Fanfic / Saga (Metroid)

Saga is a Metroid Alternate Universe Fic written by Mental Omega (aka Phantasmal Fantasy on SpaceBattles.com and Spartakrod on Sufficient Velocity.com but primarily referred to as Valiant Prime on discord)

The story follows Samus Aran and Arne Skjoldr (aka Sylux) in their quest for justice to the darkness of the universe.

While the story is fully available here on Spacebattles and here on Sufficient Velocity, the story is divided into books, with Book 1: Genesis, being available here on FanFiction.Net and here on Archive of Our Own.

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Saga provides examples of:

• Abusive Precursors: The Alimbic Tetrarch Order was a violent hegemony with Zurvduat alone having been involved in the conquest of many galaxies to grind them beneath the Alimbic heel. The fear of falling into this after the demise of the Order due to Gorea is what lead the Chozo to take a more pacifistic and decentralised turn. But perhaps the most notable example are the "Old Foe" who had waged a colossal war with the progenitors in the name of dread gods and bloody conquest, driving the Chozo and others to develop incredible weapons of war and eventually imprisoning them in an inaccessible universe.
• Ace Pilot: While he hasn't gotten a chance to show it off yet in the story, Arne is noted to be a fantastic pilot. Samus is also regarded as one to a lesser degree.
• Adaptational Badass: Adam's brother, Ian, has psychic abilities, where he was a Badass Normal as far as could be seen in the series.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Canonically, both Samus and Sylux's orientations were never explored at all and are left unknown. In this story, both of them identify as pansexual.
• Adaptation Name Change: In canon, Sylux was implied to be the character's actual name. Here, his name is Arne Eriksen Skjoldr, with Sylux being the name of the project that created the armor seen in Hunters. Samus also gets a middle name in the form of Eabha.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In canon, while the relationship between Samus and Sylux was unknown, it was heavily implied that Sylux despises Samus for some reason. Here, the two become childhood friends and even fall in love; though by Word of God it's a doomed relationship due to outside circumstances. Though one that will be repaired after Omega's take on Metroid Fusion.
• Age Lift: While Ian Malkovich's age is never stated he seems to be somewhat older than Samus in Other M, being an enlisted soldier while Samus is still a child. Here the age gap is eliminated for the sake of "making the relation less odd" in Valiant's words.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Averted. The story leans strongly towards a very constructivist view of society and morality with most people being products of their circumstances and societies. A three-year-old Samus on K-2L is notably spared by a space pirate penal legionary who due to being on the bottom of the social ladder themselves, can't bring themselves to hurt something so defenseless.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: All that has been revealed about the Kriken Empire paints its nobility as a den of monsters and schemers with Arch-Prince Trace managing to become a notorious war criminal as early as his teenage years.
• Arm Cannon: What would a Metroid be without them? Both Samus and Arne's armors have these as their primary weapons.
• Ascended Extra: Sylux canonically only ever had a somewhat major role in Metroid Prime: Hunters, while elsewhere he's just been part of a cameo or Sequel Hook. Here, he's the main character alongside Samus.
• Badass Adorable: Even as precocious and endearing teenagers, Arne and Samus are two of the very best fighters in the entire universe with both tremendous skill and utterly enormous raw physical power.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: An OC addition to the arsenals of Samus and other characters is a deployable power-blade that can use many of the same upgrades as the arm cannon to augment its capabilities; though the spin-off Duodecimarch indicates it can make other forms of melee weapons and they can detach from the wrist. By word of the author they were added because they were cool and gave Valiant more room for writing interesting action sequences and character design. Their arm cannons can also project smaller blades.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Arne and Samus are some of the greatest warriors in the entire known universe even as children but are also some of the softest, nicest people in existence when they're not in the combat zone.
• Catch and Return: In Chapter 10, Arne catches a missile mid-flight and throws it back to its owner during a training session.
• Children Are Innocent: Subverted. In the age of the ComNet, finding out the dark truths of the world is just a few keystrokes away. Most young characters are both aware of where babies come from and that death is a serious thing.
