Since Metroid Prime 4 is about Sylux’s war on the Galactic Federation, who wants to bet he’ll kill Admiral Dane? Dane is a high-ranking Federation member who trusts Samus, and Samus isn’t allowed to have nice things, especially not father figures. And I could see Dane as one, especially as someone who personally relates to Samus as the survivor of a Space Pirate massacre.
And/or, and this may be controversial. What if they reveal Dane is in charge of some pretty corrupt stuff. Set him up as a genuine ally and friend in the previous game, just so the betrayal feels real when Sylux begins to make Samus doubt the Federation. And then all of this will transition to Fusion and her seeing just how far it goes. Maybe Dane’s corruption (ba-dum tsss) will only be hinted at, to preserve Fusion’s twist for Samus.
I keep seeing people saying Admiral Dane will be killed by Sylux or he will be tied to the corrupt parts of the Galactic Federation and HE BETTER FUCKING NOT.
The Virgin “General” Adam Malkovich: A “military genius” who doesn’t authorise his best asset to turn on her fucking suit’s AC; shoots said asset in the back to make his “heroic” sacrifice more dramatic; generally comes off as a standoffish asshole and gets his whole team killed
Fleet CHADmiral Castor Dane: Commands respect just by speaking; rightfully hangs back when things get too hairy for his troops; a true father to his men; his hat alone is legendary; stands around in lethal acid rain using his own flagship as an umbrella
Sometimes I wonder if Admiral Dane could’ve been replaced by Adam Malkovich for Corruption, since we already knew about his character’s past with Samus and even got a glimpse of him in the Zero Mission manga. I feel like that would’ve actually endeared the original, human Adam to fans, more than Other M ever did… That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sakamoto said no because that’s his character, whom he already had plans and a specific vision + game in mind for. So Retro Studios had to make up Dane, who ended up becoming an actual fan favorite and often compared to Adam as the superior Federation commander to Samus. Maybe Adam can show up in Beyond with a different studio writing him this time.
This is a kind-of script, synopsis, for this idea I had: It feels more logical that the Federation would've attempted to send their own saboteurs to Zebes before hiring Samus. Even if she supplied knowledge on Zebes' layout, I think they'd try that first.
This is Samus, so maybe in her selflessness, she insisted on being allowed to try first before handing over that information; She wouldn't want anyone else to die. But I could also see her understanding that the Federation would find this preposterous, because even if she was a former officer, Samus is still one person.
So maybe they tried sending in a more conventional force... And when that disastrously failed, they decided to send Samus in. Because the Space Pirates already know they’re trying, why not? And the first team failing could be a good way to set up how dangerous Zebes is, and necessitate Samus being the one to do it.
But how did this first mission, predating the Zero Mission, go? What do we call it? I've decided on Negative Mission, since anything below Zero is Negative. I also entertained "Negative-1 Mission" but that seemed a bit too silly. So this hypothetical episode, as follows;
Metroid: Negative Mission
It’s a dark room; Three expert pilots are personally debriefed by Admiral Castor Dane. Dane explains that Zebes is a natural fortress, the planet’s surface comprised of mostly barren, thick bed rock. Most life occurs within sprawling cave networks below, carved out millions of years ago by the now-extinct Deorem.
A source has given them valuable intel on Zebes’ internal layout; All of the passageways on the surface leading to the caverns far below. Including one passageway not known by the Space Pirates occupying the planet.
Their mission is simple; To infiltrate Zebes and investigate, and confirm, this hidden entrance. From there, the group will set up a camp, collecting other data as they stay hidden from Space Pirate scouts surveying the planet’s surface. One of them will fly back to the Federation to confirm the mission’s success, before more teams are sent in.
Once the group has amassed enough, they will sneak through Zebes’ caverns using the passageway. Armed with Ice Missiles to destroy any Metroids they come across, the unit’s mission is to assassinate the biomechanical supercomputer known as Mother Brain located deep within Tourian, thereby ending the Space Pirates’ control over the Metroids. It is a dangerous mission, Dane warns them; The pilots confirm they are ready for it, and hope to meet up with the remaining operatives chosen for this heavy task.
