Once everyone was gathered around the table again, Samus went through all the introductions while Spike made breakfast for everyone. While interested glances were exchanged at each name, only two moments of real interest caught attention, both of which based in how Anthony reacted. The first was when Samus introduced Twilight as Spike's other mother.
"Heh," Anthony chuckled. "You know, I always wondered what your type was, Sam."
As Twilight tilted her head in confusion and Luna guffawed, Samus punched Anthony on his arm, hard. At that point, Spike came back from the kitchen with waffles for everyone, pausing behind Gandrayda's chair to smile down at her, only to blush when she leaned up to kiss him on the cheek.
"Whoa!" Anthony gasped out, surprised. "When'd you two get lovey dovey? I thought you couldn't stand how forward she was?"
Spike shrugged. "We came to understand each other a bit better. Things change."
"Especially in our case," Gandrayda offered with a chuckle, briefly turning into Anthony before changing back.
"...that was just freaky," Anthony and Spike stated together.
"This seems to be an unusually large gathering," Adam commented, "with several figures of obvious significance for this planet. But it seems a bit too relaxed for an official diplomatic event."
"Neigh, Commander," Luna countered. "Spike is as close to sister and I as family, so we came to hear his tales of adventure amongst the stars now that he has returned to us."
"I just stopped in cause everyone else was here," Discord offered. "It's boring when they're all in one place somewhere I'm not."
"How far you got?" Anthony asked curiously.
Spike and Samus both lowered their eyes. Twilight was the one who spoke up. "We just learned about Zebes destruction," she offered.
"Ugh..." Anthony winced. "Talk about a grim note."
"And talk about timing," Adam added. "We arrive just in time to help tell the next mission...your second to last for the Federation. Isn't that an odd coincidence?"
"Not really," Rundus countered. "We arrived just in time to help tell about the Phaaze conflict."
"That's a bit much to shrug off as coincidence," Adam countered. "It almost seems...planned." He glanced towards Discord.
"What are you looking at me for?" he asked, his voice filled with injured innocence.
"You're the only one here with the power to arrange this," Adam indicated.
"Puh-leez!" Discord scoffed. "I'm the Spirit of Chaos! Why would I do something so...orderly?"
"Because no one would believe you would, so you could get away with it," Adam offered.
Discord smirked widely. "Well now, you're a clever one. But don't you think it's a bit much on my part to gather you all here from across the cosmos just for a reunion and story time? That's just silly!"
"True," Celestia agreed. "It's far too simple for your normal hijinks. What else are you planning?"
"Aren't you overlooking the possibility that it might actually be coincidence?" Discord offered.
"Discord..." Fluttershy began, her tone of voice between encouraging, chiding, and motherly disapproval.
Discord sighed. "Cross my heart," he began, doing the motions, "hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye, my only future plans involving all of you are to hear the rest of the story."
Adam remained suspicious, but with everyone else present accepting this, he decided to remain silent. Samus then began the tale. "Our first stop after Zebes was the nearest Federation outpost," she explained. "Using that other beam augment as I did actually damaged my suit, so I actually needed a tune up before I could get a check up." She lowered her eyes. "It wasn't until later I would understand the significance when one of the scientists said they gave my suit a 'good cleaning'."
"Did they try to harvest Metroid cells from your suit to clone, but end up cloning nearly everything you fought on Zebes including Ridley?" Scootaloo asked. When everyone looked at her, she shrugged. "What? The Space Pirates abused cloning. You can't tell me the Federation doesn't have it. And we've got two more 'maybe Ridley' battles based on how many times Samus and Spike said they fought him, and only two more missions. He has to show up here somehow."
Adam and Anthony both stared. "How...?" Anthony tried to ask.
"Gamers," Spike replied, causing Anthony to nod in understanding and chuckle.
"That's exactly what happened, Scootaloo," Samus explained. "Of course, I wouldn't find out about that for a few months. After reporting the results of the Zebes mission to the authorities, Spike and I decided to find someplace to relax and detox. So we swung by Aether to see how things were going there with the rebuilding."
"It wasn't doing too well," Spike admitted ruefully. "The Luminoth were busy debating exactly how to go about rebuilding their world properly. The major debate was about whether to try and rebuild Aether as it was before the conflict, or to try and live in Aether as it had become."
"But wasn't that mission three years before?" Twilight demanded, having kept track of those details. "How could they still be debating?"
"According to U-Mos, the Luminoth are long lived, can last for a long time on little food, and are very patient," Samus explained, rolling her eyes. "Not unlike the Chozo. By my estimates at the time, as long as they had enough rations and clean water - which they did - the debate would probably last a full decade."
"So we spent most of our time riding the thermals over Agon Desert," Spike finished. "Bureaucratic infighting was not our idea of relaxation."
"When we felt more at peace with ourselves, we left," Samus offered. "Once out in space, we picked up...a rather unique distress signal. An SOS signal demanding immediate attention and aid from anyone who heard it. It was code named 'Baby's Cry'."
Spike snorted derisively.
"You have a problem with Federation protocols?" Adam asked calmly.
