She was Samus Aran. A woman. In the dark. Surrounded by the creatures she’d been vaporizing for hours.
But the Pirates had an answer for her power creep.
No cannon. No missiles. No shields.
The Space Pirate base on Zebes was a crater. The Metroids were gone. The Mother Brain was slag. Ridley was a fossil in the making. Metroid- Zero Mission
In the heart of Norfair, she found him. Kraid.
She looked up.
She punched the engines and broke atmo.
She had lost everything on this mission. Her old suit. Her old ship. Her old limits.
She hit the Tourian checkpoint, and the world went silent. No bugs. No Geemers. Just the low thrum of a cloning machine. And then they came. Metroids.
The behemoth roared, his belly a grotesque arsenal of spikes. He was a mountain of rage and poor hygiene. Samus didn’t flinch. She danced between his pounding fists, feeding missiles into his gaping maw. When he finally collapsed, the resulting seismic wave cracked the foundation of the lair. She stood on his corpse, breathing hard, and felt the faint pulse of a new ability resonating from his hoard: the Varia Suit. The heat became a mild annoyance. She was Samus Aran
The brain floated in a column of nutrient goo, a grotesque puppet-master surrounded by gun turrets and laser walls. Samus had done this before. She remembered the victory. She forgot the cost.
The Zero Mission. That’s what the Federation called it. Minimal support. Maximum deniability.
She crawled through ventilation shafts, her heart pounding loud enough to mask the skittering of the Zebesian bugs. She stunned, strangled, and avoided. She was no longer a juggernaut. She was a ghost. She found a secret Chozo shrine hidden beneath the wreckage—a place the Pirates had never discovered. In the center, a statue held out a gift: a simple, unadorned handgun. The Legendary Power Suit. Surrounded by the creatures she’d been vaporizing for