Samus didn't know where on Zebes Ridley's ship had landed. She would have to explore the planet to investigate. Her ship landed at its old resting place. The same place she had landed it last time.

Samus emerged from the hatch at the top of her ship. Acid rain poured down from the gray skies and onto the gray rock, where patches of green moss grew. This grey and green terrain surrounded Samus; jagged mountains covered the surface of Zebes until the fog hid whatever lay beyond. They were strangely shaped mountains; they leaned and bent and stuck out in all sorts of directions, and varied greatly in height.

This part of Zebes was called Crateria. It hadn't changed much. These same cliffs had felt safe and homely, once. Not last time. But last time they were encouraging; they gave her hope that her former home could still be salvaged, or at least avenged. Now they only seemed dark and foreboding, hiding mysteries Samus wasn't sure she wanted to solve. The acid rain was an appropriate welcome back to Zebes.

Samus knew exactly where to begin her investigation. She walked into cave beneath a nearby cliff. The acid rain stopped pounding on her helmet; now it was darker, but only slightly. She walked deeper into the cave until she found a blue, circular door. Even that was nostalgic. The Chozo had installed these doors into Zebes long before they had brought three-year-old Samus here. But the Space Pirates upgraded these doors after they took over… Samus shot the door and it dilated, allowing her to pass through a short metal tube. Once she was back out, the door re-closed behind her.

Samus walked further. The cave brought her deeper and deeper underground. Then she had to jump down, from platform to platform, each one covered in moss. Besides the rock and moss – and occasional door – there were also metal tubes and walls here and there. The architectural survivors of Samus's "Zero Mission".

Once Samus got deep enough, and went down through another door, she reached a completely artificial – and very familiar – room. Near the end of her "Zero Mission", Samus's defeat of Mother Brain had set off a self-destruct timer; for Mother Brain had controlled all of Zebes's environments, and with her suddenly gone, all hell broke loose. This room was an escape shaft – an extremely tall one. Back then, Samus had climbed it to escape the Pirate base before it could take her down with it. Now, she stood at its top, looking down, wondering what awaited her below.

The location of this shaft was slightly different before. This confirmed something Samus had wondered about. When she destroyed the Space Pirate base, it had drastically reshaped the caves in this part of Zebes. These caves may not be as familiar to Samus as they'd once been.

Samus fell deeper and deeper into the huge, metallic shaft, often landing on one of the many thin, blue platforms before jumping off again. Once at the bottom, she went through a door, remembering exactly where it led: to Mother Brain's lair. Last time, getting there hadn't been nearly this easy…

There it was: Tourian. The location of Mother Brain and core of the Space Pirates' empire – at least, it had been. It looked exactly like Samus remembered… well, sort of. She saw exactly where Mother Brain's tank had been held – but the tank and the brain were gone now. Samus looked up; there were the turrets – all of them inactive. And the long room contained several metal plates, all of them in pairs such that one was on the floor and another on the ceiling. These had held the last line of defense against Mother Brain, her Zebitite barriers – but the barriers were gone now, too. There'd also been lava back then, just for good measure – now, none. Everything was shaped exactly the same – but the metal was rusted and the room was totally empty. Samus wasn't sure whether to sigh with relief or recoil at the memories this place evoked.

Samus made her way across the room, investigating every corner. When she got to the other side, she felt that her worst suspicions were at least unproven and at best disproven. If the Pirates were back, surely they wouldn't have just let this old room be. But then why did Ridley bring the infant Metroid to Zebes?

Due to the reshaping of the caves, the next room held another surprise. It was an elevator room; the elevator only went down. Some dim lights were on, and the elevator was humming. It seemed to still work. Samus walked onto the elevator platform in the middle of the mechanical room. On a metal pole, a screen displayed an arrow that pointed down. Samus pressed the arrow, and down she went.