• The Chosen Many: Samus and Arne are not quite as unique as they might seem at first. Progenitor cultures adopting orphans from more modern societies and raising them as their own is common enough for a specific term to be developed for it; Inheritor. Twelve of them in particular will rise to fill currently vacant prophetic roles.
• Chummy Commies: The Omdyn of Democratic Omnipragmatist Council Republics is depicted as something akin to the Culture from Iain M Bank's novels and while a rival superpower to the Federation; is portrayed broadly positively. Arne's parents, who lived and died in service to its volunteer cadres dispatched to assist foreign revolutionary movements, are also portrayed as a kindly, loving couple and adoring parents who give their lives to save their son.
• Chuunibyou: Ian's efforts to portray himself as a cool kid with the wearing of sunglasses indoors and attempted smooth-talking lingo and, by the word of other characters, not completely successful attempts at getting dates and impressing people give off strong shades of this. Especially when juxtaposed to it seeming to stem from a desire to set himself apart from his much more serious and much older elder brother Adam. This serves more to make him endearingly cringeworthy than actually cool, especially since the subculture he's trying to ape has been dead for thousands of years and nobody seems to fully get what it is he's trying to go for.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Ridley seems to try to go for this, but due to being from a solitary species and thus having no instinctual concept of how social interactions work and the sheer degree of violence he inflicts for "humour" it mostly comes across as horrifying.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Agafya, an Inheritor of the still yet to be described in great detail Umbhar species; is heavily associated with shadow and darkness but while a bit abrasive is ultimately on the side of right, though much of her characterisation comes from the first iteration of Duodecimarch; a spin-off quest to the fanfic.
• Doomed by Canon: Samus and Arne's relationship is doomed to be pulled apart as the two reach adulthood, leading to Arne staging his disappearance, stealing the Sylux armor, and taking on a new identity. Samus is similarly doomed to come into conflict with the R.A.I.D due to their confirmation as being the group behind the Federation's sinister projects in Fusion. To a smaller degree, Ridley's seeming death in the first arc; Genesis; is not going to stick and Mother Brain will end up betraying the Chozo and Ian and Adam will both eventually die. And of course, Samus' parents were never going to survive and Zebes will be conquered by the Space Pirates.
• Dork Knight: Samus and Arne are incredibly powerful, intelligent, and kind, and have the social skills and grace of a thrown brick. They're incredibly and unreservedly passionate, and don't have the best filters or appreciation for social cues. Arne is deeply underconfident and often unnecessarily shy, and Samus has yet to settle into her later introspective stoicism, leaving her a parsec a minute motor mouth who has no idea what is and isn't appropriate to say.
• Dragons Are Demonic: Ridley is described in terms evoking demonic imagery almost as much if not more than he is with images that evoke dragons. Given his relentless sadism and utter lack of compassion, it fits.
• Dragon-in-Chief: While Ridley is technically a Dragon to High Command as one of its enforcers, ironically enough it's noted that Weavel serves in this capacity to him. While Ridley technically stands above the military hierarchy, he has no patience or head for the finer details or logistics or tactics and leaves Weavel to handle all the real duties of commanding an army.
• The Dreaded:
  • Trace is feared to the point where the very idea that he might have interest in Arne's school gives the usually confident Taellarja a great deal of fright. Trace is notably no older than Samus or Arne, and is considered a spoiled Prince of the Kriken Empire, yet he evokes Ridley levels of fear.
  • Even when he's assumed to be dead, the very mention of Ridley's name causes fear across the universe, and Samus' parents are deemed heroes for seeming to have killed him and put an end to his reign of terror.
  • Even Ridley is scared of the disapproval of the Despot of Urtraghus who is essentially the leader of High Command and the overall ruler of the Space Pirates.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Samus and Arne's parents go down swinging. Samus' mom giving brief pause to Ridley himself who defeated everything put in his way so far with ease while her father takes out his flagship and a huge chunk of his fleet in the process; severely injuring Ridley. Gyda and Erik take down thousands of RAID posthuman soldiers; each of whom is a more than three meter tall power suit clad Super-Soldier who would manhandle a Space Marine with ease; and hold back Viper themselves for the time Spire's ship needs to leave Cylosis, letting Arne escape safely.
