Birth of a Defender

by TheCinematicRevealThatBatmanIsDead

Summary:

Dedicated to Samus Aran
By the Trillions she has saved.

“She appears as ghostlike as the Chozo, but at times the mists clear. We see her wounded eyes, and remember the child we found so long ago.

What has she become, this Newborn?”

- Chozo Lore “Hatchling’s Shell”

---

 

K-2L is blockaded in accordance with Article 24 of Resolution 967.A of the Galactic Federal Senate. All colonial citizens were evacuated weeks ago, and the last of the locals are on their way out now. After the Leviathan incidents on Bryyo and Elysia, all planets deemed Extremely High Priority were ordered to remain on Level 2 Alert at all times to guard against the threat of another Leviathan Seed impact. The Galactic Security Commission usually took “Extremely High Priority” to mean any planet that housed an Aurora Unit or had a population greater than 8 billion. You don’t know why K-2L earned the designation, but you suspect it was the Federation’s attempt to appease you. A sort of apology for the PED modifications they made without your consent. You imagine senators and military advisors in a shouting match over this expenditure of resources, a grizzled veteran in his high-collared uniform explaining your value to the Federation, an undercurrent of fear running through the entire affair.

Fear.

When you were young, after you left Zebes and the Space Pirates behind (for the first time) the fear and reverence people spoke to and about you with was amusing. Maybe even empowering. Soon though, it became exhausting. You recognized the look they gave you: You had given the same look to Ridley as he turned to look at you, your father’s blood dribbling from his jaws onto the muddy, pockmarked ground.

When you joined up with the Federation Police, you had to re-learn your native tongue. The language your mother and father used to sing you to sleep in. You’re still not sure how old you are exactly. Your records were destroyed in the attack. You could have been three, or four, or five when it went down. There are conspiracy theorists who believe that you aren’t who you say you are; that the real Samus Aran is a male cyborg, and you’re just some actress hired to protect his identity. You scoff at them, but the question their ramblings leave you with sits like lead in your stomach.

Is there a real Samus Aran?

You don't know who the hell you are, or are pretending to be.

The Chozo obsessed over you. They were, as a culture, always looking for ways to stem the tide of entropy, to leave something behind that could serve as a reminder that they were here. Old Bird, though he meant well, decided that it would be you. The idea caught on. The Chozo called you “The Hatchling”, “The Entrusted One”, or simply “Child”. They left you with their DNA, their technology, and their history, and they asked you to preserve their identity and make them immortal. They offered nothing similar in return. One day, about two years before you left Zebes, you snapped, and began shouting at Old Bird. “My name is Samus Aran” you screamed, repeating it over and over because you were afraid you would forget. You had nightmares about melting into nothing, crumbling to dust, floating into the infinite blackness of space, anonymous and alone. You carved your name into your skin and left bloody handprints on a sacred boulder. That was the beginning of the end of your life as the Entrusted One, as one of the Chozo.

You touch down on the planet with permission from the general commanding the blockade. The city you were born in, K-2L955, is a ghost town. The concrete beneath your boots is scuffed and worn, but still pearly white.

Your head hurts. Nothing looks familiar. The buildings and pathways are all new, pristine. They look fake. Un-lived in. You turn a corner and see a weathered stone monument.

It depicts a child crouching under a pile of rubble, peeking into the light to see...you. You’re in your armor, kneeling and extending your hand to the child. The detail is exquisite. You can see the scrapes on the child’s elbows, the dirt caked onto her face, and the mirror sheen of your arm cannon. There is life in this stone, trapped, preserved forever. On the pedestal, there is a bronze plaque with an inscription:

 

“Birth of a Defender”

Dedicated to Samus Aran

By the Trillions she has saved.

 

You were only fifteen or sixteen when this happened. The girl was named Hannah Frond and she was the daughter of a K-2L local and a colonist. The scene depicted in the statue actually occurred on another planet. Antrapa, you think. A pirate raid had destroyed the hotel she was staying in with her mother, a GF Senator, and they were both trapped in the rubble. You pulled the two of them to safety, but the mother died as a result of her injuries. Hannah kept correspondance with you for a long time after that. In her last letter, she batted around the idea of erecting a statue in your honor. You laughed it off. The Zebes incident occurred shortly afterward.