It was a long way down. Unfortunately, that gave Samus a minute to think. She tried to piece together why Ridley was here, and what that meant; but that's not where her mind wanted to go. It was stuck on the baby Metroid. She didn't like imagining where it might be, or what Ridley planned to do with it, but she couldn't push those thoughts away. In this confusing and uncertain visit, Samus knew only one thing for sure: she had to save her Metroid. But first, she had to find it.

The elevator landed. Samus looked around. This place, too, was very familiar. There was no mistaking the blue, rough, round rocks that made up the caves of Brinstar. In fact, Samus recognized this very spot. Early on in her Zero Mission, she'd found the morph ball upgrade near here. In front of Samus, the path was blocked by the very boulder she'd jumped over to reach this upgrade. She decided to jump over it again for old time's sake.

From the top of the boulder, looking down, Samus saw a spherical hologram atop a tall pedestal, which stood between two statue-heads. That was it – the morph ball. It must have regenerated. Samus wondered whether it had done so after she left Zebes or after she lost her morph ball ability. There was nobody around to ask. In any case, Samus didn't need this upgrade – she'd lost it once (or twice… or maybe even three times), but she'd gotten it back on SR388.

Samus froze in place when she saw what was up on the cave wall. A camera was built into the wall, exactly on level with her. It looked like a metal eyeball on a stick. Its pupil-like lens was looking right at Samus. She dropped to the ground. The camera's stare followed her.

On the one hand, the camera could just be leftover from the Pirate's last stay on Zebes. Samus didn't remember seeing it back then, though. And frankly, she didn't have a good feeling about this whole situation. Something else didn't seem to add up. The caves may have shifted after Mother Brain's destruction, but that wouldn't connect two previously unconnected elevator stops. Someone would have had to do that. Yet still, the question remained: if there were Space Pirates here, where were they?

And where was her baby Metroid?

Samus shook her head. It's not my Metroid, she reminded herself. Anyway, if there was one place where it and the Pirates weren't, it was here. Samus poked around Brinstar for a short while longer, but soon she gave up. These caves were empty. It was time to get back on the elevator, go back to Crateria, and see what she could find out up there.

}

Right away, Samus knew that something was wrong. Only a few emergency lights had been on in the elevator room when she went down. Now, after coming back up, the place was brightly lit. Samus braced herself for the worst and opened the door.

It's a good thing she braced herself, or else she may not have ducked under a half-dozen laser beams the moment the door opened. Space Pirates were waiting for her.

Space Pirates loved to modify their genes and armor, so they looked different everywhere Samus went. But the Zebesian race of Pirates was a particularly proud one – with reason, given Zebes's central role in Space Pirates' glory years – and hadn't changed in a long time. A number of scaly, humanoid figures now occupied the ruins of Tourian. They had very long, two-sided claws at the end of each arm – like a crab's, but proportionally longer – and a gun between each pair of claws. Their heads were elongated and flat, with beak-like mouths filled with sharp teeth. Their gray bodies were about Samus's size. Their red eyes were filled with anticipation. Most of them clung to the walls, but one stood right in front of Samus.

Samus acted immediately. Her suit transformed, and as it did, she transformed – into a state halfway between matter and energy. Samus had become a morph ball so many times that she no longer even felt the transition (the first time she'd done it, as a child, the shock almost made her catatonic). Yet the Pirates had been aiming at a person, not a two-foot-tall, red and orange sphere; it took them a second to adjust. Samus used that second to roll between the legs of the Pirate in front of her, transform back into her normal form, and shoot that Pirate in the back with a missile. The Pirate collapsed. Unfortunately, this gave a couple other Pirates time to shoot Samus in the back.

Samus turned around and shot a missile all three Pirates in sight. They fell from the wall to the ground. These were very weak Pirates – the lowest of their ranks. Samus jumped forward, onto the first of many platforms between her and the door. Then two more Pirates fell from the ceiling to the second platform. Samus jumped over their laser attacks and fired away at them with her power beam. They collapsed and fell into the ditch below. Samus jumped over to the second platform and looked down. One of the Pirates was twitching; the other wasn't moving. She jumped down, landing on the rusted metal tubes that covered the whole room. She pointed her arm cannon at the surviving Pirate; she then walked until she was looking down at it. Though it was no longer moving, it was still conscious – the loathing in its eyes was clear proof of that.