• Eldritch Abomination: Whatever the gods that the Old Foe worshipped are best described as being this, monstrous things from beyond conventional reality that ask them to do even more monstrous deeds to appease them. By word of the author, Gorea is at the very least of the same order of being as some of their dread pantheon.
• Enfante Terrible: Trace, even at the age of thirteen, is regarded as a menace on a similar scale to Ridley. As one of the sons of the Kriken Emperor, he has access to as of yet uncertain resources and a tremendous degree of ambitious cruelty in his aspirations to reach the throne. For one thing, he already has an extensive list of war crimes committed by both himself and forces under his command.
• Evil Is Petty: Why does Trace send hitmen after Arne to capture him? Because he accidentally bumped into his dream space while asleep himself.
• Expy:
  • The N'Kren are interpreted as a more benevolent one of the Necrons from Warhammer 40,000 entirely due to the similarities in name.
  • Viper serves one to King Ghidorah, particularly the most recent iteration of him from the 2019 film, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). The most notable deviation besides being made smaller and faster is having fur due to being pseudo-mammalian, and having ice-based powers instead of electric ones.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Arne's native culture; the Grendakal Clan of the Uskarling Peoples; is heavily Pagan Norse influenced, though there are elements of pre-Christian Slavic, Celtic, Finnic, Siberian, and pre-colombian Inuit societies in a generally "northern tribes" blend.
• The Federation:
  • Both the Galactic Federation and the Omdyn of Democratic Council Omnipragmatist Republics. The Federation being more of a Liberal take on the concept and the Omdyn being more of a Council Communist take. The Galactic Federation is by Word of God based more on the European Union than the United States, with its component members essentially still being sovereign and maintaining their own militaries as well as the joint Federal military. The Omdyn's inner workings have yet to be explored in-depth but there are already signs of strong efforts to allow for component cultures to retain their identities and self-determination.
  • The Space Pirates, or the Confederacy of Dismor, are funnily enough portrayed as a dark version of this idea. A loose conglomeration of Fascist states, Military juntas, Despotic autocracies, Actual pirate fleets, Warrior culture clans, Belligerent pariahs, Corrupt Megacorporations, and other malcontents with the strongest components thereof sending their representatives to High Command in a vast co-dictatorship.
• Genius Bruiser: Samus and Arne are both smart enough to make Tony Stark blush. They not only designed their starships, but were also the ones who designed and assembled their power suits using Chozo and Alimbic technology respectively as a base; and Samus even created a new cryogenic sub-weapon so effective that the Chozo actually decided to copy it after seeing it. They can effortlessly do extremely complicated math in their heads, and show a tremendously broad array of knowledge and familiarity with STEM fields and many of the humanities.
• Genki Girl: Samus is quite excitable, cheerful, and fun-loving, but Solveig is a human dynamo of cheer.
• Hate Sink: There is almost nothing likeable about the Alimbic General, Zurvduat. Even Ridley is at least a rather jovial fellow and Viper is at the very least relentlessly professional. The only redeeming quality of Zurvduat seen so far is his commitment to his species' future and his competence as a leader.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Samus is regarded as a human/Chozo hybrid in data logs. Arne is similarly regarded as a human/Alimbic hybrid.
• Healing Factor: Ridley and Viper may have some of the more noteworthy ones, but Samus and Arne are noted to be exceptionally quick healers, injuries that don't outright kill them will be recovered from in short order, though it's not on the same magnitude of nigh-instant battlefield Regeneration their nemeses have.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Both Arne and Samus' parents die saving their three-year-old children from RAID and Space Pirate attack respectively. Samus' mother uses a mining mech and her marine training to distract Ridley long enough for Samus to run away and for Rodney to suicide bomb the Afloraltite the space pirates had stolen; taking out Ridley's flagship and most of his fleet and horribly injuring Ridley himself. Arne's parents entrust Arne to Spire's care after reaching his gunship during the attack on Cylosis and say their goodbyes before fighting off an entire army of the RAID and Viper themselves to allow Spire's gunship to take off and flee; dying in each other's arms after one final frost breath attack from Viper.
