TheDragon1989

Disclaimer: I have pretty much no familiarity with any Metroid expanded universe stuff. I’ve played all of the main games (or, in the case of Metroid II, the remake), and the things that are in your stories that aren’t directly from the games are not out of place for a miscellaneous sci-fi universe. I’m still surprised by Samus not knowing the gist of how the collar works. I would think that, even outside of a slavery context, they would be useful things to put on legitimate prisoners, and thus would have become widespread throughout the Galactic Federation. It’s probably best to put things down to overconfidence on her part and move on. I dare say that, if and when she gets out of this, she won’t be making the mistakes she made at the start of the story again. Normalising the concept of slavery certainly makes sense on Alista’s part, and that removes yet another reason not to enslave Samus. I still think, like any act, that it needs a little active reason to do it. Considering Olsar for a moment, he wanted Samus specifically because she had hurt him on a personal level. Though then again, Samus could have gotten them both out of the situation back just before her capture, when she “rescued” Alista from those space pirates. Depending on how much she remembers of that, you could work with that. This is probably where my lack of knowledge of Metroid EU comes back to bite me. I’ve always imagined Samus as willing to help, but not above revenge. There’s a reason she specifically goes after Space Pirates, after all. And within this story, she clearly got some sort of slightly-sick-but-justified satisfaction out of not only killing her rapists during the hunt, but in brutal fashion as well. And I think once you’re killing people in general, you are past a Batman-esque psychological state (again, not without justification).

I guess for me, she just still shouldn’t be at a level where she betrays her allies, at least not in a long-term sense. Certainly, she should be less able to trust others, and showing what would happen if Samus did betray her is very wise (and thus, I think it does make sense that Alista would let Samus get raped), but I’m not seeing why she would think this is a good idea. Again, especially when she’s just seen how very, very badly it can go wrong. Hoping to be proven wrong, and I’ve certainly enjoyed stories with worse character motivations. Well, since you asked… Starting at the end of Chapter 27, I would have had Samus basically start a one-woman guerilla war, taking down Olsar’s resources and maybe one or two more of his subordinates. Pushed back into a corner, he would then either retreat into his homeworld stronghold or to where they’re keeping Samus’ weapons and ship. She defeats him, either killing him outright or sentencing him and his cronies to ironic, even sadistic punishments (breaking Salis in a similar fashion to how she broke so many prisoners makes a certain sense). Yeah, obviously very vague, and probably not to playing to the strengths of this story. Subtle trickery and manipulation is more your thing. Besides, the difference in resources would probably have made Olsar unbeatable by conventional means, unless Samus were to get her equipment back. As to where I think it’s going now: Well, I think it’s fair to say that Samus is going to get her power suit back. That certainly seems to be Alista’s plan, and it makes sense in terms of taking down Olsar and company. Obviously, she has some plan for how to take down Samus afterwards. My guess is that it involves her collar in some way. You keep coming back to that detail, and if it had, say, an electroshock function in there, then it could theoretically take down Samus even when she was fully suited up. As for how it all ends, I think there are three basic possibilities: Samus wins, either killing Alista outright or letting her go to settle the debt. Samus leaves the empire to sort itself out. Alista wins, enslaving Samus and taking over the empire. If I had to take a guess, I’d say she’d be a fairer owner than Olsar (if nothing else, you’ve specifically mentioned in the story that she wants Samus as a bodyguard, and that would require a certain presence of mind), but this would still be a downer ending of sorts. Samus wins, and takes control of the empire, enslaving Alista, Olsar and whoever else is left alive to her will. I think this might actually be the most likely, simply because you’ve mentioned the ending would be a surprise. I can just about imagine this working, given that Samus is clearly a fan of retribution, at least in this story (in canon, I imagine killing Ridley, at least the first time, would have been immensely satisfying to her as well). In any event, I’m fairly sure this doesn’t end well for Olsar and his cronies. After all, if you were going to have them win, you could have just ended things at Chapter 21. Of course, you could just pull something completely out of left-field (oh hi, Ridley), but I doubt that will happen.