The more Samus's adrenaline rush cooled off, the harder her brain got working. "Tell me what's going on here," Samus said to the Pirate, keeping her arm cannon inches from its head. "Why have the Space Pirates come back to Zebes?"

The Pirate laughed, and Samus had to hold back an urge to shoot it right away. "You really don't know yet? Oh, now this is a privilege! Do I really get to be the one who breaks the news to the Hunter about our new base?"

"What? A new base?"

It laughed again. "There's the shock I was hoping for! Yes, Hunter, we've rebuilt our Zebesian base. And this will not be like last time. There is nothing – nothing – that compares to what we are doing now. Our kin from all over the galaxy are contributing to it, pooling our resources for it, so that it can be more than a base – it will the foundation of a new Space Pirate empire. Oh, and here's another surprise for you. Guess who's back on Zebes?"

Ridley? Samus thought, but she chose to remain silent.

"Give up? C'mon, I'll even give you a hint. You've known her since you were just a little girl."

Behind her visor, Samus's eyes widened. "Mother Brain?"

"Bingo! And…"

"That's impossible! I killed Mother Brain – I killed her right here, in this chamber!"

The Space Pirate, who seemed to be enjoying itself despite its perilous situation, laughed again. "Man, this is fun! Yeah, yeah, you beat us last time. But it wasn't over then and it isn't over now. We've rebuilt Mother Brain, and she will lead us to…"

"Where? How?"

"I can't tell you where, idiot. But as for how – well, let's just say that even though the Urtragian Pirates lost Aurora Unit 313, they still kept the instruction manual."

Samus's body was vigilant as ever, but on the inside, she felt numb. This was an overwhelming amount of information to take in at once. Without thinking, another question came to her lips. "Where's the ba- the infant Metroid, where is it?"

"That's enough questions, Hunter!"

Samus heard the scuttling behind her, but she turned around too late. One of the laser beams whizzed by her, but the other one hit her right in the chest. She shot and killed the two Pirates who'd snuck up on her. The one she'd been interrogating sat upright and attacked her; she shot and killed that one, too.

Samus jumped back up to the platform and looked around. "Any more of you? Huh?" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "Show yourself! Come out and fight!"

Silence. That seemed to be all of them. But that didn't calm Samus down. She was tense. She was angry. And beneath all of that was a creeping sense of despair.

Automatically, Samus jumped back down to the dead Space Pirates to see what she could get from them. Her suit held itself together using a vast amount of energy packed tightly into tiny tanks. Some of that energy had been used up when the Pirates had shot at her. Luckily, this suit could suck the remaining energy out of the dead Pirates' armor to restore some of its own. Since her missiles were kept in a compact, energy-like state before being fired, she could replenish them using a similar method.

Samus did get to replenish her missiles, but unfortunately, only one Pirate had energy left to give, and it was only a little. The last Pirate Samus checked was the one she'd interrogated. Samus looked down at it. She'd almost been ready to spare it, too, before it attacked. Samus hadn't spared a Space Pirate in a long time. It was all but impossible now, really. The "Hunter" was so notorious among the Space Pirates that they all dreamed of being the one to take her down – and none of them would dare live with the shame of having let her go. Once they saw her, nothing short of death would stop them from fighting. And they had made an adjustment to their helmet; now it keeps them conscious until death, no matter how much pain they are in – so killing a Pirate is the only plausible way to defeat it.

Samus had tried to spare her Pirate opponents, once. When she was younger. As it became less plausible, she eventually gave up. Right now, however, she felt no desire at all to spare anyone. She was angry, and the more she realized what a total mess she'd landed in, the angrier she got. The Space Pirates had ruined her life at every single turn. She thought she had put a stop to that. Now they were doing it again.

