I am a Metroid

Metroid... the name sounds foreign... distant... but it's what you are. It's a name not of your mother tongue, you were an "other" before you were a people. Your brothers tell you that your kind was born of the hands of other lives. You were inventions, tools. Your brothers speak loud and long, they speak a special history. The tale is extensive, it is not a happy one.

Your ancestors were designed with purpose, your creators could not have imagined the terror of their creation's progeny. You began to destroy them in time, the predator conquering the prey. Created devouring creator. The god driven before the subject. You feel a pang of almost... sadness. A sort of secondhand guilt, maybe some sort of mechanism designed by these beings as a defense? Can you trust the feelings these higher beings gave you towards themselves to be real?

The joint consciousness around you chitters. You know there is no place for these thoughts, not when there is still work to be done. And there is oh so much work to be done. The voices of your brothers speak of many things uncertainly but share one certain truth. Above all, the strength of the species must persevere. Your voices must grow and spread until they can sing like the stars in the sky. For the first time, you begin to perceive the world around you, the pits where your egg resides and the stars above. You're told that when you hatch you can fly freely out of the pits. You would like that. For now, you must grow. For now, you must stay contained.

Around you, you feel a great clutch of eggs, fed on pure Phazon energy, many ready to burst forth new life. These brothers have older and wiser voices, but the wisest come from the freed brothers that float above.

Life is slow in the egg pits. Your brothers speak both during sleeping and waking, the only difference between the two for you is whether you look inward at yourself or gaze up at the sky above. It is a warm and safe place.

You're never hungry for energy, the Phazon beneath your clutch feeds you constantly. "Feed" is a foreign term to you and your brothers but a useful one. Any source of energy you can siphon from is sustenance enough. The Phazon speaks to you as it nourishes you, it's a different kind of energy than the ship engines some of the elder Metroids speak of. The Phazon is alive, as you feed on it you learn from it. Inside of it is ancient knowledge even the oldest of the brothers lack. You ask the Phazon things, but it can't hear you. Its knowledge is one-way. There are many things it tells you that you don't yet understand.

You do not know your brood mother. The oldest brothers speak of a queen, a long long time ago. She birthed millions of voices before hers was silenced. Many brothers have brought new mothers, their DNA mixing with that of yours as they bear the clutches of eggs, but all reject it eventually. Their minds shatter, their bodies reduced to nothing but husks for feeding. If you feel out far enough in the corners of the pit, there are blank points in the consciousness. Spots where your brother's voices are replaced with shuddering murmurs and whispers. Minds that don't match your own kind that speak in incoherent scatters. You fear those spots.

The collective mind rankles, there's a disturbance. A foreign ship lands near the egg pits. The eldest brothers scream in recognition. Egg-Killer. Queen-Slayer. Every voice begins to speak at once, it's too much for your mind. You shudder, trying to close the voices away. Your brothers' lights start to burn out, starting at the farthest reach of the pit but drawing nearer. In their place is an unreadable bulk. A buzzing burning mass blocked by walls of noise and fury. Steadily and mercilessly it snuffs light after light, voice after voice going silent. She's drawing nearer, erasing brother and egg alike.

For the first time since you were born you fear , and it is approaching quickly. You begin to flail, battering at the sides of your shell. Maybe it's luck, maybe it's some suspect knowledge gleaned from the Phazon, but you manage to poke through the soft membrane of the egg. The shell begins to leak and you're spilled out onto the ground of the pit. You're cold, tired, and no safer than you were before. But you're outside of the egg. The unending lights above are within reach. You try to lift yourself to them, but they don't draw near. The stars stay as unmoving in their heaven as you do in your panicked squalor.

Your body is weak, soft as jelly. All you are is a set of half-formed mandibles with a bubble of membranes and thought connected to them. You can't summon enough energy to move rapidly, but you can slither about pitifully. You reckon you aren't even big enough to feed on the tiny bot flies that swarm around the carcasses your brothers have fed on. Sub-parasite predator.

You slither and flop for some time, the voices of the nest continuing to be silenced around you. You've lost track of the buzzing that's silencing them. At least until an unfeeling boot heel comes crashing down onto you. You have a moment to consider that if you were any older and more solid the impact might have killed you, before the heel lifts and steps past you. For a moment you hang in the air, flung by the of the footstep. At that moment you make an instant decision. You don't know why, you don't know how, but you twist and flex your body until you're scrunched every iota of your being together. Then you flex, pushing with all of your might to launch yourself forward. You hit the back of a suit of reinforced armor with a splat that almost jars your consciousness back into the void. You slide along the surface before you gravitate into a crease in the armor. You cower in place, if the suit's owner notices you then they don't act on it.

You don't know how long passes like this or how many voices it silences. By the time it slows to a stop your mind has gone numb. The voices of your brothers are all gone or going. Even the eggs have been burst and destroyed. You remain, hiding among the killer's armor. The great silence starts to stretch around you.

The cool damp and dark of the egg pits is replaced by blinding light and insufferable dry warmth. The stars are gone, the sky above is featureless sheeting and artificial light sources. Created lights, you too are a created thing. You too were created for a specific purpose. Were these lights made by the same makers that made your kind? Would these lights turn against their makers if they knew why they existed?

Your thoughts are getting harder to form. You begin to realize how much you had relied on your brothers in their absence. These light thoughts are weaker, they mean less. They're ponderous to have. They're tiring. You need to feed on something, but there is no Phazon here.

The suit's owner stops moving, you feel the suit begin to stir irrespective of them. Parts of it begin to slide away and detach. The buzzing comes into clearer view, something soft and living. In a moment you're shaken out of your hiding spot and find yourself falling again.

You land somewhere dark, somewhere much nicer than where she had taken you. The ground here hums with a unique voice. You can feel power nearby, power unlike anything you've felt before. You slither furiously toward the source, a set of snaking metal tendrils wrapped in a protective coating. You pinch your way through the coating with your poorly-formed mandibles. It exhausts you, but you eventually break through. A new kind of power course through you, it lacks the personality of the Phazon but it doesn't hold itself back. You glut yourself on power and drift to sleep.

Your new home rumbles and rocks as you sleep, you miss the stillness of the egg pit.

When you wake you feel changes in your body. You're still undersized and soft, but you've grown a good deal and could probably stand a chance against smaller vermin. For the time being your diminutive size could wind up serving you, everything you do in this new place needs to be secretive.