Dane also reminds them that their success determines whether or not the rest can follow. It also means they are the first, and only, to die if things go wrong. Unperturbed, the pilots promise the admiral they will face their fates with bravery. Dane seems charmed by their enthusiasm, but as he turns and walks away, has a heavy heart; That’s what they all believe at first, it’s what I thought.
Cut to three Federation stealth crafts flying to Zebes to sneak past the Space Pirate blockade. With stealth fields active, they’re invisible; They tense at the sight of the blockade, but go past all of the large ships and fighters, easy. They relax a bit, having cleared past every ship.
But Pilot A detects something ahead of her craft for a split-second. Something hits the windshield, and slides past; Two seconds later, Pilot A gets readings of her ship’s energy levels suddenly depleting. What she hit was a Metroid, and before it slid off her craft, it managed to latch on with its fangs and is now draining the ship of its energy. Metroids can see right past any cloaking, sensing energy through mysterious means.
Pilots B and C are unable to help as they try to maneuver past the Metroids; Pilot A begins to curse, and Metroids begin lining up in front of the stealth crafts, hoping to snag on. The pilots realize the Metroids are being used as goddamn space mines! Two more latch onto Pilot A’s craft despite her best efforts; Two latch onto B’s, but fortunately one lands on the bottom of his craft, in front of a cannon.
He attempts to shoot it off, to no avail; The Metroid is just out of the way. He strains the turret to the left, shoots again. The shot just barely grazes the Metroid, shaking its gelatinous body. One more shot… There! The force of the blast sends the Metroid careening ahead but out of Pilot B’s flight path as it shrieks, unharmed yet frustrated.
Pilot C narrowly avoids a Metroid, which briefly snags itself by a fang onto the wing, clawing through and disrupting the stealth field slightly; She does a spin and shakes off the angered Metroid.
Meanwhile Pilot A’s losing power fast. The others say to calm down, head for the atmosphere; Air friction during atmospheric entry can be used to pry the Metroids off. Unfortunately for Pilot A, who is beginning to panic, the stealth field has begun to sputter out; And now it has.
The Space Pirate blockade notices a foreign spacecraft, fighters immediately deploy as cruisers direct heavy fire. Pilot A weaves around, unable to make a straight line for Zebes, and begins to panic. The others fret but there’s nothing they can do; Pilot B has to prioritize heading for the atmosphere to get rid of the remaining Metroid, and Pilot C is by no means precise enough to shoot the Metroids off of A without blowing up her ship.
A pleads C to try but it’s too late; Space Pirate fighters have engaged. Pilot A flies around, C curses and deliberates, but with a heavy heart has to keep going as A begs. A’s screen warns her that the engine is losing power fast, as will life support syste-
The AI doesn’t get the chance to finish when everything goes dark. No more power, the Metroids drained it all. Because of inertia, Pilot A’s craft keeps shooting forward at the same speed. One of the fighters contacts a commander; Should we keep them alive, to interrogate? No, dismisses the commander; What could this Federation dog tell us that we don’t already know?
Pilot A squirms and sweats in the speeding quiet of her ship; She hears a scraping, sliding noise as one of the Metroids shifts back into view over the cockpit, its mouth pulsating hungrily. Crying and begging god, she closes her eyes, and Pilot A pulls the manual eject; The cockpit splits open, sending the Metroid flying off with it, just as the Space Pirates fire. The ship doesn’t blow up; Reactor is too dead to explode. It just liquefies into molten metal, sending the other two Metroids flying.
Pilot A whirls around in space, panicking as she tries to regain his bearings. She wails in despair and horror as a Metroid latches onto her face, covering the visor as she sees that same pulsating mouth; It drains him dry, and other Metroids join as she thrashes.
Pilots B and C dive through the atmosphere. B’s Metroid shrieks as it loses its grip, briefly hanging on by a mere fang before it flies off. Pilot B sighs in relief, Pilot C says good job.