It never ends. It never fucking ends.

Samus got ready for battle as she opened the door and walked into the tall shaft.

More Space Pirates. Just as she suspected.

Samus rolled sideways to dodge the oncoming laser fire. "Goddamn it!" she yelled as she fired back. "When will you assholes leave me alone?"

{

Something dove down at her. Samus didn't have time to see what; she only saw its scattered remains fall to the ground after her missile quickly tore it to pieces.

It was so awful that Mother Brain was now in control of Zebes's wildlife. None of the animals here had wills of their own anymore. In essence, Mother Brain had already killed them and turned them into extensions of her own being. Her puppets. When Samus remembered this, it became easier to kill everything she saw without hesitation.

It was a shame, yes. But Samus was done mourning for Zebes. Now she was finally doing something about it. And despite the danger, despite all the evil that had been wrought here, it was exciting. Samus had never felt more alive.

She looked ahead. Further on in the cave was a green, metallic structure that seemed out of place in the blue, rocky caves of Brinstar. A yellow pit of lava surrounded the structure. And things were moving in the darkness, although from this distance Samus couldn't tell what. She knew only that they meant danger. And what had she come here for, if not for danger?

Samus smirked. A "Zero Mission", they had called this. They'd given her a zero percent chance of success. Maybe they were right. Somehow, it didn't make a difference to Samus, one way or the other. If she died here, she wouldn't have let her parents, or the Chozo, or the galaxy, down. She would have died fighting to end the same evil that had contaminated her life from the beginning – to make sure it never contaminated another life again. She hoped she could succeed. If not, maybe she could make it easier for someone else to.

Her heart racing with anticipation, her mind focused as a laser, Samus walked into the unknown danger ahead.

}

One Pirate down. Two Pirates down. Samus dodged their attacks and fired and fired at them. But they just kept coming. There was no end. And each time yet another Space Pirate jumped down from the tall shaft above, Samus got angrier still. Angry that she'd been fighting these bastards her whole life and they were still finding new ways to make her miserable. Angry that no matter how hard she fired, how much of her rage she siphoned into the act of pulling the trigger, she couldn't blast her way out of this nightmare.

Samus found herself surrounded by more than a dozen dead Space Pirates. She couldn't remember killing any individual one of them; she'd been too enraged to think straight. Now she was only slightly better. Killing them hadn't given her any satisfaction – in fact, the sight of their dead bodies made her sick. Worse yet, she knew that there would be more of them, and most of the others would be stronger. This unexpected mission was only beginning.

Samus jumped up the shaft slowly so that she could think. Space Pirates had come back to Zebes. They were putting all they had into this new base. That made the stakes of this mission higher than ever: it would either be the Pirates' last stand or their great comeback. Somehow, Mother Brain was back. And most importantly, they'd kidnapped her Metroid… No, that was far from the most important fact here. It just happened to be the fact that Samus's mind gave the most weight to.

What use did they have for a single Metroid? A chilling thought came to Samus: did they plan on cloning it? She forced herself not to think too hard about it. She'd find out eventually.

Finally, Samus got to the top of the shaft, shot the door above her, jumped through it, and went back to the natural cave. Fortunately, there were no more Space Pirates here. Unfortunately, that didn't mean Samus was safe. While she was gone, Crateria had come to life. Creatures of all sorts had crawled out of the soft soil of Zebes. Only Mother Brain could control so many animals at once. So the Pirate hadn't lied. She really was back.

A couple of blue Geemers slowly crawled back and forth along the cave walls; they wouldn't attack Samus until she got near. Nor would the Ripper she saw further up. Rippers were small, light-brown, and heavily shelled creatures that propelled themselves through the air like some sort of natural rocket; they tended to follow fixed paths, and right now Samus wasn't anyone near this guy's.

So, for the moment, Samus was safe. This gave her time to think – if she could only calm down first. It wasn't easy, but eventually, she forced her frustration and despair to back off, for the moment, so that her mind had room for more important things.