• Horrifying the Horror: Even Ridley sulks in fear at the very possibility of being chastised by the overall leader of the Space Pirates, a figure known simply as the Despot of Urtraghus.
• Humble Hero: Samus is rather embarrassed by the accolades and fame she starts receiving for her heroic actions, and does what she can to avoid the spotlight.
• I Am a Humanitarian: The Space Pirates' tendency to eat the slain rarely goes uncommented on whenever they show up as part of their portrayal as a disturbing society dominated by hypercompetetive predatory virtues.
• An Ice Person: Numerous characters have these abilities, but the most prominent are Viper and Rundas.
• Jerkass: Zurvduat is a thoroughly repugnant, meanspirited person who's outright abusive to Arne, devastating his self-esteem and giving him serious PTSD over the years. He constantly refutes Arne's attempts to form a father-son relation with him, and has outright beaten him in the past. Even to the Chozo and his fellow Alimbics, Zurvduat is frequently rude and insulting.
  • This eventually comes back to bite him when, while in the midst of a power-trip as he berates and threatens to beat Arne and separate him from Samus and all the friends he's made even after he and Samus saved trillions of lives from an ancient foe of the Progenitors, he forgets that he's in public and finally exposes himself as a child-abusing monster. This results in him losing any claim to custody over Arne he has, though the severity of the abuse means that Arne has a long way to go to mentally heal.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Mother Brain may be an uncaring jerk about it, but she is correct in that Samus, as a frail child, is completely unsuited for survival on the harsh environments of Zebes, which is part of why the Chozo augment her with their DNA.
• Lack of Empathy: When Samus is first taken in by the Chozo, Mother Brain bluntly and uncaringly points out that she's ill-suited for surviving the harsh planet of Zebes and will die soon, not at all caring about the girl's tragic circumstances or even putting a token effort to make her feel better.
  • Taken to an extreme with Ridley who, as a member of a solitary species, simply does not have the capacity for altruism or any sort of emotional attachment to other beings. This is presented as an explanation for his cruelty, he is a solitary predator who revels in the hunt that provides him food, but can never truly feel the emotions that govern social interactions.
• LEGO Genetics: Specifically averted. The process of hybridizing humans with progenitor genes is far, far more complicated than conventional gene therapy and appears to involve a substantial deal of mysticism.
• Mama Bear: Gyda Skjoldr takes on an entire army and one of the most dangerous agents of the Federation with almost none to help her save for her husband just to ensure that Arne can get away safely and puts up an amazing fight before she finally is killed by being worn down by thousands of super soldiers and super agents. No less impressively, Virginia Aran takes on Ridley himself with nothing but a mining exoskeleton to similarly buy time for her child.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Samus and Arne's relation has some downplayed shades of this, with Samus being the more aggressive and proactive of the two to Arne's shier and more reactive nature though it's probably more fair to say that they're just outside of traditional expectations for gender altogether.
• The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Averted hard. Extrapolating from how casually Samus is able to visit the fictional Tetra galaxy in Hunters as well as note that the Ki-Hunters came from beyond known space, the radius of known space is measured in billions of light-years and so far not one of the characters has even been to the Milky Way. Samus is born in the Whirlpool Galaxy and Arne in the Pinwheel Galaxy; both of which are millions of light-years apart.
• Mook Horror Show: What Samus did to the very first space pirates she's seen since K-2L when they tried to raid the academy she was staying at to learn how to interact with other people is kept horrifically vague but is so terrible that the Federation troops who show up to contain the situation are more scared of her than the pirates.