Cut to a dark chamber; A bubbling vat as a thing inside begins to pulsate. Electricity arcs between its spines; It hears “Good job” and knows intruders have arrived. Mother Brain overhears Pilot B warning C that his ship’s about to run out of energy.
Cut back to Pilot B as his ship’s engines sputter. With no other choice he pulls the manual eject; His seat shoots out, parachute deploys, as the ship falls to the surface below. Pilot C tells B to send a signal when he lands, so C can pick him up-
Cut back to Mother Brain; A bolt arcs between two spines, and suddenly the transmissions are cut off. Taken aback, B tries to respond, but hears nothing from C. C doesn’t hear anything from B, and tries to reach out, nothing. She curses; Atmospheric interference? She has no choice but to land far below, Pilot B watches despairingly.
He waits, floating from his parachute, just the sound of it billowing in the wind. Pilot B slows his breaths, trying to calm down from his previously racing heart. His seat has built-in thrusters, but it’s best to save that energy, you never know what might happen.
He hears something above; A dreaded cry. A Metroid. He looks up but all he can see is the parachute obscuring whatever’s directly above; There’s no way, he murmurs. How did it follow him so fast? Pilot B begins to breathe fast and heavy again, and decides screw it. He clumsily, hastily reaches for his blaster.
B shoots one of the tethers; This unbalances the parachute, causing him to fall fast and lurch around, spinning. He tries to stay calm, focus, shoot the other tethers. This makes the descent more and more chaotic. One more left, and then four fangs suddenly protrude from the other side of the parachute; The Metroid!
B severs the final tether and drops, fast. The parachute unfurls, wrapping around the distressed Metroid as it cries out. The seat’s backup thrusters fire, righting Pilot B as his descent continues, still quickly. A meter shows fuel running out fast. He looks up uncertainly; The tangled-up Metroid is becoming smaller in the distance.
Cut back to Pilot C, who lands near a cliff that blends in with the rest of the surface from above. She gets out, deploying the stealth hovercraft. Ice Missiles, check; Regular Missiles, also check! As Pilot C drags things out, she steps on the ground. Deep below, something feels it, like a heartbeat.
C has everything, she’s suited up and geared. She tries again to contact Pilot B, to no avail. Pilot C ducks as Space Pirate fighters fly overhead; They don’t see her, the stealth field is still working. She still waits a bit, and finally breathes. Pilot C gets into the craft, one more step pushing her onto it, and then drives off.
Pilot B is almost about to land when the thrusters burn out; His seat drops the last foot or so, landing harshly on the side as he grunts, taking a moment to simmer in the pain. B rapidly gets out, armed with only his blaster. He looks around frantically above; No Metroid. He ducks under some Zebesian foliage, and tries to contact C, estimating some coordinates; Mother Brain is listening. With no response, B growls and stays where he is.
Suddenly he hears a noise, snaps toward it with weapon ready. It’s some small creature; Seems harmless(?) enough but you can never be too sure. Shakily, B tells it to back off, but it simply regards him with curiosity as it hops forward. B is obviously not ready to shoot this thing, maybe it’s just a cute thing…? He’s not sure, he gets more scared as it gets closer, starts to sniff. He tries to nudge it aside with her foot, comes across more like a kick.
The creature jabs, piercing Pilot B’s foot. He screams, hopping around on the other as he shakes his foot, the creature screeching furiously as it digs into the flesh. He tries to hit it against a rock, and in a panic, attempts to shoot the thing off.
He shoots off the creature, AND a chunk of his foot. Pilot B screams even louder, and now he’s on his back, crying and sobbing, pleading to god or whichever, writhing on the dusty, rocky surface of Zebes, clutching his leg as the foot boils and smokes.
Cut back to Pilot C, scanning the horizon; She’s displeased that there’s dust across this otherwise solid, rocky terrain. It’s creating a track; One the fighters overhead would obviously miss. But Aerotrooper patrols would go a lot slower and closer, and have a keener eye to pick up on it. Pilot C makes one more attempt towards B, as we see her first-person perspective-
BAM! Deorem bursts out of the ground, roaring, its mouth opening briefly. It’s like a flash, the hovercraft is rendered into shards of electricity and metal and a bit of fire as Deorem re-enters the ground. Its body loops through, spikes shifting along its sides.