She'd come here to retrieve the Metroid. Now she understood that this was no longer the most important task: that spot was reserved for finding, and killing, Mother Brain. Even if she hadn't come here today, the Federation would have asked her to do it eventually.

The Space Pirates weren't idiots – well, not all of them. They would have known that "the Hunter" would come back for them. They would have prepared for it. Samus had to be prepared for the unexpected. She couldn't know what new treats the Pirates had cooked up for her.

If the Space Pirates had surprises in store for Samus, she'd better find some surprises for them, too. The fact was that Samus hadn't fully explored the depths of Zebes on her last mission. It was a vast and mysterious planet, and the Chozo had inhabited it for a long time. They'd left secrets here; their prophets had known that someday, one of them would need it. Or, at least, one of them via adoption. Samus had found many of these secrets the last time she came here, but certainly not all of them. Now she needed to find more. Especially if the Space Pirates were as invested in this base as she'd been led to believe. She needed a new edge on them.

So Samus decided to thoroughly explore the caves of Zebes this time. She'd leave no crevice uninvestigated, no path ignored.

To start off, now was a good time to take a good look around Crateria.

}

Her search of Crateria brought her in contact with a number of hostile, but weak, creatures. It took her through tiny passageways into an unfamiliar cave. It took her to a hallway, adjacent to that cave, made entirely of brick. And finally, in a room at the end of that hallway, it took her to a Chozo statue.

Samus knew what she'd found the moment she laid eyes on the brick hallway; it was too elegant a room, too beautiful, to be of Space Pirate design. The room and statue at its end were both predictable and familiar. It was always the same with these rooms. They were built like a fortress – not unlike Mother Brain's old fortress, though much smaller. A little, simplistic metal box built into the soil. And the sole inhabitant was always the same: a grey, beaked figure sitting against the wall, holding its arms out in offering.

The sight of the Chozo statue relieved Samus. It reminded her that there were still things the Space Pirates couldn't touch. That although the Chozo had left Zebes, a part of them was still here, resilient against all evil.

In the statue's hands was something small and round. Samus shot at it, and as she expected, it became enveloped in a bright light. Samus jumped on top of this light and became a morph ball. Soon, she felt her suit changing. Her suit is so much like a part of herself that it felt as if her limbs were being taken apart, adjusted, and put back on. But it was a sensation Samus was used to by now, and it didn't hurt. Hardware and software shifted in unison until the upgrade was complete.

Samus rolled off of the statue and unraveled from her morph ball form. Then she saw a notice on her visor, telling her what had been upgraded: her bombs. The tiny bombs that she could lay in her morph ball form. Now they'd be more powerful, and quicker to create.

She looked at the statue one last time. "Thank you," she said, and she was thanking it for more than just the bombs. Until she saw it, she'd forgotten that there was still good on this planet. Or in this universe.

She turned around. The door was closed – and gray. Normal, blue doors are blocked by an energy shield that can be broken easily with a power beam (originally, one was supposed to have a key to unlock it, but shooting it works just as well). Other colors represented more powerful shields. Gray meant there was no shield at all – just a titanium door. And it was locked.

The hell? was Samus's only thought. Then she heard something behind her. Samus turned around, gasped, and backed into the door.

The Chozo statue was standing up.

{

"Grandpa! Grandpa Bird!"

Samus finally found him; his broad, gray-white, feathered back was unmistakable. Old Bird turned around to face the panicked and confused nine-year-old girl. He smiled – an obvious attempt to reassure her, but Samus could see the worry in his eyes.

"Samus? Is something wrong?"

"Grandpa, it's… it's that statue in the valley! I just saw… you won't believe me, but I just saw it walking!"

Old Bird laughed; the worry disappeared from his face. "Is that all? That isn't anything to worry about, Samus. I suppose it found a better place to stay and decided to move there."