Hannah was a Seargent First Class in the GF Colonial Reserves when she was sent to provide assistance to the research team on SR-388. She was the one who discovered that the Space Pirates raided the research vessel, killed the entire crew, and stole the Metroids held on board in order to take them back to Zebes and begin breeding them. She volunteered to be a part of the initial strike team, the one that would swoop in if you failed to defeat Mother Brain. The Fleet Commander denied her request. She was sent in with her platoon to scout the planet before you made landfall. You didn’t learn these details until her funeral. Shortly afterward, the K-2L Historical Society contacted you, and told you about one of the clauses in her will, and a letter she wrote upon hearing that her request was denied. You still have that letter. You haven’t read it yet.

You touch the granite gently, but you can’t really feel it through your suit. So instead, you scan it, and lock the file away under “Human Structures”. It helps, categorizing everything, breaking the universe apart and laying the pieces out like evidence in a courtroom. Exhibit A, blood that is not your own. Exhibit B, a handprint on a boulder on the surface of Zebes. Exhibit C, the awe in the face of the child frozen in stone.

You look around at the fake buildings and the fake sidewalk, and you try to imagine a past where this scenery will move you, try to create memories of first days of school, dates and fights and concerts and home.

 

Who are you, really?

 

You look at the stone rendering of Hannah as a child, and you see the woman she grew up to be, however briefly. She knows. Your gaze drifts to your granite doppleganger’s hand, outstretched, offering what the girl feels is divine intervention. You shake your head and struggle to see through the cloudy veil of expectations and legends, of stories told in hushed whispers, or rabid screams, or thunderous applause. You’re somewhere else entirely now, ripping away layers of yourself in an empty void. You tear away Tallon IV, the Metroid Prime and the hollowness you felt in the Chozo ruins. You tear away the Luminoth kneeling as you walked by, the bodies of Federal Troopers rent by friendly fire, the applause of exhausted troops and high-collared generals as you emerged from the cave covered in a wet, glassy substance that you would later find out was the Metroids’ cytoplasm. You tear away Rundas’s words: “We’re the good guys. Justice will triumph, and all that stuff, right?”

What’s left?

Images. Walking to the river with Old Bird, who’s not a father figure yet, because you have a father, and a mother. You say things and he laughs, not at you, with you.

Not moving even as your mother collapses on top of you because you have to keep still or they’ll see you. Her heartbeat stops, and you’re alone, hidden by a thing that used to sing you to sleep. Your hair is wet, and something dark runs down your face. Their growls and footsteps fade into the distance, but you do not let yourself cry yet.

You kick in the door- “FEDS!” someone screams - and see a Space Pirate in the flesh for the first time since you were a child. This one has black and red ink running across its steel-grey scales, and a heavily scarred lower-left mandible. You feel a sharp, frigid terror and a euphoric jolt as the gun explodes in your hand again and again and again and again…

Night classes to re-learn Galactic English. You’ve never felt so tall. You hate the stares.

Freelancing, putting a shard of glass in an informant’s mouth and smashing his head into a table. The glass winks at you, catching the light from the bar as pokes out through his cheek.

The suit. It protects you, and you give it life. Symbiotic. This is preferable.

A letter.

You’re on your way to Bryyo now. You tear the envelope, and remove the stationary to see the familiar handwriting.

 

Samus,

I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. The story you told me about being the hatchling. That’s never stopped, has it? Everyone’s putting you on a pedastal. The Federation, the Pirates, even me. I’ll be honest, I never thought about how much pressure you must put on yourself because of that. I’m sorry.

But Samus...you don’t seem to understand the gravity of the things you’ve done. There’s a story I’ve never told you, and it’s technically classified information, but you need to know this. The purpose of the senate hearing on Antrapa was to draft a statement of surrender to the Space Pirates. The Federation was going to cede the Outer Arm territories to them completely, to try to placate them.

We were going to give up.

And then you came.

Samus, you are so much stronger than you seem to realize. I don’t know who has you so convinced you’re a tool of the Federation, but they’re wrong. You consistently perform acts of tremendous heroism, and you make it seem easy. My daughter- she’s five now, can you believe it?- told me that whenever she’s scared of the dark, or a shadow, or of speaking in front of a lot of people, she closes her eyes and pretends she’s you , and the fear becomes manageable. You are the kind of hero that storytellers used to make up as an example for the rest of humanity to follow, but you’re real . You are a gift to all of us, Samus, and I know I’ve said it before but thank you . You’re the reason I wake up every morning, the reason I have the strength to lead my men on this mission. I hope we meet again on the surface of Zebes.

I hope this letter will open your eyes to what a truly incredible person you are. It’s okay to be afraid, Samus. You’ve earned it.

 

With Undying Love and Gratitude,

SGT. Hannah Frond

 

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Her Wounded Eyes