Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The atmosphere was heavy in the large conference room, despite it only being occupied by three people at the moment. Commissioner Lafelcht, after thirty years managing the finer details of various operations for the Galactic Federation, was no stranger to meeting with the many bounty hunters who came under their employ. Only she did not expect the two people she chose for this job to be this unenthusiastic at the prospect of cooperating with one another…

That was her fault, she was now realizing. She should have verified what kind of history existed between these two before she called them here.

To the commissioner’s left sat the single woman in the universe who no longer needed any introduction, despite her status as a mere urban legend to the common folks. Though she was a human like Lafelcht herself, Samus Aran’s blonde head appeared minuscule between her Power Suit’s bulky shoulder pieces, giving her a very distinct uncanny look. Her face was expressionless as ever, as she fidgeted using her free hand with a cup of tea she had not sipped from since it was served.

And to Lafelcht’s right was a lanky humanoid, the Vhozon warrior Noxus, who unlike his colleague was dressed not in his usual armor, but in extravagant, shimmering robes that were deemed the proper regalia for the men of his race. His clear eyes contrasted with his deep blue, almost black skin, as he looked directly at her with a faint smile, though several of his numerous optics sometimes darted toward his reluctant colleague, returning her glares with mockery matching her contempt.

The Federation agent finally broke the awkward silence, with a resigned sigh. “I realize it was presumptuous of me to call you two here bypassing the usual background check. But surely you two can set your differences aside long enough to hear out the mission debrief? Naturally, you will both be free to agree or decline to take part in the operation afterward.”

“I have no issue with this, Commissioner.” Noxus responded, smirking at his fellow bounty hunter. “We are all professionals here, aren’t we?”

Samus crossed her arms and laid back in her chair, shifting her gaze to Lafelcht.

“With all due respect, Commissioner, you know I work alone. If you needed another self-righteous boyscout to make a matching pair, wouldn’t Falcon have been a better candidate? Or is he still too busy making an arse of himself on the racetracks?”

Lafelcht retorted “Very funny, Aran. Yes, I knew you would be reluctant, but there is a reason I’ve considered you of all people for this mission. Now, may I please finally begin?”

Samus’s silence was as good an answer as she was going to get. Noxus crossed his long, segmented claws under his chin, and both bounty hunters turned their attention to the holographic screen that now materialized behind Lafelcht.

The rundown was straightforward enough. Samus and Noxus were both called here for an ordinary hostage situation. The Ashlings, one of the lesser known factions of intergalactic bandits, hijacked a spacecraft full of innocent civilians, including one Federation official. They were now asking for a colossal quantity of rare, expensive ore in exchange for the hostages’ safe return. Samus’s brief scoff wordlessly expressed her certainty that they wouldn’t even have been called had some politician’s life not been endangered.

The Commissioner continued, giving a brief portrait of the two masterminds behind the mass kidnapping; There was Andron, a massive armored being of an unidentified species, and his right-hand man Tiamach, an Urtraghian, the same species as the many Space Pirates who usurped the name “Zebesian”, whom both Samus and Noxus had spent the better part of their careers arresting and/or terminating.

“Unsurprising.” The Vhozon scoffed. “Being the scum of the universe is in their blood.”

Lafelcht went on, explaining how the group itself was rather small but well organized, gathering under that same emblem, the ancient symbol Xi: ξ, painted in yellow. Their MO was to use warfare automatons of their creation and other complex machinery to do their bidding. As she spoke, blurry footage of the hijacked vessel, being physically pushed off its course by massive winged robots that almost looked like living creatures appeared on the screen. And then…

“This is the message the Federation received yesterday. I ask that you watch it carefully. Especially you, Aran.”

The Commissioner stepped away from the screen, and the video flickered on, showing Andron, the armored giant, sitting, his arms crossed over the yellow spray-painted emblem on his chestplate. Behind him were several of his underlings, all sporting heavy combat gear and helmets, all armed with all kinds of weaponry, all sporting the same color and emblem on their chestplate.

Andron, whose voice sounded so distorted by his suit it seemed a lot deeper than what should be physically possible, calmly gave his terms, requesting a colossal amount of Rimerite, a rare and expensive ore mostly used in the most onerous jewelry. A single shard could be worth as much as a brand new spaceship in this economy!

Common crooks after riches. Sounded a lot more ordinary than her usual jobs, Samus thought.

“ Every single one of the thirty-six hostages is safe, accounted for, fed, and treated with the respect and dignity the Federation never showed the likes of us. But there are limits to even our hospitality.”

Andron wagged his finger at somebody off-camera. Just then, from the side he pointed to, a pale-looking alien in official Federation attire was pushed down by one of his underlings. The unlucky senator scrambled back to his knees, mumbling for his captors’ mercy, while the bandit who shoved him pointed the cannon of his weapon at his head, prompting him to curl up into a ball. The camera lingered on the man’s terrified face, and the gloved, long-fingered hand of the one menacing him.

Samus squinted at the screen.

Andron’s voice continued:

“We expect the ransom to be delivered in exactly forty hours on Asteroid 155X2, in the Eugrens Star System, after which every hostage will be safely returned. And I would advise against attempting to cross us. Otherwise... ”

The camera tilted up, facing the armed bandit directly. For a split second, above the yellow smeared chestplate and what looked like a raggedy toga, the recruit’s face could be seen. He appeared surprisingly youthful, but it was something else that Samus found shocking.

The Ashling soldier was the only one not wearing a helmet. He had black feathers, a beak of the same hue, and his pupilless eyes could be seen even under his large tinted goggles.

This avian humanoid aimed his weapon directly at the camera. There was a flash, and then nothing more.

Lafelcht turned toward Samus, expecting her reaction. The bounty hunter stared at the now blank screen for a few more seconds before she swallowed her spit and found her voice again.

“This is the reason you called me? Because one of them is a Chozo?”

The commissioner nodded. The holographic screen flickered out of existence.

Samus rested her hand on her chin, pondering on what she’d just seen. While a few rare Chozo survivors remained here and there in the galaxy, they were all at least dozens of centuries old, far too reclusive to have anything to do with Zebes, and they all knew it wouldn’t be long before their race went completely extinct. Since eons ago, the Chozo’s collective curse as a species, for harnessing powers far beyond mortal capabilities, had been the loss of their ability to have children; to reproduce.

So for one of them of this young age to even exist… That warranted more than a simple investigation.

Noxus made his wrists crack, snapping Samus out of her reflection.

“And here I thought that after your last adventure on Zebes, you would finally be free from all of your personal baggage,” he said.

Samus side-eyed her rival. “I had no idea you were aware of my connection to Zebes.”

“You hardly seemed in the mood to chat when we met on the Alimbic Cluster. Not to mention you shot at me on sight.”

“That’s funny. If I recall correctly, you were the one who attacked me first.”

“Could you two save this for later?” Lafelcht clapped to get back their attention. “Now that we’re ready to move on, I am far from done with the briefing.”

They spent one more hour going over the details of the operation. The Federation would pretend to comply with the Ashlings’ demand and deliver half of the required shipment of Rimerite to the Asteroid, and then demand the liberation of some of the hostages. Lafelcht herself would serve as the CO of the operation. Noxus and Samus were to await her orders while remaining close by, hidden in their respective gunships. Samus was to discreetly follow the cargo back to the Ashlings’ base, take it down, secure the hostages, and if possible, capture or terminate the leaders. Meanwhile, Noxus would be intercepting the first batch of ransomed hostages on their way to the Asteroid, and the second shipment of Rimerite should Samus take too much time.

Neither bounty hunter had any problem with this plan, although Noxus spent quite some time staring at his “colleague” and gauging her every reaction. Finally Lafelcht asked them whether or not they accepted the job.

They both said yes.

Before dismissing them, the Commissioner reminded them that the mission would be taking place on the next day and insisted they both get some rest until then. Rooms were prepared for the two of them within the Federation’s barracks, among the quarters of higher-ranking officials. “Though you are both free to sleep in your ships should you so choose,” she concluded, looking straight at Samus, whom she was aware cared very little for hospitality.

Samus had put her helmet back on. She and Noxus were now walking away from the conference room - going in the same direction, but not particularly feeling like they were walking together.

Still, when they both arrived in front of the elevator that would bring them to their lodgings, the Vhozon, after putting his claw over the panel on the wall, thought it appropriate to initiate some small talk.

“Gray Voice was a friend of my mother.”

That name alone was enough for Samus to snap her head toward the alien.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You didn’t wonder how I knew about your past?”

“It seemed too trivial to ask.” She looked back at the closed door of the elevator. “Just because I don’t go around flaunting that the Chozo raised me as one of theirs doesn’t mean I intended to keep it a secret.”

The soft whirring of the approaching elevator continued to echo down the shaft. Neither of them spoke for another minute.

“I assume he came to your planet during his years as a bounty hunter?” Samus eventually asked.

“Hmm. And he remained on good terms with my people well after he retired. My mother and him saw eye to eye on a lot of subjects. He is one of the few outside of our race who seemed to understand how fragile the order of this galaxy could be. And what needed to be done to protect and restore it.”

Samus looked up at the ceiling. That sounded believable enough. She kept fond memories of Gray Voice, even if he never was the most affectionate of parental figures, but this belief the Vhozon all shared, that the greater good came first, no matter the cost, did sound like an ideology her surrogate father would have seen eye-to-eye with.

And yet something about this didn't sit right with her.

“On his very last visit, he told us of the poor human orphan he and his brethren took in. So when years down the line, I heard of a human bounty hunter who single-handedly took down the Pirate Base on Zebes equipped with Chozo tech, the connection seemed obvious.”

The door of the elevator opened. Noxus stepped inside first. Samus kept a distance between them before she also followed.

“I could see only two reasons why a solitary, completely unknown bounty hunter would demand to be put in charge of the Metroid menace. Either she had a death wish, or she had some personal stakes in the matter.”

Samus didn’t react. She pressed the panel on the side of the elevator and the door shut behind them as the whirring started once more.

“So it was simply a lucky guess.” She finally said.

“I prefer to call it instinct.”

“You can justify a lot of things with that excuse.”

“You mean like when you couldn’t finish your job on SR388?”

Samus abruptly turned to face the Vhozon, who was smiling, showing uneven fangs with the satisfaction of having successfully chipped away at her stone cold facade. She looked away from him once more. Her suit’s left gauntlet creaked just a little.

“I set out to rid SR388 of the hostile lifeforms that inhabited it. Nothing more, nothing less. I did not leave anything unfinished.”

“Oh, please. We all know the only thing that stayed your hand when this hatchling imprinted upon you was mere sentimentality. Now, I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a sign of weakness, but it was a colossal mistake nonetheless. I imagine this is what Gray Voice would have told you. And given your motivations for accepting our new job today, it seems you haven’t learned.”