"Nah," Spike countered. "I just think it sounds like a bad joke that the 'Baby's Cry' led us to the Bottleship."
Rainbow wasn't the only one who snorted in disbelief, though she was the one that spoke. "Seriously?"
Samus shrugged helplessly.
So... "The Baby's Cry" led to the "Bottleship"? What's next, fighting Ridley in "The Cradle"?
Oh, Twilight, you're so innocent. And I love how Luna got the joke. Nice chapter.
Oh my god.... That final joke....
6924308 The whole game was like that, unfortunately. "Babys cry" "bottle ship" "Other M= Mother brain", and the whole time Samus mopes about the baby metroid who died to save her. It's a decent game gameplay wise, but the plot and especially how samus is portrayed kinda spoiled it.
...This joke eluded me since I got the game. Well played, Nintendo. Well played.
*sighed
I've been waiting for a while for this part. Other M will finally be written by an actual writer.
THE BABY
THE BABY
THE BABY
BABY'S CRY
BOTTLE SHIP
METROID OTHER M IS AN ANAGRAM FOR MOM!
OTHER M IS AN ANAGRAM FOR MOTHER!
IT'S AN ANAGRAM INSIDE AN ACRONYM WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SH-
had to.
6924477
Oddly enough, that video is rather heavy inspiration for this entire arc of this story.
Here we go.
Wehey!
Welcome to dealing with shapeshifters.
Because they can cause so much chaos?
I think it'd be Zebes' in this case. But yeah. Definitly not a happy end.
Because if anyone was capable of doing this sort of thing, it's you, Mr Reality Warper.
Clever boy.
Future plans being the key phrase.
Not sure I follow.
Clever girl.
Leave it at that.
Really? Wasn't that a few years ago? I mean Luminoths are probably long lived but, so that extent?
Wow.
Naturally.
Yeah, even the great Tatsurou, badassifier of many and much, can't make that sound good. Blame the original writers.
Like I said, blame the guy in charge of Other M. Apparently he was very stubborn in wanting things his way, as such.
Scootaloo's prediction is awesome. I can't wait to see what changes you make to this Tats, it will be my head canon for what should have happened.
6924506
YAY! I helped write it!
...
sorta...
Arrrigh', Tats: your mission, as you've preselected to accept by having been writing this fic:
MAKE OTHER M NOT SUCK!
Godspeed.
Having played Other M, I'm glad to see that Adam survived. There's just one problem though.
Samus' computer in Fusion was basically Adam in digital format. So I wonder how you're going to handle that part of the story, now that we see that Adam had survived.
6924595 *Sigh* If only Other M was so easily fixed...
Other M was an ok game. the only thing i don't like was it had to much story involved with it and some of the cut scenes were a little too long.
...ohhhh... I guess that was one of those jokes I needed to have spelled out.
Another enjoyable chapter. Good job.
It's funny, so many people hate Other M for the whole Authorization upgrade pain in the ass, yet so many forget that the bottleship was a Federation facility. which means it has safety Protocols, some of which were probable hardcoded into Samus' suit,
As for why Adam could not just Authorize her full suit at the start, that's simple, He was not one of the bottleships officers, so he had to get around and through the ships one internal protocols first to find the Authorization codes.
6925514
Then why was she able to reactivate the Space Jump, Screw Attack, and Gravity Suit without his approval towards the end of the game?
6925692
Internal repairs fixed them? The writers forgot the cut scene? whatever systems that was making the authorization system necessary finally broke, and she just never bothered to turn them on earlier?
We're talking about a Plothole that the games creators missed, that was only spotted after shipping, which in most conventional thinking about console games meant you could not fix it afterwards.
6925852
Alternatively, there's this interpretation.
Samus wanted to make things right with Adam, so she limited herself to the same tech Adam's unit had available to them...until she came to the mistaken conclusion that Adam was a bad guy.
And as for the "not authorizing the Varia Suit until the boss fight", because it wasn't in character for Adam to say when he tuned in to see her going up against that creature, "Samus, why the fuck aren't you using your Varia Suit? You're in the middle of an artificial volcano! Where is your brain at?"
(In essence, he didn't authorize the Varia Suit before the superheated section because he didn't think he had to tell her how to tie her shoes, metaphorically speaking. After all, only using authorized tech was Samus' decision, not Adam's directive.)
6925881 ... It's sad but that line of logic makes more sense then anything else I came up with, and applies a lot more logic then most of the haters of Other M applied to the series.
6926090
And it even explains why Adam shot her in the back to disable her when it came to the Metroid sector. After that, it became plain to Adam that his very presence had so skewed Samus' judgement and decision making process that she'd insist on doing it herself just to prove herself to him, and there was no way he could force her not to if she had full access to her abilities...so he fixed both problems by sacrificing himself, leaving Samus to complete the mission, knowing she'd function at full capacity to do so.
...wow. That actually explains the entirety of Other M in a way that fits the character of Samus overall.
Of course, here Samus has already taken responsibility as a Mother as well as a Bounty Hunter, so I'll be able to fix a lot of the issues.