• Multiple Head Case: Viper, a "Void Hydra" in the employ of the Galactic Federation's Black Ops paramilitary known as the Rapid Armed Intelligence Division and the Federation's answer to Ridley, has five heads. Two on its tails, three where heads should be from. Each of the heads has its own personality and name.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Samus and Arne are toned and clearly fit, but they're also clearly both teenagers and built mostly for speed and agility; yet are able to overpower immensely larger and more brutish creatures with trivial ease.
• Nay-Theist: The Space Pirates are an example of this curiously enough. Their Confederacy disdains religion out of a belief that there is nothing in the cosmos worth worshipping because they are simply that superior. Their atheism does not cause their amorality, and they seem to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural, but they simply regard anything described as divine as too inferior to give any fealty.
• Nepotism:
  • Averted with Adam. Despite his family's prolific military history, he made it a strong point to avoid any patronage networks and worked his way up away from where his family had influence, rising to the top on his achievements alone.
  • Adam notably also gives his younger brother no favors in the Prodigal Program despite clearly being capable of doing so. If anything, he's extra hard on Ian for his irreverence and laziness.
• No-Sell: Samus and Arne are virtually immune to most esoteric or weird effects of psionics or magic and other similarly weird abilities; as per Word of God this includes reality-warping, attacks against their souls, durability bypassing abilities, mind control, or even attempts to teleport them against their will. This is an artifact of their tremendous but entirely latent Psychic Powers and magic potential.
  • The two are on the receiving end when faced with the Sun Stalker and Moon Hunter, warriors from an ancient civilisation that were old nemeses of the Chozo and Alimbics. They spend much of Forlorn running from them before they finally have enough firepower to take them on.
• O.C. Stand-in: Because nothing is really known about Sylux in canon, Arne Skjoldr functions as this for the story.
• Official Couple: Samus and Arne are officially in a romantic relation with each other as of the second arc; Forlorn, and it continues to go strong more than a year later.
• One-Man Army: Chock full of them. Not just Samus and Sylux, but also Spire, Svihaly, Gyda Skjoldr, Ridley, Viper, and plenty more have shown that even completely on their own, it takes a massive amount of effort to stop them.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Ridley's species is given no name but is often described as a sort of "Space Dragon", which by Word of God is a blanket term for any sort of creature that fits the aesthetics of dragons enough. However Ridley is notably described as carapaced rather than scaled and has a healing factor that is certainly not part of the standard fantasy dragon's arsenal.
• Our Hydras Are Different: While it's not clear if "Void Hydra" is a term actually used by Viper's species or if it's an exonym with Viper's origins being a near total unknown in-universe, Viper is described as a Hydra more often than anything els. Unlike most examples of the trope some of the heads are on their tail. Also noteworthy is that Viper has fur and takes after mammalian creatures such as Deer as much as they do after serpents.
• Papa Bear: Both fathers seen so far in the story, Erik Skjoldr and Rodney Aran, go down swinging for the sakes of their children.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Samus is tall by human standards (for her age) but tiny compared to nearly everything she fights the story bothers to take note of and yet she's won virtually every contest of physical strength she's ever partaken in. Even over creatures big enough to swallow Godzilla whole.
• Planet of Hats: Discussed and averted. Arne askes Samus if all Chozo are as nice as others make them out to be, Samus points out that while plenty are, the entire race isn't universally nice, nor is any other race universally the opposite. This notably doubles as foreshadowing for Samus Returns and Metroid Dread (though Metroid Dread's existence wasn't confirmed when this was written) reveal that not all of the Chozo are forces for good.
  Samus: You cannot say any species as a whole is kind or cruel. Every person is shaped by the circumstances they live within, all of our choices are limited by the world we live in.
• Powered Armor: Features extremely extensively, nearly all humanoid combatants make use of extremely sophisticated power suits to make nearly anything seen in Warhammer 40k and Halo to shame. Giving them the strength to shift absolutely massive amounts of weight, take enormous punishment, move at supersonic speeds, dodge already fired bullets and give them 24/7 access to communication networks. And yet these suits absolutely pale in comparison to even basic power suits wielded by Samus and Arne. Samus and Arne's power suits are treated with virtually mystical reverence and are not only hugely powerful, but able to assimilate nearly any upgrade, self-repair in moments, protect them from most hazards, enhance their physicality, scan nearly anything, and more.