Through her visor, the bounty hunter glared daggers at the other.

“Don’t try and pretend you knew anything about Gray Voice.”

More silence. Then she spoke again.

“Let’s imagine for a second your wild conjectures have any semblance of truth. I am my own person. Not even his disapproval would make me regret my actions on that day. Nor do I have any doubt about what I will do on our mission tomorrow.”

The Vhozon squinted his numerous eyes at the human, staring back at her obscured face. He looked away first, facing the door, not in resignation but in similar defiance.

“It is a miracle how you survived this long in this line of work with those unnecessary platitudes dragging you down. You may be a hero to all of them, but you cannot hope to bring justice upon this universe if you let your biases dictate your conduct. I hope you do realize that.”

The light of another dozen floors passed by in front of the elevator. And finally Noxus figuratively went for her throat.

“But, tell me, Samus. Was it worth condemning the forty eight who died on Ceres Station, for the sake of an abomination that perished anyway?”

His tone was calm, he wasn’t smiling, he didn’t hide the resentment and disappointment on his face. But his words struck right where he hoped they would, and they both knew this.

The bounty hunter froze. And the next thing her rival knew, she was punching the control panel. The entire elevator shook to a sudden stop, and the doors opened.

“See you on the mission.”

Impossible for her to tell whether Noxus was satisfied with his, for a lack of better words, low blow, or was humbled by her outburst. She did not even bother looking at him as she stomped away. Nor did she even know which floor she was on. The only thing she knew for certain, when the doors closed behind her, was where she was headed. The command center’s barracks had to have a gym, a shooting range, or any form of training ground somewhere.

Right now, she was feeling a biting urge to take her anger out on something.

Samus did not speak to Noxus, or to anybody else for that matter, until she arrived at the command center’s central docking bay shortly before the operation began. The Vhozon was also here, this time donning his signature purple armor, in deep conversation with one of the commanders who would supervise the initial shipment. He cut his talk short when he saw Samus walk by, but neither of them uttered a word to each other.

As she packed her belongings into her gunship and went over her arsenal and the state of her vehicle, she thought she and Noxus would keep ignoring each other. Only he decided to come and see her shortly before they were supposed to take off.

She did not even acknowledge his presence, until he saw fit to resume his tirade from the elevator.

“You do realize you may have to kill the boy, right?”

Filtered through his helmet, his voice sounded like a distant breeze, with just enough of a threatening edge while still being recognizable as the same condescending tone she heard the day before.

She slammed the hatch she had been working on shut.

“I will do what has to be done to keep the hostages safe. What I do afterward is none of your business.”

She began tinkering with the holographic interface of her Power Suit. Noxus did not want to let the conversation end here.

“You may not believe me, but it was never my intention to antagonize you. I simply ask that you heed my warning. Foolish idealist that you may be, this galaxy would be all the poorer if it were to lose the one who rid it of Ridley once and for all.”

Samus’s hand visibly twitched over the virtual keys. She turned the interface off, lowered her arms and finally deigned to look where she could guess her colleague’s many eyes were beyond his faceplate.

“Worry about the mission and about yourself, then. I have no use for your concern.”

The Vhozon asked with no hesitation: “Do you intend to ask the boy about his origins? If there are others like him?”

“I do not intend to do anything until the job is done. I will prioritize the hostages’ lives, and then my own. But otherwise, if you really want to know, I have no intention of using lethal force unless I have no other option. And this goes for any of these bandits. Not only the Chozo.”

“You’re too naive. They’re terrorists.”

“They’re a relatively small group of outcasts who do not realize they bit off more than they could chew by targeting the Federation.” Samus retorted. “Kill one of them, and the rest will want your head on a spike. You don’t want to find out the hard way what these people are capable of when they have nothing to lose.”

“If they would seek revenge over atonement, then the galaxy would have been better off without them to begin with.”

The conversation was cut short when an announcement rang through the docking bay. The operation would start soon. The ship containing the first shipment would depart shortly. This was Samus and Noxus’s cue to get going.

“Remember what I said, if… when you come face to face with that child. ”

Samus acknowledged these last words with a short hum. She adjusted a few more settings on her Power Suit, before she jumped to the top of her gunship in a graceful somersault. She gave one last look at the Vhozon warrior before the hatch on the roof activated and she was lowered into the cockpit. She watched from the side of the window as the lanky insectoid marched to his own spacecraft.

The operation was finally starting. Samus remained fully alert over the commands of her gunship, observing the Asteroid from afar, concealed behind a cluster of the many debris that floated in the Eugrens Star System. Lafelcht was keeping her informed of what was going on through her radio. Already, the armored giant Andron and fifteen of his underlings had made contact with the Federations’ men, and they were currently attaching the first casing of their loot to one of their giant winged beastlike machines. It appeared unlikely their base of operation was hidden on the Asteroid itself, meaning they would proceed with the initial plan and tail the robot as it retreated.

At Lafelcth’s signal, Samus prepared to take off. From the gunship’s cockpit, she spotted the massive metal contraption leaving the Asteroid. It was gliding through the vacuum of space with blue flames blazing out of its rear and each of its segmented wings.

The thing really was a sight to behold, when it wasn’t obscured by the low quality of the only footage they had of the initial attack. Its head had a canine-like snout and a sharp-fanged maw to match, and it was adorned with multiple visible armaments, mimicking claws and bug stingers. She wondered for a time if it was based on the likeness of anything that existed within the galaxy or in the legends of its many cultures.

When she was confident she left the robot enough of a head start not to be immediately spotted, Samus activated the cloaking device the Federation installed onto her gunship, and she began flying after it, remaining in the shadow of the debris as to not set off whatever radar the thing could be equipped with.

She’d been flying after it for a little over eight minutes when she spotted a blot of nothingness move strangely a few yards ahead of her. She realized it was probably Noxus’s ship. He was flying a lot closer to the mechanical beast than she was, no doubt hoping to intercept the first wave of liberated hostages. Foolish, she thought. The floating monstrosity might have been unable to detect him as of now, but a manned transport ship coming the other way would surely notice the blinking and wavering of nothing in space as surely as she did.

Lafelcht’s voice was heard again. The Ashlings on the Asteroid, including Andron, were in an uneasy standoff with the Federation’s agents while they awaited for the first batch of prisoners to arrive… And just as she said that, she cried:

“ W-Wait… That’s not right. Another ship just arrived. ”

Samus’s eyes briefly went to the communication hub on one of her screens. She continued to maneuver her ship among the floating rock formations, while waiting with bated breath for another word from the Commissioner. She wasn’t sure what to expect. Did they get set up for a surprise attack? Were the Ashlings now planning on ambushing the Federation agents? Add them to the prisoners they already had and demand even more riches from the galaxy over? Or could it be that…

“It’s… It’s them! It’s the first twenty hostages, they’re free!”

The blurry reflection that was floating alongside her stopped dead in its tracks. She flew right past it.

“What?! Hold on!” Noxus’s voice crackled through. “This is… This is absurd! I didn’t come across any transport ship and I am still tailing the shipment to their base. ”

“Andron must have had them come ahead of time, assuming we would pull something like that. At the very least, they’re safe. One of them is injured but it’s nothing too concerning. They’re currently being put back in our care. Noxus, we don’t know what Andron might be plotting next if anything, so come back immediately, but stay out of sight. Aran, continue as planned. ”

“Roger.”

After a little over an hour of tailing the creature, without it ever showing signs of knowing of her presence, the beast holding the container dived straight upward toward a sizable rock that gravitated a larger planetoid. Its entire body ignited as it approached the celestial body, meaning the place was dense enough to have its own atmosphere. Samus clicked her tongue in vague annoyance, realizing keeping up at the same speed as the target would most certainly reveal her position. She couldn’t be certain the Ashlings would think to monitor the sky above their head, but the mere suspicion a cloaked vessel might be nearby could be enough of an excuse for them to get rid of the second batch of hostages.

She brought her engine to the max of its power, hoping the underside thrusters would be enough to slow her descent as the rock’s gravity took hold of her spacecraft, all while keeping her concealed.

She had almost pierced into the atmosphere when her radars alerted her of a rapidly approaching object. She barely had the time to run a scan on the presence for it to reveal itself to her very eyes. A familiar purple, cross-shaped ship soared right past her at incredible speed, piercing straight through, right in the same direction the monster carrying the container of Rimerite disappeared.

That was Noxus. But she thought he’d returned to Lafelcth, as he was ordered? What could he possibly be doing here? Samus didn’t have to wonder for long, as she flew after him. She had a vague idea of what could be motivating her rival.

She heard enough about the Vhozon to be aware of their obsession with honor. And now it appeared like the wound to Noxus’s pride after the fake out from earlier was far deeper than his obsession with the law and order of the Federation.

Damn hypocrite.

Her left hand flew to her ship’s communication hub. Noxus was now offline. No doubt because Lafelcht would have asked him to stand down otherwise. Samus sighed, really hoping that, by some miracle, either her colleague hadn’t been spotted, or either his presence wasn’t enough of a reason for the Ashlings to call off the deal and kill the remaining prisoners.

The enemy’s robot disappeared from her radar, but Noctus’s ship thankfully didn’t. It led Samus right to an impressive crater, at the bottom of which the letter Xi, the emblem of the Ashlings, had been marked upon the very ground. No doubt that this place was where their base was located… A sprawling facility, surely some kind of scientific watchpoint from ages past, was built against a considerable chunk of the crater’s wall. 

She found Noxus’s ship, with readings telling her he was still on board, in the shadows of one of the rock formations on the side opposite to the buildings. Feeling time was of the essence, Samus also landed in the shade of the canyons, feeling safe enough to deactivate the cloaking module.

She raised from her command seat and went over what she knew and what she was about to do. The atmosphere wasn’t toxic, and the gravity was a lot looser than that of most celestial bodies, meaning she wouldn’t need to waste energy keeping herself moving or, for that matter, breathing. She would be able to make it to the enemy’s base by foot, and hopefully carry out her operation before her rival did anything foolish.

The image of the young Chozo shooting at the camera flashed in her mind.

Chapter Text

The first thing Samus realized when she went outside and hopped off the roof hatch of her gunship was the high temperature of the planetoid’s atmosphere. It was unpleasant, but she'd seen worse, and it wasn't even inconvenient enough to trigger her Varia Suit's cooling systems. This satellite rock was at just the right distance from the Eugrens system’s only sun for the hot air to be as tolerable as it could be on any desert planet. She would have been able to take her helmet off here without her face melting off, though, with the strong winds that carried the sand battering at her visor, doing so sounded like a bad idea.

She walked toward the base, staying in the shadows of the rock formations, through crevices on the uneven terrain. The celestial object they were on was angled just right for its atmosphere to give everything around an orange hue, while the sky itself was dotted with the faraway glow of other heavenly bodies. It wasn’t without reminding her what the twilight hours looked like on K2-L.