6925852
6925881
Preface: I haven't actually played the games (I want to, but I've never really had the opportunity), but I've been following this story up to this point (which has done a fairly good job of explaining things, and the comments fill in a lot of the blanks), and I've done a bit of independent research to supplement my knowledge. That said, even I became aware of Other M's less than stellar reputation almost as soon as it had been out long enough for people to start forming opinions about it...
Anyone also forgetting that Samus is, above all, a Merc? Sure, she's former federation, but the key word there is Former. She's not technically anywhere inside of their official CoC, and any authority they may have over her is that of a private Citizen with a notarized Mercenary License, which gives her considerable amounts of Free Agency when carrying out missions. Her base-suit is built form Chozo tech, and any code-locks the Feds may think of sneaking into it would likely be Highly Illegal (Not that that would necessarily stop them, though once discovered it would be irresponsible of her not to Scrub her system ASAP and run a few Counter-Virus operations, just to be safe)...
In short, she has no excuse, as even if she wanted to "make things right" with her former CO (and therefore no longer under his Command), not utilizing her full potential only makes things more difficult, and perhaps more importantly, dangerous than they strictly Need to be.
6926105
One detail you overlooked.
Former CO and father figure. She was only 16 when she left Zebes and joined the Federation, and only 20 when she fought Mother Brain on Zebes in Zero Mission, based on the most reliable unofficial timeline available.
Also, according to that timeline, she was three when she lost her parents, and only 25 by Other M.
(I added a few years in there to give Samus more time to bond with Spike...but she's still only 28 on the Bottleship in this story.)
6926129 Ah, must have missed that little tidbit in my independent research. In that context her looking for Adam's approval makes a bit more sense, but in my mind still doesn't really excuse her not using every advantage at her disposal, and from looking at the relevant Wiki information again (Dash of Salt), it would seem that limiting herself in such a way would only serve to annoy and/or frustrate him so long as she's still at least following the mission directives given to her. In short; "How" the mission was completed shouldn't be as important as that it "Was" completed.
At risk of repeating myself:
Always Cheat. Always Win. The Only Unfair Fight is the One You Lose. And when the stakes are that high, losing means either you and/or one of your allies/friends/children dies.
6926543
That is the logical conclusion, yes.
But Samus' emotional state at the time of that mission in canon meant that not all of her decisions were based entirely in logic. It doesn't make sense to limit herself, but emotionally she's trying to go back to how things were before she turned her back on him.
692612 20 in Metroid/Zero Mission! 25 by Other M?!
garbbled choking
6926591
... Dies anyone else find it ironic that we appear to have put more effort into making Other M's story work properly within the timeline then Team Ninja did?
also, after the scene linked by The Fiery Joker, I liked how the deconstructed how they messed up the Ridley fight/encounter.
I agree with a lot of the rant, but I don't think it would have been PTSD. no It should have been more like the sort of stunned Rage, the type one gets when they think there Personal Nemesis is dead, Vaporized even, watched it happen Live and in person. and yet her they are, still alive and standing in the way.
I can almost picture Samus face when Ridley shows how with Sombra. that sort of Stunned, are your freaking kidding me, rage..
So, have the Luminoth settled the issue yet?
6924520
I'd think "involving all of you" would be the key phrase
6926723
It's Discord. It could easily be both.
Guess they're like Ents, huh?
6924595 .... I have to ask. Are you The Fiery Joker from Youtube?
Hmm... I am left wondering how Adam seemingly already knows Discord.
Oh wait. Discord is obscuring the truth concerning his plans&actions ... off planet discussion with Adam?
...other M was an AU sort of thing. You could have just pretended it never happened. Why didn't you?
7182465
Several reasons.
One, because despite the issues I had with the plot and characterizations, I enjoyed playing it.
Two, because it gave a chance for more character development, which this story rides on.
And Three, because one of the main reasons I decided to tackle Metroid was a desire to fix what I perceived to be wrong with it, as represented in The Firey Joker's "Fixing Other M Rant" video.
hahahahahahahahaha
6930281
Beat me to it.
6927534
Or the idea that the story in question isn’t over yet. One last mission
7182465 Incorrect the prime series is a AU (even if I don't like that fact) due to the fact that the creator of the metroid said that it was non-canon.
Me: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9989055
You are both wrong. While the author did try to say Prime was non-canon... even that authority needs more to go off of than "I said so". Nothing in Other M truly contradicts Prime's events, and neither contradict any other part of the series, so they're both canon... but if it was a "one or the other" situation? Well, on one hand we have three games that are widely regarded as series high points, and dating back to Fusion in release, with a fourth in the works... versus what we all consider the lowest point barring console limitations or lack of actual Metroidvania, which only came out after the last of the original Primes... You do the math.
6924346
Supposedly, someone on Prime 3's design team hated Samus's character and was intimidated by her. So, he decided to ruin her. Hence the angst and story design bull of Other M. Well, with the continued success of Samus 2 remake, Metroid Dread, and Prime 4 in development, that MFer obviously failed in his attempt.