Samus was so confused it was hurting her head. After a moment, she decided Old Bird must have misheard her. "It was a statue, though! And it was moving!"

Old Bird smiled and nodded. "Yes, yes, I understand. When you hear 'statue' you think of the slabs of stone that humans have carved. We Chozo only call our creations 'statues' because there's no better word for it; no human tongue has a word for what we create. You see, Chozo artisans don't solely focus on their statues' exteriors. They also put… a little bit of themselves inside."

"What? A little bit of themselves?"

"Yes, a little bit of their own spirit, you might say. So that the spirit of the Chozo may live on long after we've left this world. Isn't that the point of art, after all?"

"Um…"

Old Bird smiled and rustled Samus's hair. Samus blushed and grimaced; she hated being treated like a child.

"Most of our statues serve a specific purpose," Old Bird explained as he removed his claw-like hand from Samus's head. "Some of them will help a lost traveler in need. Many hold on to a treasure, keeping it safe from thieves. Then there are the Torizo." His face became sterner. "Those are warriors, built as a last resort if something of ours needs protection. They may be beautiful on the outside, but they're the fiercest of guardians if you disturb them."

Samus's eyes grew large as a brilliant idea came to her. "Wait a moment… Grandpa Bird, I could train by fighting the Torizo! You said there were no sparring partners here besides the boring stuff Mother Brain comes up with. But…"

"Absolutely not," said Old Bird, and suddenly his gaze was harsh.

"But…"

"Samus, if you fight a Torizo, only two outcomes are possible. One, the Torizo are built to be very powerful and would probably kill you."

"But I…"

"Two, if you survive, you would only do so by destroying the Torizo, and that is a sad outcome itself. Think about it. A noble guardian, gone. All the hard work that went into creating it, gone. A part of the Chozo's eternal connection to the universe, gone. Is that really what you want?"

"I… um. No." Samus looked down at her armor-clad feet. She was getting so tired of Mother Brain's robots. She really wished she could fight against something stronger.

}

Old Bird was right: the Torizo was tough. But not nearly tough enough for a fully-grown, fully-experienced Samus Aran. Soon, it was reduced to a pile of bird-like rubble at her feet.

Samus heard the door go click behind her, unlocking itself. She barely noticed. She was staring sadly at the statue's head, which she had shot clean off of its body. "I'm sorry," Samus said to the broken statue, and immediately she regretted saying it. Words couldn't possibly express her regret; realizing this made the regret more real, somehow.

"Dammit," Samus whispered. Then, louder, as she slammed her fist into the wall behind her: "DAMMIT!"

The Torizo had done its job, defending the bomb upgrade. And out of desperation, Samus had become its enemy. Desperation forced on her by the Space Pirates.

No place Samus went was safe, it always seemed. But the past, her past with the Chozo, had been her sanctuary. No matter how terrible the outside world got, she could always close her eyes and go back there. In the open-eyed world, the Chozo statues proved that this past was real; they tied her to it. Her past was the one place she thought that no evil could reach. Now she'd been forced to turn against it, to fight it, to destroy a part of it. The Space Pirates had turned her own past against her. Their ability to ruin things had finally transcended time.

Furiously, Samus ran out the door and through the hall, ignoring all of the tiny winged bugs that flew at her. She didn't even feel it when they bit at her armor with their small, but sharp, fangs. None of that mattered right now. All that mattered was that she kill every single Space Pirate on this planet as soon as possible.

}

At the very least, she killed every single Space Pirate in her path. There were plenty, as it turned out, in a spiral staircase she found after running through Crateria. It was made of the same type of brick as the hallway near the Torizo; Chozo writings were etched on some of the walls, and the beaks of carved Chozo heads poked out near the ceiling. Several Space Pirates, in tough red armor, were waiting for her there. She killed all of them on her way down.

At the bottom of the staircase, the path forked. To Samus's right were caves that went yet deeper into the crust. To her left was a simple suspension bridge. She took a closer look at the bridge. It seemed to pass through a huge ravine – she couldn't see the ground beneath it, nor could she see any walls nearby. Only darkness surrounded it. Something about it intrigued Samus. She decided to see where it led.