From there, she realized the Xi symbol she saw from high above had not been merely traced on the ground but carved into the rock itself, forming deep, round trenches a few meters deep, filled with water that definitely didn't fall there naturally. Out of curiosity, she brought a hand to the side of her helmet, activating her X-Ray Scope. The world briefly turned dark, the rock formations fading into a mess of green and blue stains, and surely enough she found what she was looking for. There was an opening, some kind of pipeline system, sprawling underground all the way from the canal to the distant enemy base, easily accessed through a grid deeper in the symbol’s midsection.

Samus got a little closer. Given the clear state of the water and the absence of smell, it didn’t seem to be sewage. Though it seemed unlikely the bandits would keep tanks for their personal consumption outside, exposed to the elements. The most likely theory was that they used these reserves as cooling liquid. Meaning she could probably follow these pipes and directly access the part where they kept their heavy machinery, including the mechanical monstrosity she just tailed. If she went down there, found and took these down before they could be activated and sent out, that would make her work a lot easier. Just as planned, she would be rescuing the remaining hostages, and then incapacitating Tiamach to bring him back to Lafelcht if the opportunity presented itself.

She quickly opened her suit’s interface and took one last look at her arsenal. She cursed under her breath realizing she didn’t think about equipping her suit with its Gravity module. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to stay in the water for too long…

Her plan properly devised, Samus dived into the canal, going against the current until she found the entrance to the pipe system. It seemed pretty narrow, but still manageable. She blasted the grid off, and slipped through in Morph Ball mode.

From there, it was all a matter of finding a way into the base proper. And surely enough, the long winding pipeline eventually led her to an open duct, which she could very easily punch her way out of to climb back to solid ground. The bounty hunter stayed alert after her landing, imagining the ruckus she caused would have alerted the enemy. But save for the quietly trickling waters, everything in the dark corridors seemed silent. Eerily so.

Odd, she thought. But maybe there was some logic to it after all. The Ashlings, despite their access to this colossal complex they most definitely didn't build themselves, did appear like quite a small gang. Perhaps she just got lucky she arrived in a part of the base they never had any use for.

Something was jamming her radar, though. She could still detect readings from a lifeform she recognized as Noxus somewhere on the surface, but everything underground and within the structure was a mess of scrambled data. She couldn’t be certain of how far she was from the enemies, and the remaining hostages. It was like there were no other lifeforms in the base.

Shrugging it off and guessing she would have to do her navigation on her own, Samus carefully began following the pipes she could still see through the metal grid floor, intending to go with her initial strategy. Without machines and heavy armament, their foes would probably be a lot easier to take down. If she was fast enough, she could probably even be done before Noxus even found his way inside and ruined everything.

Here it was finally, at the end of a corridor, Samus found an arch that no doubt was once some kind of door back when this structure served its initial purpose. She could hear water gushing, and it appeared to be completely lit up.

She stepped in, and just as planned, she found a large, spacious storage room with dozen of neatly aligned war turrets,  some standard security robots, some more unidentified mechanical beings, as well as four or five of those mechanical flying beasts, hanging upside down, their claws crossed over their chests, their wings wrapped over them like they were sleeping. As she passed by one of the many “aisles”, she noticed something. First that one of the odd-looking drones laid dismantled in the middle of what appeared to be a messy engineering station. And then that someone else was there.

Samus immediately pressed her back against an array of deactivated battle droids, squinting her eyes at the massive silhouette. When suddenly, there was a whirring noise, and a massive metal claw wrapped around her chest as one of the machines behind her seemingly awakened. Samus immediately flipped toward her mechanical attacker, aiming for its glowing yellow eyes and blasting a hole through its metallic skull. The artificial monster fell limp, dragging down two of the inactive copies along with itself. Samus swiftly passed her left hand over her flank where she was touched. Just a scratch.

She turned toward the engineering station, expecting a reaction from the person there, but to her surprise they hadn’t moved at all…

And for another surprise… Even with his back turned, this giant armor was far too recognizable. This person was none other than Andron. The leader of the Ashlings.

The very same person who was also on Asteroid 155X2 at this very moment.

She raised her arm cannon his way. Just then, his entire body shook, as if he just noticed her presence. His head suddenly perked up, and he very slowly turned to face her. He was easily over five feet taller than she was. Not that Samus wasn’t used to her enemies looming over her, but she could fully understand how the Federation found him intimidating enough to take seriously.

“My. I knew the Federation would try to cheat its way out of its end of our bargain and I was eager to see which famous bounty hunter they would send for our heads. But I would never in a million years have thought it would be you, Samus Aran.”

He took a ground-shaking step toward Samus, who immediately began charging a shot. In response, he raised his arm and closed his fist. The gauntlet of his armor folded, revealing a crescent-shaped laser blade.

“Now, I’m aware of your penchant for slaughter, my friend, but do we have to resort to violence? If you take me down, that would mean the deal is off, and surely you know what that means, right? Don’t you have enough blood on your hands, already?”

Samus stared into Andron’s featureless faceplate. While she didn’t doubt that to him, the green light of her visor appeared as similarly unscrutinizable, she did feel her brow furrow and her jaw drop with a silent, surprised sigh at his words.

A penchant for slaughter. Her? She only ever did what she was hired for, and she had a reputation as one of the pickiest bounty hunters when it came to choosing her battles. She only ever did what was right for the greater good. For the eternally peaceful galaxy Gramps and Gray Voice dreamed of.

It did occur to her before that, to those for whom she was little more than a whisper in the wind, her name could be associated with the death she sowed first, and the necessity of her deeds second. But never did she think she would be so directly confronted to this reality.

She didn't like it.

The light emanating from her cannon subsided and she took a step back.

“You didn’t give the Federation any chance at diplomacy, now, did you? If you want to talk, let’s talk, then.”

After another silent moment, Andron’s blade retracted into his suit. Slowly, he crossed his arms over his chest.

“I don’t see you lowering that cannon.”

He followed his sentence with a blow of static she imagined had been a spiteful huff under that helmet. Samus responded.

“I am not heartless. But I am not foolish either. I just want you to know I see no reason to attack you or yours without being provoked.”

“I commend your honesty. Maybe almost to the point I would call it naiveté. You waltzed right in the middle of our armory. It would be a trivial matter for me to just activate every single one of the units stored here and have them tear you apart.”

Without moving his arm, he pointed a finger toward the fallen robot that just failed to restrain her. Samus lowered her canon a little, while still keeping a firm grip on it with her other hand.

“Multiple heists. Intrusion on private agents’ property. Burglary. Blackmail. Petty theft. There was never a single death in any of the incidents the Ashlings were involved in. I want to believe you’re not the monster the Federation told me you were.”

Andron did not respond. He did not move either.

In fact he did not seem to breathe. Samus couldn’t help tilting her head, taking a step toward the colossus. Then, all at once, he shook back to life, as if he had briefly fallen asleep. He seemed to catch his breath for a brief instant filled with more white noise from the speakers on his armor.

“Who would have thought a bounty hunter of all people would recognize our ethics. I suppose I should be grateful not to be just another mark on your list, then. But you are still here to take back our payment and our guests by force, aren’t you? Maybe put a definitive stop to our organization in the process?”

Samus pointed her cannon toward him again.

“You may have shown your prisoners some basic decency, and I care little for what ideology that senator you used as leverage represents. But I can never forgive you for involving innocents in your latest stunt.”

The Ashlings’ leader remained completely unfazed. There was that static-filled sigh again.

“And so, are you here to deliver your own vigilante justice? Or ask me to surrender so you can turn me over to the Federation’s courts? Hmm, I imagine the former would…”

He stopped speaking halfway through his sentence again. Except maybe, this time, there was… nothing natural in the way his voice disappeared. It simply dwindled and stopped.

Samus felt confused. Not by his words, but by the strangeness of the situation. She took a cursory glance at the scene. And then something clicked.

It made sense. Too much sense. She should have realized there was no way he could be in two places at once!

Swiftly, she lifted her cannon and aimed it straight at Andron’s head, all while charging up a beam. He did not react immediately. The crackling sigh echoed again from his suit, and once more he stumbled in place, as though he’d just been pulled awake.

“What do y-”

She shot his head clean off.

“-ou think you’re doing?”

He finished his sentence at the same time whatever scrap metal remained from his helmet clanked heavily onto the ground. Andron remained steady on his legs. There was no blood. No charred flesh. No death. This whole time, Samus now realized, she had been talking to a hollow automaton.

“I see. This is how you could be on the Asteroid and here at the same time.” She said without missing a beat.

“Tch. I knew it would be a matter of time before you noticed.” The man she just beheaded responded, still frozen in place as he no longer bothered with gestures a being of flesh would make. His voice was still coming from the gap where his head once was.

Samus figured she probably also broke something in that heavy machine, because the filter that altered Andron’s voice seemed to have gone off as well. His real voice was lighter, squeakier. More juvenile, more… like that of a young man.

… Of course. That was him .

“It’s a real shame. I was quite enjoying our little chat, but… ”

Samus shot the mouthpiece-robot again, this time through its shoulder. It didn’t move, didn’t flinch. The real Andron speaking through it only groaned under an electric crackle.

“Will you stop doing that?”

“You’re stalling. You’re somewhere close to or inside this building, and you intend to escape with the Rimerite once the second shipment arrives, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Well. If you already guessed that much, why are you wasting your time asking?”

Samus huffed right back, bringing her hand to her hip.

“I came here primarily to save your prisoners. And it is no skin off my back if you manage to get away with the ransom. I am getting paid either way. Though, the other reason I accepted this mission was that I was curious… about who you are. I want to meet you face to face.”

The automaton did not immediately give her an answer. After another brief pause, the crackling happened again, and the empty husk calmly declared:

“Really? You want to know who I am? I am Andron. Leader of the Ashlings. That’s all.”

“That’s not what I mean. Take a good look at me. Doesn’t my suit remind you of something?”

This time she spread her arms and turned to the ceiling. Surely enough, she spotted a little blinking device high above their heads that was probably the camera the armor’s puppeteer was seeing her through.

After a few seconds, the youthful voice let out an audible gasp, and almost immediately after, whatever loudspeaker was in the machine was completely shut down, leaving the bounty hunter with a trickling of garbled white noise.

Samus sighed, her arms falling to her side. That was the real Andron’s response. He most definitely recognized that her Power Suit was Chozo technology.

But unlike her, he didn’t seem interested in knowing someone else with a connection to the ancestral civilization. And she couldn’t begin to guess what his reasons could be.

He didn’t want to tell her where he came from. Samus thought for a second she would have to leave it at that. She brought a hand to the side of her helmet and scanned the area once more. Something inside the base was still jamming her tracking and cartography modules. And from his absence on the surface, she could assume Noxus had finally found his way in.