Pilot B is delirious. The sun is in his eyes, he can barely see through his visor. There’s a horrible taste in his mouth. As he comes back to, he wonders where it all went wrong. Regressing, he mutters mama…?
And then he hears it, again; Why, why again?! That dreaded Metroid cry. His eyes snap open, he leans forward, the glare is out of his visor and he sees it up ahead; The damned Metroid. And it’s locked towards him, descending fast.
Pilot B regurgitates a noise of fear as adrenaline kicks in. He spins around, sending dust flying as he tries to run away but falls, screaming and cursing from his burnt-off foot. He starts crawling away, scraping along the dust. He looks back, shoots at the Metroid with his blaster but the shots bounce uselessly off of its indestructible body. B refocuses on getting away, spotting a crevice; Without thinking, he crawls through.
To his luck, Pilot B finds himself atop a cliff overlooking a larger, lush cavern below. He looks behind; There’s some sort of blue-green color, a mass, growing there? Oh god; It’s the Metroid, squeezing through with its flexible body. B tries shooting in panic, but the shots bounce off uselessly, rippling across the Metroid’s body. He desperately tries to push the Metroid back through the crevice, straining to halt its progress, but it easily pops its body out the other end.
Pilot B is knocked over by this, sliding down a hill past lots of alien foliage into some dark undergrowth. As he groans, Pilot B crawls beneath the cover of the flora, unthinking.
Cut back to the Metroid, following above. The foliage doesn’t rustle, thankfully not giving B’s position away. But it doesn’t matter; It tracks him perfectly, undeterred, like there’s some invisible connection pulling the Metroid to Pilot B. Cut back to Pilot B laying low somewhere beneath the foliage, so utterly terrified, teeth and eyes clenched, hoping and wishing to god the Metroid doesn’t find him as sweat beads roll down his face. He’s too slow and tired, and hopes to hide instead of fleeing.
As if all that foliage is invisible, Metroid lunges straight for Pilot B, fangs open. It latches onto him, a giant leaf wrapped around Pilot B as he struggles and thrashes, just like the Metroid previously wrapped up in his parachute. We don’t see all of him, just glimpses of the limbs, the burnt-off foot, as Pilot B screams. The Metroid hovers into the air, effortlessly carrying B’s body within its maw as he hangs. The leaf goes dark and brittle; Pilot B stops thrashing, his legs beneath the armor frail now. Some of the armor slips off.
Dissatisfied, the Metroid shakes Pilot B’s body like a dog with a chew toy, or a dead animal, wondering it’s got any more life to it. Nope, nothing; The Metroid squeezes it one last time in the hopes of something more, and then tosses aside the corpse. The leaf disintegrates mid-throw as B’s body lands, and we get a shot of it close-up as it comes to a halt, dust sifting through the gaps in the armor, bones cracking and the body so, so thin.
Mother Brain knows, she has sensed both deaths. In orbit, the Space Pirate commander is asking his soldiers if they’ve sighted anymore intruders. Suddenly, Mother’s voice interrupts the transmission; Sweetly talking, she explains there are three. Two have died on the surface of Zebes, and the commander happily confirms that with the third in space, they’ve dealt with the situation.
In a condescending tone, Mother Brain admonishes the commander lightly, as if speaking to a child; Now, now, this is still not something to be proud about. Those intruders shouldn’t have gone this far to begin with; And now one of her children is stuck on the surface, someone needs to give them a ride back into orbit! Whose fault is that? She leads the poor commander with some demeaning questions.
With an unenthusiastic face, the commander apologizes to Mother. Mother Brain insists to him that they need to keep home nice and tidy; They can’t allow pests inside. Begrudgingly, the commander bows and confirms, Yes Mother, my apologies. Don’t be sorry, just be better, Mother happily reminds. She shuts off the screen. The commander has an awful face; He’d love to curse Mother Brain under his breath and kick something. But this is Mother; She’s always listening, they say. She will turn around and ask him to repeat that. The commander is reminded of his own frustrating mother. A bad taste is in his mouth.