• Pretty Boy: Arne is frequently noted to be very handsome in a somewhat androgynous and youthful way, and all the commissioned art for him shows him as a handsome, lean white-haired boy who grows up into a handsome, lean white-haired man later on based on artistic depictions of a matured Arne. The commissioned art of Erik Skjoldr confirms that it's something Arne gets from his father.
• Putting on the Reich: Officially commissioned art of R.A.I.D Basic troopers shows that the skull cover portion of their helmet is based on the Stahlhelm and part of their colouration is explicitly described to be Feldgrau.
• Precursors: Generally called Progenitor Cultures within Saga; including groups such as the Chozo, Alimbics, Luminoth, N'Kren, Ylla, and a number of original species such as the Fairy-like Faera. They fought a tremendous war with a foe known as the Krazimak Dominion long before the present that ended in the Dominion being sealed away in a prison dimension after their defeat. By the present, most have either faded or are in the process of fading.
• Psychic Powers: Featured very prominently and is seemingly universal among Progenitors. It's also not too uncommon among modern species either. Arne and Samus also have Psychic abilities, but while their potential is said to be absolutely enormous, its raw and untrained and only a small portion of it is actually used; primarily serving to protect them from hostile effects.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Thoroughly averted. Arne and his parents both have red eyes and have consistently been both heroic and kind-hearted. This will likely become somewhat the case after Arne's fall into becoming Sylux, but Word of God is that even as Sylux, Arne is still heroic and kindly; just deeply hurting and isolated and considerably more ruthless as a fighter.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Samus and Arne have a rather classic example of this dynamic, with Samus being the more energetic and proactive Red Oni to Arne's more cautious and reactive Blue Oni; which also fits their respective helmet colors.
• The Remnant: The population of Alimbics that were in stasis when their Empire was destroyed by Gorea are all that's left of their species. This essentially makes General Zurvduat the de-facto leader of their greatly diminished race. Zurvduat gives many opportunities to reflect on why this is not an ideal state of affairs.
• Retired Badass: Old Bird fought in the forbidden wars and his service in such is regarded as praiseworthy by other progenitors. However that same conflict also made him deplore warfare and pushed him to his present pacifism.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Subverted. Omega is fully aware of the scale of the universe, the tech really just is that advanced and the characters really just are that powerful.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Old Foe was, at the end of the Forbidden Wars long before humanity had developed a writing system, sealed away in another inaccessible universe cut off from the rest of existence in the hopes that isolation would help them find improvement and grow beyond being a violent theocracy in service to horrific deities. Based on the Sun Stalker and Moon Hunter's rampage during Samus and Arne's rite of passage, they very much did not learn their lesson.
• Slasher Smile: Nothing good ever follows any sequence where Ridley is noted to be smiling.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Somewhere in the middle. While the universe is full of darkness and terrors and there are many bad things about it and some truly terrible people, there are also many incredibly good people as well as plentiful reason to hope for things to get better in the future.
• Space Elves: Greatly expanded from the little lore on the character Kreatz from the Metroid Manga into one of the more commonly seen species and given the name "Aelva". While there aren't too many hard details out on them yet, they seem to reach adulthood at the same rate as humans do and have a higher tendency towards having psychic powers or magic. They also are seen in both the Federation and the Omdyn; Arne's home country and some are noted to be nomadic.
• Space Fantasy: With so much emphasis on magic, mysticism, and the supernatural, Saga presents a blending of the aesthetics and sensibilities of both the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres.