Great. Just great. She hoped for Andron he was hiding well, because he would be surprised to learn that despite her apparent reputation as a stone-cold killer, the Vhozon’s view of justice was a lot harsher than her own. That meant she would have to start by seeking out her rival, then the hostages, then to safely lead them to her gunship. By then another mechanical beast will have delivered the second container of Rimerite, and Andron would already be very far away.

Somehow she still trusted the enemy wouldn’t simply kill the hostages even now. Perhaps foolishly so. She still decided she needed to hurry and leave this warehouse, when she noticed a thin red laser point at her chest.

She froze and looked around for the source of the light, when another red pointer targeted her. Then she heard more clicking, more whirring. She spat under her breath, realizing that as a way to stall her further, Andron had reactivated every single war machine in the engineering bay, including the spare flying beasts, the turrets, and the humanoid robots, including those like the one that tried to seize her earlier.

She noted that a lot of them were wearing some familiar helmets, and sported a certain emblem on their chest… Some were even outfitted in gear they oh so clearly didn’t need.

Props to stage a threatening message, perhaps.

She raised her cannon, aiming at one of them.

“He’s played us all for fools…”

Destroying the various machines that were sent after her was not easy, but Samus could make it out of the engineering bay relatively unharmed. The turrets and dummy soldiers were easily dispatched with a few blasts, but taking care of the flying beasts nearly completely depleted her supply of missiles. She would have to go the rest of the mission with only one left.

The battle wouldn’t have had to drag on, had she just set a handful of bombs on the obvious support pillars around the room, but she just couldn’t take the risk of making the floors above collapse, as it was likely the prisoners were up there.

She wouldn’t gamble with innocents’ lives.

She found no staircase or easy way up to the main base, but tracing her steps back to the corridor with the water duct she burst through, she found a defunct elevator shaft. The panel on the side did not react to her touch, nor did it seem like there was any wiring or cabin she could hold onto. More than likely, Andron had his own way of coming and going to this floor.

That was not a mystery that she needed to see resolved, however. Coming up with her own solutions was more her style. She passed her hand over the smooth stone wall in the back of the empty elevator shaft and looked up. The darkness up above seemed to stretch endlessly.

Didn’t matter. As three of her precious little friends once taught her, all she needed to get to the next floor was two opposite surfaces, and some patience.

Wall jumping her way to the next floor only took her a couple of minutes. After reaching it, she could very easily push the sliding door out of her way and make it into a part of the base that wasn’t as direly dilapidated. There was still rubble, wear, and cracks here and there, but it appeared the building’s current occupants at the very least tread the ground there on a much more regular basis.

Guessing there was no point in concealing her presence, Samus began running through each corridor, throwing doors open, blasting the locks off of those that were closed. She found nothing. Not Andron. Not the hostages. From the machinery and spilled documents she found there, she could guess this old ruin was up until not too long ago a Federation-backed aeronomical research facility studying the properties of the Eugrens system’s sun.

On the next floor, she wasn’t any luckier. And then, on the third one, she heard echoing footsteps and saw a shadow approaching at an angle between two corridors. She held her arm cannon, getting ready to fight, when she recognized the cyan glow, lanky form, and digitigrade posture of her fellow bounty hunter in his own combat suit.

She stepped into his view, her cannon still raised. Noxus, surprised, stopped his course and pointed at her with his weapon as well, before he let out an audible sigh and they both lowered their arms.

He asked: “What are you doing here?”

“Following my orders. I should be the one asking.”

“I had to make sure the vessel carrying our remaining hostages didn’t simply sneak past us, now, didn’t I? Though in truth, it’s more that I had… a hunch I needed to verify. About our so-called enemies.”

“You guessed that they already freed all the hostages before they took the ransom, right? And you found nobody on the floors you already explored?”

She could tell that the Vhozon’s four eyes narrowed under his helmet. He wasn’t expecting her to have come to the same conclusion.

“Yes.” He huffed. “I found barracks where a certain number of people definitely stayed until recently, but not a single straggler otherwise. Not even one of those terrorists. Thirty-six missing civilians. Twenty arriving while we’re tailing them. The exchange overseen by fifteen soldiers and their leader whose real face no one has ever seen. They all stay perfectly still while one of their machines takes the shipments away. No words exchanged…”

“I imagine the Federation realized the trickery by now. That the captors they met were truly the remaining hostages, forced to play a part in the delivery of their own ransom.”

Noxus punched the wall to his left strongly enough to leave a dent.

“These Ashlings, they have been making fools of us from the beginning.”

“I think the Ashlings as an organization never existed to begin with.” Samus said, bringing her hand to her chin. “And the leaders are most definitely the only members we should be worrying about.”

Noxus seemed to be taking some time taking in some of Samus’s deductions. She reluctantly added:

“The… Andron we saw on the video was also a decoy… Controlled by someone else.”

The Vhozon’s fury faded back to his usual nonchalant fascination.

“Was it by any chance…? Interesting. So this boy you were desperate to meet was not a simple follower, but the mastermind behind this whole farce all along?”

“Him and Tiamach must have stayed holed up in here, planning to escape once the two halves of the ransom were in their hands, which shouldn’t be long now…”

“Eh, a Chozo working with a Space Pirate. How ironic.”

Through the reflections of her visor, Noxus saw Samus glare at him.

“Tiamach has no connection to the Space Pirates whatsoever, beyond sharing a species with the bulk of their force. Could you refrain from making such shallow assumptions?”

“I am calling a criminal a criminal. Anyway… What do you intend to do now?”

Samus crossed her arms.

“I will get back outside and, if you’ll allow me, I will try contacting Lafelcht from your ship. I’ll ask her about the prisoners, and if everything is as we suspect, I will leave with my own ship. As far as I am concerned, the mission is over. Running after two lowly bandits is the Federation Force’s job.”

“How sweet. If only it were true.” He noticed Samus tighten her fist. “Now, now. I’m not calling you a coward, Samus. Far from it. But you are a bad liar. It is obvious you have no desire to see one of the last Chozo being brought to justice.”

As he spoke, the Vhozon warrior slid his scythe-like appendage over the side of his helmet, tinkering with the inner systems of his suit. Eventually, Samus saw a message flicker at the bottom of her visor’s interface.

[VHZSSJ_#9903 LEVEL 2 PERMISSIONS GRANTED]

“Do what you want.” Noxus said. “But don’t you dare try to stop me.”

Samus left without further debate. As she was about to take the stairs back to the surface, she stopped for a few last words.

“There’s a storage room on the lowest floor where they kept their heavy machinery, including the flying beasts. I was ambushed there, so I had to destroy most of it but… It’s not impossible that the access to their docking bay might be concealed in this area.”

“Hmm. That would certainly explain the presence of those flying abominations. I’ll try looking there first. Thank you.”

And then they parted ways. She went up, he went down. And when she could no longer hear his steps, she picked up the pace. She needed to get back to the surface as soon as possible.

Before Noxus realized she’d purposefully misled him. And before Andron slipped away.

Chapter Text

She made it to the facility’s entrance corridor with relative ease. The doors slid open when she approached, and the hot air of the planet near pushed her back with its strong winds. Samus shielded her helmet from battering sand with an arm, pushing forward as she made her way toward Noxus’s gunship, barely concealed in an opening on the edge of the crater. Under the planetoid’s atmosphere, it looked more red than its usual violet.

She found the access hatch to the slick cross-shaped vehicle on its underside, the main body of the ship was high up, as the vehicle was propped up a few meters above ground by metallic feet. It reacted to her presence, or rather to the authorizations Noxus downloaded into her suit. She was about to interface with it and open the door when…

ZAP!

She barely dodged an electric bolt that suddenly sparked her way. It crashed where she stood a second prior, leaving a black mark and rapidly vanishing smoke on the rocky ground. However, before she could ascertain where the attack came from, she was struck by a second bolt.

Samus bit on her tongue to stifle the pain, as she was physically blasted away against one of the legs of Noxus’s ship. There, she could see a blurry form approaching.

Not too far away from her, now in plain view, was the only other alien they had seen unmasked in the ransom video.

Tiamach.

At a glance, he did look very similar to his Urtraghian brethren, albeit unlike them, he was no cyborg; He obviously lacked the weaponry the Space Pirates usually had grafted into their limbs. He was instead holding in his claws a bulky two-pronged device, crackling with the same blue electricity that hit her.

“Thought you could just prance around like you own the place, pal?” He cackled. “I’d get the hell out of here real fast if I were you.”

Samus tried to pull herself back to her feet. Tiamach came a bit too close, with, she assumed, the intent of kicking her down. She managed to jump away before she could find out, shooting a few blasts at the alien. Tiamach shielded his body with his weapon, on which the shots simply bounced off. He retaliated immediately by sending another surge her way, which the bounty hunter avoided by hiding behind the leg of Noxus’s ship.

“Now aren’t you persistent… Shouldn’t you be even a little bit tired, after your little scuffle with Andron’s toys?”

“Not the least. I could do this all day.” Samus huffed back. “I’ll give you that, I was taken off guard. Even though I knew to expect something of the sort.”

Tiamach thrust forward and attempted to zap at her again. Samus rolled to the side to dodge the electric arc, and fired a quick blast at her opponent’s back. He let out a pained grunt, despite his hard shell. He then slammed the blunt end of his cannon her way, and this time it did connect. With a loud metallic bonk, Samus flinched and stepped back. Sheesh, that one was gonna leave a bump.

He attempted to strike her again immediately, but she could push back against him and he hit his back against the spacecraft, leaving a dent where his shell hit. His weapon glowed as he shook himself back to awareness, which Samus took as a sign that he needed to recharge that oversized stun gun of his before he could fire it again. She hopped out of range, keeping her arm cannon pointed at him.

“Slippery little bitch… Couldn’t just retreat into your fancy hunk of metal and leave, now, could you?” He spat.

“Oh, I could have. If that weren’t exactly what you were waiting for.”

At her words, the alien slightly lowered his weapon and squinted his eyes.

“Looks like I was right. You made your winged robots take a detour in this crater to lure whatever bounty hunter came after you here, so you could hijack their gunship and get the Federation off your trail… Surely this is why you didn’t mind letting me know of this place and sacrificing all of your war machines. You didn’t intend to escape with them anyway.”

Past the initial surprise, Tiamach smirked. Samus took it as a confirmation she was right.

It all made a lot of sense. While nothing would have prevented him or Andron to hack or force their way in, the failsafe in most personal spacecrafts would have prevented them from taking off. They needed someone to let them in on purpose. Hence the ambush…

“You’re sharp. I’ll give you that.” He said. “I guess, if you’re not gonna be fooled, the next best thing is to gently persuade you…”

He thrust his stun gun into her face and squeezed its lever. Samus, seeing this as her cue, lounged forward and threw her arm straight into the already sparkling mouth of the machine. Protrusions sprouted from her arm cannon and she fired exactly once.