Back on Daiban, no response from the saboteurs for a week now. The Federation generals in the meeting agree; It’s a bust. Dane quietly closes his eyes, exhaling; He had a feeling this would happen, it’s why the first three were just pilots selected by him and not elite soldiers, who would’ve been picked by General Alex Miles. Dane was not yet sure if he could risk ground troops until he knew it was possible to get them to Zebes’ caverns. The guilt is weighing on his shoulders, he sent these pilots in as test subjects, expendable guinea pigs.
Commander Adam Malkovich reluctantly suggests that they take into account their source’s suggestion; That she be the one to infiltrate Zebes for them, and assassinate Mother Brain. At the very least, the Federation doesn’t want to lose any more of their own, do they? Miles gets semantic, pointing out this ‘source’ was a Federation officer herself; Technically they’d still be losing one of their own if she fails, contrary to what she suggests.
But yes, Miles backs Adam, and the others begin to agree with this spark. So does Dane, taking responsibility for his initial skepticism towards the source’s capabilities; It is time to hire Samus Aran.
So Admiral Castor Dane is a friend to Samus; A potential father figure even, someone who also lost everything to the Space Pirates at a young age, and dedicated his life to stopping them as a result. Dane survived the Phazon crisis with Samus, he looks out for her, and as a high-ranking Federation commander, would likely vouch for Samus after the events of Fusion, with his opinion holding a lot of weight; He is someone who understands.
…Who wants to bet Sylux will kill him in Metroid Prime 4?
I keep having fun with different Sylux scenarios in my head and now I’m thinking of another backstory that merges both my fanon motivations for Sylux (the disdain for a government that enabled a non-official caste system) and Samus blowing up a weapon after Sylux ignored the Federation’s orders:
Cylosis is a planet that doesn’t like the Federation for again, the same reasons I elaborated with my Sylux fanon. When it tried to secede, the Federation (during its Old Army era) deployed one of its client races (the Tanamaar Pirates) to suppress and control them. Sometime later, a people’s rebellion overthrew the Old Army, and Cylosis took advantage of the chaos to secede. The new government that was being hastily jury-rigged together took a solid look at Cylosis and decided, Let’s just let them have this.
In the meantime, some of the Federation’s client races also take the opportunity to invest in the Space Pirate PMC. Castor Dane is born but loses his family at a young age to the Space Pirates. Sometime after that, the human who’d go on to be called Sylux is born and winds up under the care of the people of Cylosis. I dunno how or why, probably another Space Pirate massacre. They were the galaxy’s #1 orphan manufacturer.
The Space Pirates launch the Metroid Crisis and deploy the Tanamaar Pirates to Cylosis, reasoning that they’ve done it before so they can do it again. Samus flips things around with the Zero Mission and helps the Federation in their counterattack. The people of Cylosis fight back and a grown-up Sylux does prodigal work as leader of a squad, helping wipe out the local Metroids.
Cue the battle: The people of Cylosis fighting in the trenches against Space Pirates who are surrounding an artillery canon. It’s not a super-weapon but it fends off spacecraft so it’s still powerful and volatile. The people of Cylosis are losing, but they have an ace up their sleeve: Sylux’s squad, which has snuck past enemy lines is right next to the cannon.
Sylux receives a message from Admiral Dane, who notes that Cylosis is losing and they need Federation backup. Sylux tells him to fuck off, they’re not gonna give the Federation the opportunity to take control under the guise of “saving” Cylosis; Besides, pirates at Cylosis is Cylosis’ business, not the Federation’s. Dane retorts that the Space Pirates just launched a devastating attack on the Federation, their continued operation is absolutely their business! Dane notes he has Samus Aran on standby.
