"The... Tits upgrade." Samus groaned out, reluctantly selecting the upgrade from the list. The A.I. making these upgrades had just given up, hadn’t it? She had grown to accept the usual result of the upgrades, but this? This wasn’t even pretending not to be exactly what it sounded like. It might have been better than being a megalomaniacal turtle/lizard thing, but she really wished this particular one hadn’t been the trade-off.

Samus took the chip from the machine, and just stared at it for a minute, contemplating the fact that she could just leave now, and never come back. She then inserted the upgrade into her zero suit, waiting for the changes to begin.

Rather than the immediate swelling that she had expected, Samus felt her skin start to tingle and itch, her zero suit making it particularly uncomfortable. She tried to ignore it and stay still, but before a minute had passed she was squirming and wished that her zero suit would just shrink away like it always did and allow her the ability to scratch her itching skin. She grabbed a clump of her hair in annoyance, ready to tear it out at the infernal itching, and stopped when it felt rather different than usual.

Her hair felt softer, and not at all like thousands of strands, as hair tended to be, and felt more like a collection of... Feathers? She tugged at it, and brought her hand down to examine what had come down, revealing a blonde feather, tinged with black towards the bottom. The upgrade was bird-related? Had she missed something here? Speaking of missing things, her hair-band had gone awol, not that it would be any help with feathers for hair.

She didn’t have time to ponder this however, as her boots melted away, along with the material up to her knees, giving her a second to register the cold metal of the floor before she began to feel the familiar cracking of her legs turning digitigrade, her skin hardening as her toes merged together into three large ones, the middle one longer than the two to its side, while a third toe as long as the middle one sprouted from the back.

Samus struggled to keep her balance as the toes rounded out into proper bird’s feet, long talons growing out of them and pushing them up, Samus quickly finding her balance naturally, used to this way of standing by now. It was slightly comforting to know that she had adjusted to a situation that would never occur naturally, or ever again once she left this station, assuming she didn’t take this type of upgrade with her.

Unfortunately for her, once her attention was off her feet, she immediately was forced to acknowledge the maddening itching coming from her skin thanks to her zero suit, and she decided to just get rid of the thing herself, reaching for the zipper on her back. However, the upgrade took this moment to start affecting her arms, and the material covering her arms melted away, revealing a quickly growing layer of feathers over her arms that quickly began to grow outwards into a pair of wings.

They were a mixture of blue, white, and black, shifting to green as they reached her shoulders, Samus twisting her neck to see that the small area behind her shoulders that was uncovered had thin green feathers to trying to escape the latex-like confines, and with the itching too much for her to handle, or at least handle when she had the option, she reached for her zipper before her wings grew too large for her to reach the zipper without hurting herself. Her fingers were covered in feathers, making the task clumsy and difficult, but she managed to get the zipper down, sighing with relief as her back was freed from the insane itch of her feathers growing.

By this time, her wings had grown to their full length, her hands hidden under them from one side, Samus raising up her arms to furl her wings up unconsciously. This didn’t last long however, as she immediately unfurled them as she tried to get the rest of the zero suit off. She didn’t know why the whole thing hadn’t disappeared like it normally did, but at least she had it off, minus a shower of feathers. The legs hadn’t exactly been easy either, she just hoped she hadn’t torn it much.

Focused on getting her zero suit off, Samus didn’t notice for a few moments that she seemed to be rapidly losing something, and looked down to find the layer of feathers on her chest puffing out into thick plumage, while the endowments that she had previously believed to be the namesake of the upgrade were deflating.

Within moments she was as flat as a board, her, Samus despite herself feeling somewhat inadequate without her normally considerable assets, usually augmented by these upgrades. She could see why they would go, seeing as birds didn’t breast-feed, thus making them biologically superfluous and it didn’t exactly make her aerodynamic with them, but she still felt a lot younger without them. This of course raised the question why similar upgrades had retained them, but Samus brought her mind off of it and back to more notable things, like the fact that she was a giant anthropomorphic bird now.


With that done, she looked down  to see everything on her front side from her neck down to her legs covered in bright yellow feathers, with a large black stripe running down the middle. She felt the sensation of her feathers growing on her rear end, and turned her head to see a long tail of feathers growing out, extending to about half a metre or so behind her, the same blue white and black as her wings. It swayed back and forth as she walked to the mirror to examine herself, something she’d have to get used to while she had the upgrade active.

She wasn’t really bothered by the bird-like upgrades, she admitted to herself. It was probably having been raised up amongst the Chozo that she had to thank for that. That and the ability to fly, probably also from being raised in a society of flightless birds. It was really the only one power her suit hadn’t had at some point or another, so it was particularly appealing, and she had spent a lot of time between upgrades just flying around the room, thanking the builders for making the rooms quite large and open.

She reached the mirror, and examined herself in it. Below the face, she looked like a very womanly bird, making the fact that her face was untouched look rather odd and silly. Even the back of her head and her hair was made up of smooth black feathers, some white ones on the sides. She wondered just why it had decided to change last.

However, before she could look at her slightly ridiculous head much longer, she began to notice some black fuzz coming up from the skin, some white coming up on her cheeks, and her face start to tingle, her mouth and nose feeling odd, that particular feeling she recognised as the one she got when it was about to change. Not like she really needed to recognise the feeling, it was obvious anyway.

Her nose began to extend, growing two or three times as long, looking ridiculous as it came out until the skin began to harden, the end becoming pointier as it became what was obviously the top half of a beak. Samus’ bottom lip began to harden as well, her top lip receding as the space between her nose-beak and bottom lip opened up, her now beak-like bottom lips extending out to naturally match the top-half, her teeth disappearing as her tongue extended to the end, Samus opening and closing her new beak as she tried to get used to it, as well as her lack of teeth. It felt rather odd, but then again, it had happened before. Just with teeth.

Samus stepped backwards, her posture considerably more birdlike thanks to how she held her wings furled coupled with her legs, appraising herself. She would never quite get used to the longer, thinner mouths she ended up with, and her beak felt very odd to have on the end of her face. She still seemed to be able to talk with it though, although her tone was considerably chirpier as she asked herself one question:

“Ok, but what do birds have to do with this upgrade again?” She felt it was a very good question, although she was relieved that it hadn’t turned out the way she had expected it to. She went back to the computer, and looked at the name of it again. Oh, Tit upgrade, not Tits upgrade. She must have misread it, although considering this place’s track record, she felt she was reasonably justified in making that mistake. A quick query with her ship’s computer informed her that they were some kind of Earth bird. Well, that made more sense that what she had in mind.

Seriously, what was going on in the programming of the A.I. making these things? After all, the Power Suit and all Chozo technologies were originally made for the Chozo, not humans. How would this turn out if one of them were using these?

She supposed she’d have to think about that later, since she had to get back and deactivate this upgrade. Well, after a minute or twenty of flying, of course, she thought to herself as she began to flap her wings.