Her last missile immediately detonated, making the entire contraption explode, the blast blowing Tiamach away. He landed with a crash, raising plumes of sand where he laid with his arms spread and his eyes wide open. The wind seemed to weaken.

The battle was over.

Samus carefully stepped over the scrap metal left from the stun gun and kept her cannon pointed at the enemy. Tiamach seemed shaken, but he was still visibly conscious, and it did appear that his hard crustacean-like skin preserved him from any serious injury.

Samus stared down at him.

“Eheheh… Dammit…” He sighed. “Looks like I’m hitching a ride from you anyway. Just hoped it’d be as a free man.”

Interesting, Samus thought. He was still under the impression the cross-shaped gunship was hers. But shouldn’t he have seen Noxus come out of it earlier? Even from a fair distance, and through the sand, it was pretty hard to mix them up, unless…

She raised her head to look back at the deep purple vessel. And how it didn’t appear to be deep purple at all now. Aah, but of course. In this celestial body’s perpetual twilight, everything appeared red or orange. Meaning the bandits hadn’t seen her landing and infiltration. Nor did they know there was another bounty hunter involved.

Samus was pondering on her next course of action, when the interface of her visor alerted her of something fast approaching on her six. Before she could turn around, however, she heard the whirring of a weapon and someone shouting from behind her:

“Get away from him!”

The voice was familiar. It was the same one she’d heard, coming from the headless automaton earlier. Keeping her cannon pointed toward the Urtraghian, she looked back. And surely enough here he was. A youthful Chozo of decent height - at least two feet taller than her - with wide, sparkling eyes that weren’t too obscured by his thick goggles. Despite the atmosphere giving everything its orange hue, his feathers and beak still looked as black and deep as ink. He was sporting a long gown that covered most of his body and was pointing the same plasma gun he held in the video toward Samus.

“D-Dangit, I told you to stay hidden!” Tiamach groaned, trying to pull himself back up. Samus firmly pressed down on his back with her boot.

“Drop your weapon, Andron.” She demanded. “[Please.]” She added, in a certain other language.

This visibly unsettled Andron even more. And he fired at her.

Samus narrowly managed to avoid the blast, and Andron continued to shoot. In any other condition, the bounty hunter would have been shooting back, and her instincts were telling her she ought to do so, but she couldn’t bring herself to.

Not at this kid. Not if she wanted to know where he came from, and if there were more like him.

She eventually took cover on top of the wing of Noxus’s aircraft. Once she was out of reach, Andron stopped his assault to go help Tiamach back to his legs. With the howling of the wind, she couldn’t hear what they were telling each other. But from the way Andron’s chest visibly heaved, she could tell he was… relieved to see his comrade unharmed. Not disappointed that his partner in crime failed to incapacitate her.

Just what kind of relationship did these two have?

They briefly talked between themselves, while glaring her way. Andron gave his weapon to Tiamach, who unfolded it into a longer laser rifle he could operate with his claws. The Chozo pulled a small cylindrical device out of his robe.

“We’re not afraid of you!” The shelled alien finally declared, stepping in front of his avian companion. “If you want to take him back to your madhouse, you’ll have to do so over my dead body!”

The bounty hunter stared down at the strange pair. Slowly she came to the realization of why this scene seemed so awfully familiar. It was the glimmer in their eyes, their defiance, their determination. They were rising up against her, even though she clearly already showed she outmatched the two of them. It wasn’t unlike…

It wasn’t unlike the glimmer she saw in the many eyes of what she thought was a mad animal she had to put down to cleanse the legacy of her adoptive family. Before she found, stepping over its charred husk, that it died shielding the last of its progeny, which within its first minute of existence proved to her what a mistake she made.

And then there was the time she was the one being protected. And even though her companion at that time lacked eyes, she felt that glimmer again, as it engulfed her and then passed, giving her the key to put an end to their battle.

Samus lowered her cannon.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to fight these two anymore.

But before she could demand they dropped their weapon and de-escalate the situation, Andron activated the device he was holding, and out from the Xi-shaped canal from earlier came one of the still-operational flying beastlike robots, which spread its wings and rapidly soared toward them. It slashed at her as soon as she was within reach, forcing her to move and leaving an impressive dent in the wing of Noxus’s ship.

Now airborne, Samus fired at the machine’s wings. A few of her shots managed to connect and make it flinch off its course, but then she was hit square in the stomach by a blast fired by Tiamach’s plasma gun. She could thankfully regain her balance well enough to land on her feet, a steaming trail forming in her tracks as she readied to strike back.

She had a split second to analyze the situation and recover the upper hand. Her beam did not appear to have any effect against that monster, and she’d spent all of her explosive ammo to fight her way out of the engineering bay, and to break Tiamach’s stun gun earlier. But she also noticed that, along with the wind, there was smoke coming out of the abdominal plate of her Power Suit. Glancing down, she could see a visible dark circle where she was struck. She could consider herself lucky the armor only partially melted there.

Of course, she thought. That ray Andron had given Tiamach was some heavy artillery, probably a lot more potent than her own plasma beam. Meaning her best bet was to use the beast’s size and heavy movements against it, all while baiting the Urtraghian into firing her way at the right time.

This wasn’t going to be easy. The flying creature was not behaving like the autopiloted versions that she’d already laid low in the engineering bay. It seemed more likely that Andron was controlling it directly. He hadn’t stopped fidgeting with that object with one of his hands since they had engaged her again.

The mechanical beast dived down from above her. Samus jumped out of the way, and rolled into Morph Ball mode. She zoomed straight past Noxus’s ship, to the other side, where the monster had to take to the air again to follow. Tiamach ran after her as well. Andron backed away, needing more distance to keep the monster in his sight.

She took a sharp turn, passing directly underneath the gunship, when she saw Tiamach and turned in his direction. He took aim at her. Before he could fire, she rammed straight into him, making him stumble, as the beast took another high leap to anticipate her coming out on the other side. Tiamach began charging his shot again, swearing under his breath.

Samus disengaged from her Morph Ball mode. Just in time, for the beast was now landing right in front of her, barring her way. It soundlessly snarled at her, opening its mechanical maw to aim a massive rocket in her direction. She kept an ear out for the telltale blast of Tiamach’s plasma rifle. And then… 

She simply moved out of the way.

Throwing herself to the side, Samus felt the heat of Tiamach’s shot, but it didn’t even graze her. The plasma projectile instead crashed straight into the beast’s maw. It gargled out a concert of whirring stutter and convulsed in place, sparkles flying out of its rapidly melting faceplate.

“Shit!” Tiamach audibly yelped.

Samus glanced to the side, Andron had his beak wide open, as he frantically tapped at the small device in his hand. The bounty hunter charged toward him.

A few seconds later, the plasma ate through the rocket and triggered its explosion, blowing Tiamach off his legs and making the last mechanical beast collapse into unrecognizable scrap.

Looking up and seeing Samus running in his direction, the Chozo gritted his beak and dropped his control device, instead pulling a short knife out of his gown. Samus was wondering how to shoot the blade out of his hands without harming him, when instead of raising it toward her, Andron brought the sharp end to his neck.

Samus stopped right in her tracks.

“Wh-What do you think you’re doing?” She asked.

The corner of the Chozo’s beak stretched into a strained, desperate smile as he stared down at her.

“[Come any closer and I’m killing myself. And I’m sure you already know Ember Gaze won't forgive you.]”

Samus froze, her eyes going wide under her visor. This, he just said in the old Chozo language. Just what was he talking about?

She turned around and once more pointed her arm cannon at Tiamach when she heard him going around the charred husk of the metallic beast. He too was aiming at her.

The silent stalemate lasted for one very tense, very long minute. Before Samus lowered her arms. Tiamach got closer, keeping the plasma gun aimed at her head.

“Just so you know,” she said, “it matters little to the Federation whether you live or die. The bounty on your head would be the same, even if it was detached from the rest of you.”

Andron quirked his brow, withdrawing the blade from his trachea.

“The… Federation?”

Tiamach walked between Andron and Samus and pushed her away. She did not resist, nor did she try to fight back. A weird hunch came over her, and she chose to disengage the lock on the helmet of her Power Suit.

Still keeping her hands held up so the alien wouldn’t have an excuse to shoot her, she slowly removed her helmet. She shook her long hair out of her eyes and let her face be hit by the soft blusters of the planetoid’s atmosphere. The unfiltered air on this celestial body was hot and burning at her nostrils, but it was not difficult to breathe in. She opened her eyes and stared at the pair.

Andron’s beak dropped with surprise. His knife slipped out of his grasp and clattered to the ground.

“You’re… You’re not one of them.”

Tiamach seemed confused as well for a bit, until his brow furrowed and he pointed Samus with the plasma rifle.

“She may not be one of them, but ain’t she an odd bird all the same. Your allegiance doesn’t matter, woman, we’re not following a Federation lapdog eith-!”

Before the Urtraghian was done talking, Samus fired a single beam at his claw, burning it enough to force him to drop his weapon. Instinctively, he raised his arms in surrender.

“I am willing to let you two go.” She said. “I ask for only one thing in exchange.”

Tiamach lowered his arms and spat at her feet.

“You want the Rimerite back? Fat chance. We’re not telling you where it’s stashed.”

Andron walked closer and squeezed the other’s shoulder.

“Pops, please, let her finish.”

Tiamach exchanged a glance with the other, before he looked back at Samus, squinting his eyes. The bounty hunter addressed Andron directly.

“You can keep the goods. I want to know where you came from.”

The Chozo looked down. At first, Samus thought his gaze was not focused on anything, until she realized he was scrutinizing her Power Suit.

“I see… You’re… You’re the girl from Zebes.”

Samus nodded. She put her helmet back on.

“I see you heard about me. So surely you understand my purpose here.”

There was a pause before Andron responded.

“The Space Pirates took your family away from you a second time. So you wanted to know if there were other surviving Chozo elsewhere in the galaxy, is that it?”

“Not only that.” Samus added. “But you’re… Well… So young. One of my surrogate fathers once told me the entire race ended up losing its ability to procreate as a result of their extended lifespans. So, where do you come from?”

Tiamach extended one of his arms between Andron and Samus.

“Don’t tell her. It’s none of her business.” 

Andron brought his hand to his friend’s (his guardian’s?) claw and lowered it.

“It’s… It’s alright, Pops. I’m just upholding my end of the bargain.” He stepped past him and looked back at Samus. ”I’m really sorry, but there is no secretive, prosperous Chozo society you didn’t know about. The truth is, I was not born. I was made.”