Space Pirates spot the group and open fire, so Sylux hangs up to focus. Cut to Dane’s POV, frustrated; He thinks Sylux just hung up out of pride. He flashes back to the Space Pirates massacring his family and holds both a rage against this pirate cell and a refusal to let the incident repeat. Down below, a squad member asks if they should let in Samus and Sylux says screw that, they’ll proceed as planned. They respect Samus for taking out Ridley and averting the Metroid Crisis, but the dear admiral clearly doesn’t want Cylosis to have a weapon that could threaten his ships. The squad gets closer to the cannon but they’re cut off by the Aberax commander. Sylux stays behind to deal with it as they order their squad to go on ahead, infiltrating the cannon.
Sylux’s communicator gets damaged but they manage to single-handedly slay an Aberax with average armor and weaponry. Sylux’s friends seize the cannon from within. The Space Pirates outside haven’t noticed and continue to press onward, so the only way to stop is to obliterate them with their own cannon. Sylux’s squad sees it’s finished recharging and prepare a shot. In space, Dane sees this and panics, believing it’s about to fire on the people of Cylosis. He orders Samus to go ahead, not bothering to clarify he’s technically going without permission because every split-second counts.
Samus flies in, and begins charging a torpedo. From outside, Sylux sees this and panics, using the communicator to warn Dane, but they don’t realize it’s broken and only see Samus continue her course. They try to warn their squad but it’s too late. Samus fires a torpedo right into the charging cannon as Sylux runs forward to stop it (What could they have possibly done?) and the cannon detonates. Sylux is shielded by the Aberax’s corpse of all things, and when it’s over the body has been disintegrated, their dropped communicator with it. Sylux barely comes to, just for Samus to drop in right in front of them; She saw Sylux. Samus runs towards the remaining panicking pirates as the Federation swoops in, and Sylux glances around at the scene in disbelief.
The Space Pirates surrender, so Samus has time to check up on this unusual human of Cylosis. She offers a hand and Sylux briefly contemplates it in disbelief before slapping it aside. They stare at their own hands, covered in Aberax blood as they tremble. When Dane is confronted about ignoring Sylux’s warning, he claims he received no warning. Sylux comes to the conclusion he’s lying; Dane’s insulted ego didn’t want Cylosis to have an anti-spacecraft weapon to defend against the Federation, so he took his chance to destroy it with plausible deniability. Sylux can’t check their communicator to confirm it was broken because it got disintegrated; And so what became blame becomes a blood debt that needs to be repaid.
I’m having fun with this take just for the Shakespearean tragedy of it all; Three parties, each of them operating under limited information and pressing circumstances, who genuinely mean well and don’t know any better. The Space Pirates are of course the fourth party who are 100% the villains of it all, which is of course yet another reason why Sylux doesn’t side with them (in this version of Beyond, they’re a third party who crashes in to kill Samus after she’s worn out handling the Aberax).
Dane wants revenge against the Space Pirates, he doesn’t want the people of Cylosis to suffer like that. He sees a Space Pirate weapon about to fire, he doesn’t know Sylux’s squad already has it handled. Samus is following Dane’s orders and assumes the tension between the Federation and Cylosis has been resolved, plus the cannon IS charging up. Sylux has plenty of reason not to trust the Federation, it may have supposedly changed but when you have madmen like Vogl and his supporters still operating in the open, how can you say for sure? Cylosis really did have it handled, they told Dane as such, and were ignored.
When the Tanamaar Pirates conquered Cylosis on behalf of the Federation, it’s laughable to Cylosis that there’s any meaningful distinction now; It’s like asking a Vietnamese farmer who lost their entire village to U.S. war crimes to trust the White House because one of the war’s generals led a failed coup, salty over not getting to finish what was started.
You can argue Sylux should’ve trusted Dane’s help, or at least believed his excuse afterwards, but that seems unreasonable with this context. You can likewise argue that Dane should’ve heeded Cylosis’ sovereignty and trusted in a commander who is actually on the field and knows what the situation and Cylosis’ strategy is; He let his emotions get the best of him. But when people are about to die, surely going against their demands just this once is fine, right? You see a weapon about to fire, you’ll panic.
