the high plateau. Those same breezes swept by to serve more of the ancient stone musicians, standing high above the crumbled floor of the water-carved valleys. Those larger than life statues stared down, attendants at the foot of the monumental Chozo who loomed up on the volcano side above, a mountain of stone on its own.

In this angled light all their eyes seemed to be focused on the same place. Set in one of the valley's steep walls was a gateway. The towering stone gate led into the solid rock and the darkness waiting within. According to the map this was the third temple entrance. Across the valley, plants rustled as unseen creatures scurried away when Samus stepped into the sun.

Samus glanced up at the dark blue sky. That large gateway would have been visible to the pirate forces descending from orbit, so they would be aware of this extra entrance. The west entrance was closer to their best landing site, though it was sealed as well, and the center entrance had been the site of their second attack before The Last went rogue, locking the pirate cult members away. However, this third option seemed completely undisturbed and that made Samus suspicious.

Then an uncomfortably familiar crackling screech drifted through the canyons. Well, that was an explanation.

A hundred yards away, a large metroid rose up from the hidden mouth of an older lava tube that carried off deeper beneath the surface. It must have been from the first batch Aurora released as a defense mechanism. This one had grown, bulbous dome now almost larger than an adult human, as it swayed up into the air on invisible gravitational currents. It had been feasting.

Samus raised her weapon. The gun shifted configuration and she began to feel the painful tingles on her right arm as cold bled in to brush against her metroid-modified cells. However, Samus was used to pain and right now it made her smile. She liked the odds of this particular rematch.

The metroid lunged forward, ravenous fangs crackling with electricity. Then it staggered back as a bursting impact sapped the heat from its cells. This new scream was filled with terrible pain and it was music to Samus' ears. Metroids could consume or adapt to almost any type of energy. Once they grew enough, even kinetic impacts did virtually nothing. However, the ice beam was not another energy assault. In fact, it was almost the opposite, anti-energy, slowing individual atoms in place where it struck.

Even metroids couldn't eat that.

Samus walked forward as she fired again and again. The metroid shook and staggered in the air with each impact. Then it charged at her once more, fangs snapping. Rocks splintered as it smashed into them, but Samus had dodged just to the side a second before. She had also taken that chance to charge up her ice beam for an even stronger attack.

Frost crackled along the metroid's body as it writhed in agony. It spun around blindly, then a missile explosion blasted against it, just barely missing the frozen weak point. It screamed again. Despite the terror and greed it incited, at its core the metroid was just an animal. Now it was injured and confused and like most other creatures it decided to run. The metroid shot up into the air, racing off on its own private gravity stream.

Samus let off another charged ice shot but the metroid's movements were even more erratic now and it just barely swayed out of the blast's path. The metroid spun in the air, angered by the attacks against it even if it didn't understand. It almost charged back, but then a brief bit of motion rustled through the vines on one of the branching canyon paths that led away. It was one of the large blue lizards and the metroid swerved off to pounce down just out of Samus' line of sight.

The broken valley echoed with crackling energy and a brief hissing scream. Samus lowered her weapon and turned back around. She didn't have time for a metroid hunt at the moment. Once she had defeated the other adversaries she would be able to stretch her well-practiced hand at genocide but that would have to wait. She walked between lichen covered boulders sheltering in succulents at their base as she advanced towards the arching portal into volcanic rock.

Inside the temple archway, the moaning songs of the stone musicians faded away leaving only the sound of her armored boots against the wide floor carved of living rock. The sun was rising and with it the shaft of light rapidly retreated leaving only dust and gloom as this cavernous hallway reached deeper into the mountainside. Patches of frost clinging to the corners signaled the point where sunlight never reached and then the huge passage opened up still further.

A tall circular chamber lay ahead, dominated by a large metal door and a single Chozo statue standing in front of it. The statue's head was missing, melted and torn away.

A deep voice hissed out of the darkness, speaking an infamously familiar language. "It was annoying while I waited. So I killed it."

Samus burst into the room already firing as she looked up to see Pirate Commander Ridley perched right above her entrance like a monstrous gargoyle. His arm flicked up faster than a human eye could see, taking the brunt of Samus' first attack on his scaly armor. Then bat-like wings snapped out on each side, completing the horror as he rushed into action.

The Pirate Commander was a monstrous creation of a scientific species gone mad. It was the genetic code and mind-scans of their planet's greatest warriors, generals, politicians, and criminals, merged together and then put in the body of a dragon. The Pirates had liked the result so much that they cloned a new one to lead each fleet. Multiplication did not degrade the threat either; he wore no armor, only a few heating coils against his skin and a small equipment cask at his hip. Any more was hard to make out because he was currently trying to skewer her.

Samus' booster jets fired as she skidded to the side, avoiding the bladed tail strike as she fired a volley of energy blasts. Ridley dodged away, giving Samus the space she needed with a cocky smirk of his own. She had plenty of practice fighting him, but he was truly smart. He always managed to surprise her.

"Ragh, ragh, ragh!" A harsh, barking cough echoed as Ridley's swooping flight led him skimming across the rock walls, catching hold with his claws to spin out of the way of a super missile explosion. Ridley was laughing.