He pulled back the fabric of his gown, revealing that his other arm ended before the elbow. No feather grew on the scarred stump.

“I am a clone. An imperfect one at that.”

Samus wasn’t sure how to process what she was just told.

A clone of whom , she wondered. Could it be someone she knew? Would that be the cause behind that nagging feeling of familiarity she felt looking at him? And more importantly, were there more cloned Chozo youths like him? In the few seconds it took for any of those questions to materialize as words, she was interrupted.

“I could give you the specifics, but It’s kind of a long story.” Andron forced a sneer, tucking the stump of his missing limb back into his robe. “I’m not sure where I should start.”

“You told her enough. Let’s go now.” Tiamach said dryly.

The Chozo added regardless: “All I can really say for sure is that… I have no connection to the Chozo of Zebes whatsoever. I’m sorry if that was what you were hoping to find out.”

“I will spare you the trek to wherever your backup option is and gladly relinquish this ship to you if you could tell me more.” Samus said. “Please, if there are other Chozo settlements in this galaxy…”

Andron lowered his head.

“If there is, it has nothing to do with us. The two of us have always been on our own!” Tiamach interrupted her again. “So now, if you’re not going to…”

Just then, an emergency signal bleeped onto Samus’s radar, the interface of her visor signaling another lifeform was fast approaching. And just then she realized.

Noxus.

He had caught on to her little deception, had surely realized the facility was truly empty, and was now going to completely ruin her negotiation with the pair of bandits. Dammit, and just when she was this close to finding out what she so desperately needed to know!

The bleeping dot on her scanner was fast approaching. She just had the time to harshly shove Tiamach out of the way when a potent ice ray hit her on the back. Samus sucked air through her teeth, feeling a numbing burn overtake her senses where she was hit.

Just then she managed to turn around, and surely enough here he was, the Vhozon warrior, gliding over his sharp segmented limbs like he was on ice skates, his own arm cannon primed and glowing. Wordlessly, he took aim at the Chozo, who scrambled for the holster at his waist, only to remember it was empty.

“Wh-What the hell?” The Urtraghian groaned, pulling himself back to his legs. “Y… You bitch, you set us up!”

Noxus fired. Samus stepped in front of him and fired in response, the two beams connected, instantly exploding in white vapor.

“I knew it.” Noxus sighed, after the echo of the two blasts faded. “I knew that pitiful sentimentality would get the better of you.”

“Stop it, Noxus! They freed all of the prisoners already.”

“And so? Are we supposed to simply wait for the next time these crooks will try to toy with people’s lives’ for profit?”

“I already disarmed them. I won’t ask you again, lower your weapon!”

“Tch. I would ask how much they offered to pay you, but I am willing to bet you probably fell for whatever sob story they had to tell.”

“You don’t get to make that kind of assumption about me, Noxus. Lower your weapon.”

Noxus shot the ground in front of him in provocation, leaving a stalagmite-shaped blast at his legs. Samus, in response, lounged forward and fired a single blast aimed at his chest. Noxus twisted his slender body in such a way that he easily dodged it, as he approached and closed his claw over Samus’s shoulder. She narrowly slipped out of his grasp before he could start shoving her. She then rapidly turned to her Morph Ball mode and slipped between his legs, leaving a single bomb under his feet.

Surely the Vhozon remembered a few lessons from their battle on Arcterra. He recognized the explosive fast enough to jump away from it, firing at his rival as she regained her combat posture and fired again. The bomb exploded, forming a pillar of sand between them.

Andron meanwhile was pulling at Tiamach’s shoulder, beckoning him to escape with him, as the Urtraghian was scrambling for the plasma gun he dropped. No way of knowing what he intended to do. All of this, Samus noticed in a split second as she was rolling to her side to shield them from another blast from Noxus.

It became very clear her purple-clad colleague, whose armor looked as blood red as his gunship in this atmosphere, had no intention of bringing the pair back to Lafelcht alive, or at least unharmed. She had to get them out of here. Now.

Eh. Maybe Noxus was right. This was all platitudes. A perverted sentimentality unworthy of a bounty hunter. But she couldn’t help it. Feeling like, if she let any harm come to these two, she would go against everything she stood for since that starry night when she left SR388.

Turning her back to her fellow bounty hunter, Samus felt another two ice shots hit her in the leg and in the back. Still, she gritted her teeth through it, and rapidly activated her suit’s holographic commands, tapping at them until it interfaced directly with Noxus’s ship.

She had been truthful, earlier, about intending to use her rival’s ship to contact Lafelcht and nothing else, even though she already decided then she would be facing their foes on her own then.

But now, her intentions, and the words she told Noxus for him to concede the digital key to his spacecraft, no longer mattered.

To hell with who was in the wrong, who cared if Andron and Tiamach deserved to be arrested here? What she was seeing now was one of her fellow bounty hunters in full combat gear, attacking underequipped, basically defenseless people who were already willing to surrender and negotiate with her.

And she knew enough about the purple-clad warrior to be certain he was shooting to kill. 

[VHZSSJ_#9903 ACCESS GRANTED]

All of what she did lasted barely three seconds. The interface that popped up at her wrist flickered away as soon as the command was approved, and Samus turned on her heels, jumping in the way of another freezing blast and shooting a few out of the air.

Andron had a little start, as the hatch on the ship’s bottom began emitting steam and an access lift was lowered down in front of Tiamach and him, crushing the remains of the defunct robotic beast along the way.

The young Chozo turned back toward Samus. Noxus was now tapping at his own suit, attempting to deny them entry into the ship, but there was nothing he could do as the lapse in his attention allowed the human to deliver a powerful jab to his helmet’s smooth faceplate.

Tiamach pulled Andron close, and the platform went up, pulling the two of them into Noxus’s vehicle. The last thing they saw was Samus being knocked away by a powerful kick, and the Vhozon then taking aim to shoot their way, narrowly missing them.

Once they were in there, Andron immediately jumped to the commands, and it was all over. As Noxus slid to his vehicle, skipping over the dirt like an arachnid on a pond, the hatch sealed itself shut, and his visor informed him he no longer had any authority over his starship’s systems.

Impossible, he thought. How could his entire gunship, a marvel of Vhozon engineering, be taken away from his control so swiftly?

Samus, still dizzy from the blow she received, slowly pulled herself back to her legs, just as the earth underneath her rumbled. The cross-shaped starship’s engines screamed, raising plumes of sediments that rained down over her and Noxus. And just like that, the machine took off, taking Andron and Tiamach off the planetoid, and away from them.

Samus stared at the ship rising in the sky until it faded from view.

Neither she, nor Noxus moved for a while.

Finally, he spoke.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

There was no more threat, nor anything Noxus felt the need to argue about. Both bounty hunters wordlessly made their way back to Samus’s gunship, with no further conversation, and only the sound of the howling wind and the flying sand against their respective armor making any sound.

When they arrived, Noxus went to sit in one of the usually unoccupied passenger seats on the side of the cabin and removed his helmet. Samus remained fully suited as she sat at the commands.

As soon as they left the celestial object’s atmosphere, a transmission came. Samus nonchalantly let it go through, and Lafelcht’s enlarged, very tired face appeared over a holographic screen on one of the side windows.

“Aran. Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you just fine, Commissioner.”

“Good. You just left their base, right? I wanted to warn you that…”

“That it turns out the remaining hostages were sent to you in disguise and weren’t allowed to move or speak until you freed them?”

“Oh, of course, you already knew.” She rolled her eyes. “Impressive detective work, Aran. Indeed you were right. At some point after the second cargo was taken away, our so-called Ashlings’ communication channels opened, and we heard Andron beg us to rescue him with Senator Ahjacri’s voice.”

“Yes, we figured it would be something like that.”

“We? Is Noxus with you? I thought his ship left ahead of yours, but I was unable to contact him. Or… whoever was on board.”

From the corner of her eye, Samus could see the Vhozon slowly rise up.

“There was… a bit of a complication, madam.” Samus began.

“Let me talk to him.” Lafelcht ordered.

Noxus arrived behind Samus’s seat. She turned around. Briefly, she exchanged a glance with his many optics. She saw the same bitter disappointment she had seen the other day. Finally, the Vhozon answered with a low, angry growl:

“Commissioner, I…”

Lafelcht didn’t even let him begin.

“I understand that you have your own methods, Noxus. And that you put your own pride on the line in your work. However! This is no excuse to disregard direct orders during such an operation. Had you stayed put, we could have sent you after these bandits, and…”

“If I may, Commissioner.” This time, it was Samus interrupting her. “Noxus may have acted beyond the scope of his orders, but his assistance was most welcome. You see, I would probably be dead now, had he not assisted me in taking down the Ashlings’ vicious war machines.”

Noxus leaned closer to Samus, quirking what served as his brow in mild disbelief.

“I should also add, he only joined me because of a distress signal my ship sent out after I was nearly struck down by the enemy.” Samus continued. “The Ashlings were fearsome opponents. We barely made it out with our lives. And they managed to seize control of Noxus’s ship, as you probably guessed…”

Lafelcth’s little eyes went wide on the video feed.

“This is quite unlike you, Aran!”

“I imagine I lowered my guard because of the Chozo in their ranks. I take full responsibility for our shortcomings during this mission, including the loss of Noxus’s gunship. You may give him my earnings on this job as a token of my gratitude, and a way to pay him back for his loss.”

Nobody spoke for a little while. Samus continued to maneuver between floating debris, while Lafelcht pinched the bridge of her nose on the screen.

“Even a solitary hero needs a hand or a claw from time to time, I imagine. Oh, well. Then, this can’t be helped. I will ask you two not to forget to keep me in the loop when such things happen during our future operations together. For now, I would like to ask you to come back, though it’s likely the post mission debrief will be over by the time you arrive. ” She looked at her watch. “ We suffered no casualties and the prisoners were all recovered safe and sound, but the Federation Government is quite upset we ended up complying to the terrorists’ demands. This is at least two billion seguru of taxpayer money vanishing in thin air. Who knows what they will use that money for.”

“We’ll get them next time, Commissioner.”

“With you two, I bet we will.”

And with those last words, Lafelcht signed off and the screen her face appeared on flickered away.

Noxus had regained his seat. He was now staring out the window, deep in thoughts, tapping his segmented claws over his other arm.

“Why did you cover for me?” He eventually asked.

Samus hummed before she responded.

“Lafelcht just implied the same things as you. That it made sense for me to act on a whim, even if it isn’t the most logical course of action. If this is the way others have decided to perceive me, I figured I wouldn’t mind playing the part and taking the blame for your own lapse in judgment. How else were you going to justify disobeying a direct order? You wouldn’t want to admit you got… emotional, would you?”

The Vhozon struck his own knee.

“Tch! Don’t expect me to be thankful.”

“I won’t. You immediately paid that debt anyway.”