• Space Pirates: Of course, seeing as this is a Metroid fanfic after all. The formal name for their organization is the Confederacy of Dismor, and they're portrayed as a very loose band of actual pirate fleets, warrior culture clans, crime syndicates, fascist dictatorships, military juntas, corrupt megacorporations, and other such scum and villainy bonded together in search of mutual profit and conquest. With their ruthless Darwinian hierarchy and exaltation of cruelty and predation, kindness is systematically weeded out of their society as a culture rife with bullying and violence upon those who show weakness weeds out those seen as soft. Many still hold onto more altruistic ideals, but they're regarded as perhaps the most violent and terrifying of the universe's superpowers. According to the author, they're called Space Pirates due to the initial contact with them being through their raids on other societies, leading to a nickname that ended up sticking that they ended up appropriating to show how little they care for the scorn of other cultures.
• State Sec: The Galactic Federation's Central Intelligence Network has a Rapid Armed Intelligence Division (RAID) which is a top-secret black operations outfit that has its own army and navy and completely separate technological capabilities from the wider Federation. Their basic line infantry are Astartes-esque super soldiers who stand nearly three meters tall and make use of automatic mini-missile launchers as their primary weapons and every indication is that they're no less brutal than the Space Pirates. Word of God on the Discord is that they also end up being the inventors of the Sylux suit based on Alimbic technology.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Arne and Samus both have a noted resemblance to their same-gender parents.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Progenitor cultures not only had or have technology so far beyond the normal ken of modern civilizations as to seem like magic, but they routinely make use of magic and psychic powers. The sort of abilities available to Samus and Arne with basic trainer suits is nothing short of astonishing and Progenitor relic worlds such as Zorant and Arganti are portrayed as nothing short of miraculous.
• Super-Reflexes:
  • When Samus first gets her new genetic abilities, this is one of the most immediately noticeable powers she has, as she's able to perceive the world in slow motion and count the individual flaps of an insect's wings.
  • Both Samus and Arne are notably routinely able to avoid lasers and hypersonic projectiles, and when combined with their precognition, are only reliably hit by either extremely fast enemies or by boxing them in with too much firepower to find room to dodge with or by forcing them to take a hit for something else.
• Super-Strength: Even without their armor, Samus and Arne are enormously strong, with their upper limits yet to be clearly defined. Notably, even as a toddler and before being augmented by the Chozo, Samus could easily shift boulders due to the universal genetic augmentations present in the 100,000s.^note Some particularly impressive feats include overturning the charge of an enormous whale-like monster multiple times longer than Godzilla is tall, throwing a several hundred-ton robot high into the air with a good swing, kicking another through multiple walls, and in spin-offs even overpowering aliens evolved to be able to stand on neutron stars.
• Teen Genius: Most of the young characters seen so far are brilliant due to being high performing students in academies for the superhumanly gifted, but Arne and Samus, in particular, can give the likes of Lex Luthor and Iron Man a run for their money, given that they've done things ranging from casually designing very complex equipment, effortlessly demonstrating mastery of numerous esoteric fields of science and engineering, and being broadly familiar with a wide array of history and philosophy. All at the very onset of puberty.
• Vast Bureaucracy: As detailed in the Extra logs, Galactic Federation politics are highly obtuse and complicated as a result of the sheer volume of representatives and delegates across millions of states comprising the Federation.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Nearly all conventional disease has ceased to be a relevant factor and most people live until killed in a way that prevents them from receiving the benefits of emergency restore station teleports to resurrect them. The degree of genetic augmentation is as such that even at three years old, before getting any Chozo augmentations, Samus can play at full blast with an agile animal for hours without feeling tired and easily shove multi-tonne boulders out of the way.
• Worlds Greatest Warrior: Gyda was the Champion of the Grendakal clan and was regarded as one of the greatest fighters alive period and for good reason, holding her own against an entire army of RAID super soldiers and agents to buy her son enough time to escape.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Averted. Arne and his parents may have White Hair but are genuinely kind and sweet people. Word of God is that after descending into becoming Sylux following a tremendous deal of tragedy, Arne still remains an intrinsically good person; just one fighting for a cause that frequently puts him at odds with Samus due to keeping what he's learned a secret.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Arne's parents are regarded as terrorists and insurgent leaders by the Galactic Federation, but their home country regards them as national heroes and champions.

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