"You are good to fight, Samus Aran. But unfortunately now is not the time. You see, I have an offer for you. It is an offer you will accept."

Samus braced herself, heel planted against the foot of the broken Chozo statue for leverage. Energy charged up in the barrel of her weapon, lighting the dark chamber. Ridley was here, in front of her, without any of his army and support. However, her own armor was not fully repaired and Ridley was a tough fight at the best of times. Her targeting reticle aimed down his throat as Ridley landed heavily on the smooth stone floor in front of her. He slowly rose up into a bipedal stance. Despite his skeletal thinness he still towered above her, and his faintly metallic wings flexed behind him to create a constantly shifting backdrop.

"You are as predictable as the studies indicated." Ridley grinned at her and a few drops of drool spilled from between his fangs. They splashed on the floor and ignited as the organic weapon chemicals mixed. "The offer terms, face to face where none can listen. You, me, and the Chozo, we all want the same things; this facility's treasure and the other two dead. Now, the prisoner Chozo has made his maneuver. He is winning. He is currently the most likely to be first to seize the treasure. It advances both our interests to focus on that adversary. Until the Chozo's advantage is gone, our alliance is sensible."

Samus' armor did not move at all, but inside she could feel her muscles vibrate with rage. Ridley leaned down, turning his head to meet her gaze with one slivered yellow eye.

"You know this is best. I killed all those humans, but you can kill me later. The Chozo attacks my soldiers and he attacks you. I have spent long with that one. Cooperation with him is impossible for you, he does not respect intelligence. So ally with me, and prove your strength to the Chozo. Then, once he is pushed back, you betray me and ally with him. You will hunt me and I will kill you. See, sensible."

Ridley was disgustingly confidant. Unfortunately, he was also right. He would try to betray her of course, but that assumption was already part of the offer. The Last was a criminal from the ancient Chozo empire, a phantom from the past much more threatening than the latest incarnation of the routinely slain Ridley. He was leading an insane cult, and had a measure of control over metroids. He had also currently shown more personal inclination to kill Samus than this Ridley, which was unsettling.

The bony dragon shifted as he loomed over her. Once Samus' hatred had burned so fiercely it threatened to destroy her. Ridley had killed her first parents and destroyed her entire home colony. But then decades had passed That hatred was not gone, but time and repeated executions had worn down the edges. It was no longer fire, it was just a verdict. Ridley would die, nothing fancier than that. But other things could be more urgent.

Samus lowered her weapon. The Pirate commander could be second on the kill list. However, she was not going to give this monster the pleasure of saying it.

Ridley understood anyway. He tilted his head back, exposing his fangs as he laughed. "Ragh, ragh! You are intelligent. That is good. You will not kill me now, as you wish my forces to fight the Chozo's. Kin to kill kin, it is good for you. For now, I assent. Go on your way. Enter the temple and hunt our enemy with my cooperation."

He beat his wings as he jumped up, getting extra height as he sailed over her towards the exit. Samus let the dust swirl around her and watched his blip on her sensor readout, but did not turn. Then Ridley landed a dozen yards behind her, claws scratching on the ground.

"Oh, I remember. You must still wish to free the human child. The speaker on the radio. Well, I have something to show you."

The click of a latch sounded through the chamber. Ridley lifted something out of his equipment cask. Then he said, "You were late."

And a little human voice repeated, "You were late."

Samus turned and looked back to see the thing Ridley held in his hand. Her suit scans had rated Roger's transmissions as authentic. However, sound analysis only told her that those words came from a human mouth. The mouth was intact. Above the nose and below the vocal cords, Ridley had not needed the rest.

Little plastic bellows worked to provide the necessary air and a computer uplink controlled the muscle nerves. Three pounds of organics in an artificial housing.

Ridley watched her and his lips curled up exposing every one of his hundred teeth in a monstrous grin. "The sight of you is truly pleasurable. I regret now that I performed the excision so quickly. If I could have killed the child right now in front of you I would know ecstasy. An intelligent enemy is an excellent thing. I can torment you, and you will do nothing because it does not change the necessity of our alliance. You hate me but you will not kill me here."

Beyond perception, the universe chilled around Samus. Time and probability crystalized with like ice, ripping and tearing the softer stuff. Possibilities were clear, as well as their consequences.

Ridley breathed heavily. "I know your thoughts. That harm is not kill. That I can command my forces as well with fewer limbs. However, we both know there are hunting metroids out there. If you wound me now I will likely be consumed on my return journey. So, you must do nothing."

Samus had not lifted her weapon. She stood beside the half ruined statue, looking back at Ridley backlit by the distant sunbathed end of the tunnel.

Ridley's tongue snaked around his fangs. "Your eyes. There is no fear, only still and unbendable fury. It is beautiful. Goodbye, Samas Aran. I will see you again."

Then he turned and flew off down the tunnel and out of sight.

Samus breathed deeply. Then she slowly turned and walked forward. The supposedly sealed temple door slid open for her, inviting her into the dark abyss within.

...

(Author's Note: And comment or input is greatly appreciated. Hearing feedback from people is the whole reason I post online.)