“Meaning?”

“Nothing was stopping you from interrupting me and telling Lafelcht I let Andron and Tiamach escape on purpose. And yet here we are.”

Noxus did not respond to this.

“I ruined the operation and caused you to lose your ship. You could have had me blamed for a professional faux pas at best, or arrested for assisting criminals at worse. I could ask you why you held your tongue, but I have a vague idea already. I had a hunch you weren’t that kind of person.”

Noxus rose from his seat and walked closer to her.

“That’s what you gambled on? A hunch? How can you be so sure I won’t just tell Lafelcht everything in private once we arrive?”

“I am not sure at all. But I know you have your pride. I think you would rather prove I was wrong for sparing those two by waiting for an occasion to show my faith in them was wasted.”

He tilted his head to the side, a coy smirk stretching his features.

“Because you are willing to bet they won’t strike again?”

Just as he spoke, the ship was arriving on the main transportation axis out of the Eugrens Star System and back to base. Samus activated the gunship’s autopilot, and turned her chair toward her colleague.

“Indeed. I believe we will never hear from them again. They got what they wanted. And with the Federation still believing they are after an entire organization and not a pair of bandits, they probably won’t be eager to bring attention back to themselves anytime soon.”

They silently held each other’s gaze for a while. In the low lighting of the cockpit, the Vhozon could clearly see her eyes beyond the green visor.

Finally, Noxus sighed and went back to his seat.

“You really are Gray Voice’s daughter. Pragmatic. Sharp-witted. Efficient. And just like him, you could have felt right at home among our people, if you weren’t so full of shit.”

To this, Samus didn’t respond. She simply turned herself back toward her gunship’s commands, contemplating the distant stars through the cockpit's window.

The conversation was over, and she couldn’t help smiling under her helmet.

Of course. That had been the true nature of her anger in the elevator. His provocation regarding the Ceres incident aside, she had been mad at Noxus because she always knew all he told her about Gray Voice were half-truths. Even if her surrogate father ever was a friend of the Vhozon, he wouldn’t have believed in their rigid conception of order without conscience.

His “greater good” was never their “greater good”.

She knew this for certain because she remembered clearly the night Gray Voice burned a gorgeous field of flowers to the ground, for her own safety. Lamenting afterward he had to hurt the wildlife before it could hurt her. Even as he disguised it as concern for the ecosystem.

What she saw as an act of cruelty in that moment made all the sense in the universe to her now, especially since her last adventure on Zebes.

“In battle everyone becomes a beast.

But I never wanted you to make the same mistakes I did.”

It’s a bit too late for that, now.

But thank you, Dad.

Chapter Text

It had been a few weeks since the operation in the Eugrens Star System.

Samus allowed herself to take something of a vacation that she spent, as usual, house sitting for Mauk and Kreatz while they were away from the Federation’s capital. Which also meant she got to spend time with Pyonchi, whom she had left in their care.

One day, while in the middle of her usual morning workout, she noticed her Rabbisquirrel’s ears twitching in his sleep, like they often would when he heard someone was at the door. This quickly escalated into a brief unrest as the animal awakened, his tail puffing up. Not in fear, Samus realized, but in curiosity. She went to investigate the nature of that presence.

But there was no one at the door.

Yet it was obvious that Pyonchi did not simply hear things, because when she looked down, she found a small package at her feet. A wooden box.

It wasn’t rare for Kreatz to get all sorts of gizmos delivered to his address while he was away, but this time, it didn’t seem like one such case. This package Samus knew was for her.

It was pretty obvious the postal services never even got ahold of this one. Her name was carved on it in Chozo characters, and there was no address, nor the name of the sender. Someone had left it there for her to find.

But who, exactly? Well. She already had a vague idea.

She took the package inside, sat on the couch and pried it open. Inside the box was a smaller, rigid metal case that whirred at her touch and unlocked on its own, the lid retracting into the casing. There, she found a small and soft velvet pouch, inside of which was a silver bracelet, on which some crystal-clear burgundy gemstones were etched.

That was Rimerite. She didn’t know it had such a pretty color after being refined. Thinking about it, if that were a designer piece, it would be the most expensive thing she ever held in her hand. Jewelry was hardly a topic she cared about, but that little accessory seemed like something she wouldn’t mind wearing from time to time…

With the ghost of a smile on her face, she put the trinket back into the case - Pyonchi had hopped onto her lap and was gnawing at the discarded velvet pouch. She picked up the one other thing that was in there. It was a plain envelope, containing a single black feather, and a handwritten message, several pages long. How anachronistic, she thought, to resort to such an analog medium to communicate. But it was probably the best way he found to make sure nobody else would be aware of this message.

And for an added layer of privacy, of course, the entire thing was written in the Chozo language.

Samus crossed her legs and leaned back into the couch, taking the message from the beginning.

Hi.

Tiamach didn’t want me to contact you again. Said we couldn’t be sure you didn’t set us up with that colleague of yours suddenly showing up. Though it was obvious to me you were the one who opened the ship so we could escape.

I just wanted to say that we owe you our freedom. From the Federation and from so many more of our troubles. Whether this is a good thing for you or not, I leave to your judgment. Just know that I am in your debt. But also that I doubt we will ever meet again.

We have what we wanted. The Ashlings will now vanish without a trace.

And so, it is only fair that I finally uphold my end of our bargain, and tell you where I truly came from.

As I already told you, I am an imperfect clone of another Chozo. My genitor, that is to say, the man whose DNA I was created from, was once called one of the greatest warriors in our history.

At some point a few decades ago, I wouldn’t be able to tell you when exactly, he became obsessed with the idea of the imminent death of our species. And more importantly, with his legacy, and what he would leave behind when his time comes.

He did not believe our civilization, mighty and advanced as it was, could ever just die out. He refused the idea that he would one day disappear with ambitions unfulfilled, and the prestige and knowledge of our race lost to the ages or entrusted to those he judged to be lesser beings. And so he decided he would defy our evolutionary dead end and have offsprings of his own, to assist him in building everything he stood for. And to carry it on after his death.

Cloning had already been considered as a solution to the Chozo’s fertility crisis. But for unknown reasons, few were the attempts that could make it past the embryonic phase, and those that made it to the end of their growth always laid lifeless in their eggshells. Cloning one of ours was, to most, considered utterly impossible.

But that didn’t stop my genitor. He had his brightest men experiment. They tried, tried and tried again, injecting fertilized eggs with various synthetic agents and the DNA of sturdier creatures. And this is how among countless stillborn chicks, myself, as well as seven others, were born.

That happened 23 years ago.

Though I was born lacking a limb, I was allowed to live, even if nobody thought I would make it past the first year. But I did. And by the time I became conscious of my own existence, I had outlived two of my siblings.

I was given the name Flightless Raven.

“Ulunandro Ashkar…” Samus read out loud in the old tongue. That was most definitely where the name Andron came from.

23 years ago. Two or three years after the Chozo of Zebes adopted her. Were Old Bird and Gray Voice aware of all this?

She continued to read.

My brothers and I were trained and educated to be fighters, like our genitor was, from the moment we could stand on two legs. Though I was given a prosthetic arm, my performances proved to be lacking. I was quite good with ranged weaponry and piloting starships, but my constitution was still too weak for real combat. I was always rapidly out of breath, and the slightest hit sufficed to knock me down.

I was mocked by my instructors and my brothers for this, and dismissed as lame and incompetent. But my genitor, understanding my worth could lie elsewhere, had me make up for my weakness with a much more rigorous technical education. While the rest of them were simply taught how to operate complex machinery, I was studying how to be the one creating it.

To make up for my weakness, my genitor wanted me to have a mind brighter than his own. Saying that otherwise, my existence would serve no purpose.

I agreed with him.

The years went by.

We kept living like that. It was normal to us. We reached our teenage years, eager in the knowledge that each day brought us closer to the time we would be let out into the world, to serve our purpose.

And then, in the span of a few months, three more of my brothers died.

Two of them passed in their sleep, and the last one died in front of us, convulsing over a table of our dining room, with frothing blood gushing from his beak.

There were three of us left. Myself, Ember Gaze, and Shrouded Spear.

Though our caretakers wouldn’t admit it to our faces, we all became acutely aware that we would all someday abruptly cease to be, with no way of knowing when. The experiment that gave us all life was a failure in the end.

But still. Our genitor believed that at least one of us wouldn’t turn out to be a complete failure. That at least one of us would live long enough to be worthy of carrying his name and his legacy.

We continued our lives as if nothing happened. Even though deep down we made our peace knowing any of us could be the next to disappear. That any day could be the last.

Our genitor visited us a lot less often. And every time he came, he would express surprise that I was holding on. We were getting to the final phase of our education. My brothers began to practice with real gear and heavy weaponry. And, as you can guess, they also received the usual cybernetic enhancements and were given their own Power Suits.

A few years later, we’d all reached maturity, though we still all felt like children who knew nothing of the world. I was now a fully fledged engineer, assisting the people I once called my teachers, and also serving as a pilot, navigator and strategist to my siblings.

Our genitor began testing us in increasingly dangerous situations, taking us hunting for rare and powerful creatures on faraway uncivilized planets, or putting us on the path of spacefaring criminals we were tasked to gun down without remorse. When he deemed we were ready, we received requests to intervene on our solar system’s more political matters.

Finally we could serve the purpose we were born for.

I always stayed at a distance during operations, advising my brothers, supplying them with machines and weapons. Hijacking enemy tech. We helped prove our clan’s superiority. We were powerful assets for defending our home. The world outside the facility where we were raised was thankful for us.

But we were never good enough for him.

After a particularly grueling mission, I made the mistake of calling that man “Father”.

He slapped me in response. Said my brothers and myself were hardly less disposable than any other battalion out there, and that being made from his blood didn’t make me his son.

He saw I wasn’t taking it well. And then he asked me to channel that frustration into spite. To prove him wrong.

And this is what I did. A few months from then, he was ruffling the feathers of my skull and giving me a few words of praise, after a machine of my own creation managed to assist him the way he desired.

It was my first time making a Mantille; that’s what I named the flying robots like those we used to fight you. I don’t know who my genitor used it against. I just knew it did its job well. That was enough for me.

Life went on. We learned to live like this. With no purpose, no dream other than doing what was asked of us. We lived to crush our homeworld’s enemies. And when there were no enemies to crush, we lived to train and wait for the next target to kill. Never expecting anything else in return, and with the full knowledge that one day, our lives would come to an unexpected, perhaps brutal, end.

I was fine with that.

Then something happened. Shrouded Spear was separated from the rest of us during a mission.

My genitor had his men scour the galaxy to find him. But to their shock, it appeared that every time they managed to locate him, they lost him again.

Almost as if he was running away.