As she walked, Samus noticed a faint glow ahead of her, from the other end of the bridge. When the bridge ended, and brought her to another rocky cave, the light was still too faint to determine what the source was. But she only needed to walk forward a little. Then she saw them.

Four golden statues, all attached to each other, forming a single golden sculpture. On top, a winged beast – Ridley. In front, a monster with an enormous stomach and comparatively tiny head – Kraid. Plus two others whom Samus did not recognize. Their eyes glowed dimly.

If this mission was anything like the last one, Samus knew why these statues were here. Last time, it'd only been Kraid and Ridley – the Pirates had found two more generals, it seemed. Mother Brain's lair was extremely well-protected. One could not get there without the consent of a few particular high-ranking Space Pirates; they were the only ones who could "unlock" their corresponding statue. This sculpture was, essentially, a locked door to the new Tourian. Of course, if any of these Pirates were to die, there'd be no use for their statue – so it would cease to function. Obviously, Samus wouldn't get far by politely asking these four to let her into Tourian. That left only one alternative.

Samus walked back to the bridge with four new targets in mind. Now all she had to do was find them.

}

The Chozo, at their peak, were perhaps the greatest civilization in the history of the universe. Were. Eventually, their numbers dwindled, their population aged, and as all things come to an end, so did the greatness of the Chozo.

As their extinction neared, the Chozo realized that they did not want to simply disappear and leave nothing to their successors. They saw it as their duty to create things – enduring things – to help make the future of the galaxy a peaceful and prosperous one. So they helped to create a Galactic Federation, uniting all spacefaring peoples in the Milky Way. And on Zebes, one of their many home planets, they created an artificial intelligence named Mother Brain.

Mother Brain pooled together all data collected by both the Chozo and the Galactic Federation. Before she was one of the greatest threats to civilization, she was considered one of its greatest achievements. The Federation and the Chozo never found a limit to what she could do; they gave her more and more tasks, and she completed them perfectly. She became fully in control of the Chozo's habitat on Zebes.

Mother Brain noticed how perfectly she completed all of the tasks given to her. She also noticed how chaotic, violent, and grim the universe outside was. Why were they giving her such a small amount of control, when the things she had control over were so much better than the things she didn't? Time passed, and her control increased, yet her perfection never waned – the sample size was so large now that, by her calculations, a conclusion was inevitable: she must be put in control of everything if the universe was ever to improve.

Control became an end, rather than a means. But she needed a means to that end. That's where the Space Pirates came in. She was a natural leader without a following; they were natural followers without a leader. They fit perfectly. Eventually they found each other, and the rest, unfortunately, is history.

The first child of the Chozo, Mother Brain, ended up with the Space Pirates, as did the Metroids she controlled. Their second child, Samus Aran, fought for the Galactic Federation and for that rapidly rising young race, humankind. Which would succeed the Chozo and become the next great galactic civilization? Everyone thought that this question had been answered years ago, when the second child killed the first. Everyone had underestimated the persistence of the Space Pirates.

}

Samus recalled her knowledge of Mother Brain as she walked through a very wet, slanted cave. It was full of tiny water puddles, and mushrooms – some of them huge, all of them with twisted stems – sprouted from these puddles. Several creatures tried to disturb her, but they were weak and she easily blasted them all away. She was so lost in thought that a powerful enemy would have caught her off-guard.

At the bottom of the sloped cavern was a door. Through the door was a room whose walls and floor consisted of wiry mesh, held in place by a series of long poles. When Samus looked down, she could see through the floor – only she couldn't really see anything. The chasm below had no visible bottom.

At the center of the room was a yellow, glowing circle. An elevator. Samus walked over to it, activated it with the push of a button, and waited. Then she descended. And as she went down, Samus was struck by a horrible realization: that this mission had yet to even begin.