Samus, well. She’s honestly innocent because how could she have known, was she just meant to assume that Dane was omitting a crucial detail? Regardless, it seems such a cruel mockery to Sylux to see the Federation and Samus, whom they initially respected, swoop in to save the day like they didn’t just murder their friends.
It maintains the (undercooked) parallel between canon Sylux’s relationship with his squad and Samus’ with her own. Sylux feels guilt, but in the end of course they decide it was the Federation’s fault. They already had a political hatred for the Federation, but now it’s been pushed to actual violence. And again, those politics shed an unfortunate truth regarding how the Federation operates.
It also plays into me killing off Dane via Sylux in the buildup to the Beyond arc; I chose Dane because he’s a Federation commander we actually care about and aren’t rooting to have killed off, so it raises narrative stakes because otherwise if it was Other M’s colonel, all that tells us is that bad guys get defeated, so who cares? But with a friendly Fed, that hurts, and it’s Dane because he’s always been beloved by the fandom (Sorry Alex).
Perhaps Sylux’s assassination was justice. Who can say? Sylux doubles down on their ideology as they wage war against the Federation; It’s ironic they push it when they themselves were raised by a species that doesn’t match humanity’s body type and capabilities. To Sylux, just because some good can come from a tragedy doesn’t mean the tragedy should’ve happened. And I dunno maybe they still feel guilty about getting their squad killed (It’s not actually their fault) and fantasize about a world in which they never showed up on Cylosis. They may have had their criticism of the Federation, but perhaps their proposed solution did not come to them until after the incident.
They were tracking Samus shortly before Gorea sent out its psychic message; To kill her? To see if she’s truly just innocent and misunderstood? Sylux isn’t sure but they’d already begun killing Federation members. And when they intercepted both Gorea’s message and the Federation’s order for Samus to investigate it, they weren’t about to let the Federation have that power to kill more people with. And anyhow they figure they need it more, so they fight Samus. Did she save them from Gorea intentionally, or by coincidence? They know damn well she wouldn’t have saved Weavel.
Sylux hears about how the Ing were wiped out by Samus. This sours their opinion of her immensely. Then they learn how she wiped out the Metroids; Sylux had no issue killing an invasive species, but in its own home? And keeping a survivor to hand over to the Federation!? That convinces Sylux that Samus really is just a Federation dog, there was no secret difference between her and them, not anymore.
It’s a dark poetry when the Tanamaar Pirates attack the Federation outpost, desperate to steal a mysterious artifact that could revive the group (Lamorn tech and Green Energy could’ve been a boon for them). Maybe that pushes Sylux into deciding it’s time; The Space Pirates have already been dismantled, so there’s no concern about destroying the Federation and enabling their rise. The Kriken are there, but the individual worlds of a disbanded Federation could easily pool their armies together for one war, and then go right back.
Samus takes a beating agains the Aberax and maybe even Weavel, and Sylux swoops in to finish her off. I want Samus to be genuinely screwed here, but maybe it’s Samus that accidentally shoots the artifact, inadvertently saving her own life but getting a lot of Federation soldiers killed in the long run because the Grievers and other threats leave only five survivors. Not her fault if Sylux perhaps knocked Samus’ arm cannon in a certain direction as it fired, but I guess they now relate to one another a lot, huh?
This is a fun idea to play with, but I might retain Sylux as just a mystery on an individual level, with their ideology all the answer you really need. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best but who knows? I can more easily imagine Samus hesitating and reaching out to Sylux if she realized what she’d done that day, VS if Sylux operated just from their ideology alone. Imagine Samus having the opportunity to land a final shot and put down Sylux for good as their armor short-circuits, only to hesitate… And then Sylux falls and it’s too late.
Sylux survives because of Samus’ hesitation and kills her friends. No good deed goes unpunished, right? When they find a way back to the main galaxy after Fusion (I guess they burn out their wormhole powers to make the jump) it’s gonna be reaaallllll awkward as Sylux decides to let bygones be bygones, satisfied with revenge and the fact that Samus is technically on their side now. Plus the issue of a Federation project both agree needs to be destroyed.