They cornered him, killed those who were hiding him, and dragged him back a few months after. He’d apparently escaped to a neighboring solar system, and he fully intended to stay there of his own free will. Whatever happened to him in the outside world changed him.

Not even a few days after his return, he lashed out, severely injured one of our caretakers, and tried to flee from our home, saying he was tired of our sheltered condition. Of only being a tool for our genitor’s ideology. That he wanted to live. That he wanted all of us to live.

They had him locked in his room. And there, he killed himself.

I was the one to find his body. The only one to see his last message, and to keep it a secret. It was a brief voice recording in which he asked Ember Gaze and myself to see the world out there for his and our other brothers’ sake. To no longer let our genitor and our caretakers dictate how we should be living our lives.

I ignored it. For a time. I kept the message hidden on my person.

Then one day, during a mission on Federation territory, the command ship from which myself and some of my assistants guided Ember Gaze and his platoon was attacked and struck down.

I don’t remember the crash. Just that I was the only survivor on board, paddling through an ocean of blood I don’t think was all my own, with the light of a warm, nearby star shining down on me.

When I looked at the sky then, I felt a faint breeze on my feathers, and I realized that I was scared. That I didn’t want things to end there. I didn’t want to die. And I was now realizing I should never have been allowed to kill or to help my brothers kill.

I don’t know how I, with my weak body, survived the crash when nobody else did. But, as I held the recording of Shrouded Spear’s last words close to my heart, I decided not to let this chance slip by.

I dragged myself out of the wreckage. I’m not sure how. What I do vividly remember, was the way I tore my prosthetic arm off. It was all banged and damaged but still operational. With all the gadgets it was retrofitted with over the years, I knew they would use it to track me down, because they found Shrouded Spear because of his implants. So I banged my arm over a sharp steel plate where it was a little loose. It came off relatively easily after that. But the few minutes it took felt like hours while I was feeling the artificial nerves snap one by one.

I don’t know what happened next. We crashed in the middle of a desert so I simply limped away from the site until I passed out from hunger and exhaustion. Luckily, I was found by some wanderers and brought to the nearest alien settlement.

Those people left me in the care of a traveling doctor who occasionally stopped by this backwater planet to offer his services. That doctor was Tiamach.

I remained silent for my first few weeks of recovery, trying to figure out what to do from then on, even though I was fluent enough in the common tongue of the galaxy. I only began speaking again when Tiamach suggested I was brought to a Federation medical facility. I begged him not to let anyone take me away.

But I couldn’t explain why.

My prosthetic arm and various other materials from the crash site were recovered by some scavengers who hoped to get a quick buck for them. As I expected, it was indeed equipped with a tracker. And one day Ember Gaze came to investigate my supposed death. 

When he arrived, I was still bound to a bed, and Tiamach didn’t understand why I asked him to keep me hidden when he saw someone just like me arrive, but he relented.

He finally understood why I didn’t want to go back to my old life when we heard some heavy commotion coming from the nearby bazaar. My brother had slit the scavenger’s throat and left with my arm.

We were always asked by our caretakers to avoid that sort of outburst, especially on planets inhabited by non-Chozo. To draw as little attention to ourselves as possible when we were away from home. But I think his grief was what drove him.

I never heard from him again.

Tiamach brought me back to his home, a mundane planet under Federation jurisdiction, and we began living together. I was learning how to live without having to fight. Without having to kill. Without always fearing for my life. He kept a close eye on my health, and also my well-being, in a way nobody ever did before. And similarly I started to care for him, the way I never cared for anybody else, not even my brothers.

After a few years we came to see each other as father and son.

Tiamach had always struggled to make ends meet, so he sometimes had to offer his services to the galaxy’s underworld. He fixed crooks without asking questions, and they rewarded him more handsomely than the legal circuits could.

Several times, I asked him why he didn’t simply do this full time. He told me he couldn't. Because as hard as it was to get good money for his services the law-abiding way, he felt a moral obligation to still care for those who couldn’t afford the most basic of medical assistance.

He taught me a lot about the real world, and how people can live together without always feeling like they are competing against each other. That you could coexist even with those you disagree with.

I took his lessons to heart and built several machines to help him in his trade, as well as tools to make his patients’ lives easier.

Then one day, his underground activity was revealed to the Federation by one of the galactic mafia leaders he saved, who framed him not only as his doctor, but as the mastermind of an armed robbery in one of the biggest banks in our solar system.

The Federation Force raided his practice. I didn’t want to let them. I severely injured one of the agents, and I almost killed her. But Tiamach stopped me before I could, and we were both forced to abandon our home, to run away, and to live as fugitives.

On that day I decided. If the Federation was going to see us as criminals, we would act the part. Because making a living the honest way was no longer an option for us.

We started small, with petty theft and burglaries. It was all child’s play. And the better we got at living as crooks, the more ambitious we got. And with each of our successful operations, we left behind enough hints for the authorities to persuade themselves we were not a simple duo, but an entire rogue army.

Our ultimate goal was never to spread chaos in the galaxy. Though I would argue the chaos we did sow was always better than the Federation’s narrow-minded definition of order. We, like many, only did what we had to do in order to live. And also so Tiamach could keep doing what he is best at, even if we had to operate in the shadows from then on.

Tiamach was also against involving civilians in our last plan. It was all my idea, and I must confess that I forced his hand. I fully understand why you, or any of the victims, would never forgive me for it. But the fact is that it worked. While we anticipated a bounty hunter would come after us, we never in a million years expected the Federation would simply give us all of the ransom we asked. But they did, and that Rimerite will now serve to support us and the people Tiamach wants to help for years to come.

As such, there really is no reason for the Ashlings to keep existing. I cannot give you much more than my word for it, but we intend to quietly disappear and live as we always desired. Far from trouble.

I will just be seeing the galaxy and living my life the way Shrouded Spear would have wanted me to.

I hope your curiosity is now sated. I will not be contacting you again, and I will kindly ask you not to try to ask me for any additional information.

For your own safety, as well as ours, I would also advise you to burn this letter along with the box, and to forget about seeking out more than what I already told you here. Please don’t try to investigate my genitor, my home planet, or the tribe I hailed from. The stagnating old world they wish to revive is not one worth seeking out.

I may not know a lot about Zebes, but one thing I can tell for certain is that you were extremely lucky to be raised by the Chozo who lived there, as I can tell your family was nothing like mine. I wouldn’t want your quest to find the last of our species to taint your memories of growing up among them. Because I am sure those are worth treasuring as much as I treasure my time with Tiamach.

That being said, if you ever were to encounter Ember Gaze, I beg of you, please spare his life, even if he threatens yours.

Farewell, Samus. Thank you.

- Andron

After staring at the signature at the bottom of the last page for a solid minute, Samus skimmed through the whole letter again. Andron’s story was painting a vivid image in her mind, and at the same time, she was finding it to be a lot to process all at once. 

She didn’t believe Andron would have gained anything from lying to her, not even a cheap laugh, and while this testimony was definitely biased by the perspective of the child he was then, it did an adequate job at filling some of the blanks in her understanding of the entire Chozo race.

While she didn’t like the idea of the Chozo as a belligerent people, it also made quite a lot of sense. She may have remembered her family on Zebes as advocates for peace, but it didn’t change the fact they were also the engineers of some of the deadliest weapons ever created in the universe.

She would know about it, for these same weapons were still the tools of her trade to this day.

She too had been raised to be a fighter. A killer. The only difference with Andron’s upbringing being that she was given a choice in the matter, and that, unlike the mysterious genitor he mentioned, she never needed to prove anything to feel the love and approval of her father figures.

What a miserable childhood that must have been, alongside all the traumatizing loss he endured, not knowing whether or not he would suffer the same fate.

She folded the letter back into its envelope and picked up the black feather. Pyonchi hopped back onto her lap. She absentmindedly scratched behind his ear while she lost herself in contemplation.

She’d known for a long time that the Chozo as a race were not as benevolent as it appeared to her when she was a child. While most of their history faded with the slow collapse of their supremacy, it was common knowledge that they had been the masters of this galaxy - no, of this universe - for millennia before they started dying out, and anyone could guess this historical domination was not achieved with sheer benevolence.

Everything she was learning from Andron, whether it was real or not, did seem plausible. In fact it confirmed a hunch she’d had for a while now. That belligerent factions among the last of the Chozo still existed to this day.

She still vividly remembered the traces of a struggle she found in the ruins of the lab on SR388, that were unlike anything any number of Metroids, evolved or otherwise, would have been capable of. Adding to this the records she found about a supposed conflict on the planet involving several tribes, and even between warriors of the same party… Perhaps the people of Zebes had truly been the outliers within their brethren, at least in their last years as supposedly peaceful lorekeepers.

She had taken the time to ponder about the reason behind her part in the operation ever since it happened.

She heard straight from Lafelcht after her return from the Eugrens Star System that she was chosen for the job simply on the assumption that she would be eager to personally take care of a rebel of the old avian species: to cleanse the legacy of her adoptive parents; A similar reason that had already led her to accept the job to purge SR388 of the Metroids quite a few years ago.

She hated hearing that. She would never have thought that what Andron told her, about her reputation in the wider galaxy being that of a ruthless vigilante, would also be true to the people she worked for.

Guess that explained why Noxus seemed so disappointed by what he knew of the incident on Ceres Station. What a shock it must have been, to find out his rival on the Alimbic Cluster, the one who bested him, was nothing like him.

She didn’t regret helping Andron and Tiamach back then, and learning that he had been through so much in his life ever since the very beginning comforted her in her decision to allow him and his father figure to escape. She hoped with all her heart they would both live long, fulfilling and peaceful lives, away from everything, where neither the Federation, nor those warring Chozo, would be able to track them down.

As for her own motivation for even accepting that job in the first place, she wasn’t sure anymore what she had been thinking. But seeing the black feather she was now holding, she was stricken by that same feeling of nostalgia she felt when she saw the young Chozo looming over the camera in the ransom video.

Perhaps one could call it an animal instinct. An unexplainable sense of familiarity. Almost as if this man was someone she always had a strong bond with, which by all accounts did not make any sense. Not a single one of the Chozo who raised her had such a deep, ink-black plumage as far as she could remember.

… Right?

Pyonchi climbed on her shoulder and nuzzled her cheek, pulling her out of her inner musings. Samus had a little start, which also surprised the Rabbisquirrel, but she smiled at him and gave a gentle scratch under his chin as an apology.

After promising the little critter she would feed him soon, Samus carried the box away, fully intending to destroy it along with the letter, as per Andron’s wishes. The feather and the bracelet, though, she decided to keep and put with her most prized possessions - one being another such feather, this one coming from Old Bird.

She promised to herself she would one day get to the bottom of all this. And then she’d make sure Andron and those who shared his cruel fate would be able to live their lives with nothing to fear.

SEE YOU NEXT MISSION