“What’s the verdict, Adam?” Samus asked, coughing as she removed her helmet and placed it down on her medbay bed-come-operating-table, the cracked glass’s HUD too distorted to give her much helpful information. Her suit was battered and scarred, scorch marks over it as one giant shoulder pad had been torn from it entirely, a massive claw mark over her chest where, if one looked closely, you could see flashes of her bright blue undersuit through it. It was, in a word, utterly compromised, and even her zero suit couldn’t prevent her from absorbing the hazardous elements of the planet’s atmosphere.

“You were down there too long, Samus. I warned you that you should have pulled out the moment your suit was breached.” Adam’s electronic voice was neutral, but there was an urgency to it that betrayed his concern. “The infection has spread through your body, and immediate medical intervention is required.”

“I could have told you that for free. I feel like my chest is on fire.” Samus remarked, letting out another fit of coughs, leaning on the bed for support, her gaze flickering up at the various nasty instruments that hung over it, always ready for emergency surgery. It was a testament to her strength and professionalism that she wasn’t doubled over and moaning on the floor. “It wasn’t that bad while I was on the field, but now that the adrenaline is wearing off…”



“Please remove your suit and prepare for treatment, Samus. Now.” Adam stressed.

“Temporary, or the full course? I can hold out until we make it to a hospital, there’s one in a quadrant nearby. Don’t worry about painkillers.” Samus said through gritted teeth, the pain getting worse and even her legs starting to shake as she disengaged her suit, the various pieces falling to the floor in a heap around her as she stumbled out of her boots.

“If you had disengaged earlier like I advised, we would have had time for professional treatment.” His voice was neutral, but his tone was lecturing. Could a computer say they told you so? Of course they could, Samus grinned through clenched teeth with sweat pouring down her forehead, when you had perfect calculations, it was easy to cite your evidence. “Fortunately, I can synthesise a cure here, and by my estimates there should be little difference regardless of who administers it.

“Then I was right to make sure the target didn’t get away. He’d have been off-planet and five quadrants away by now if I’d given up, and all I need in return is a little home medicine.” Samus grinned, the ends justifying the means in maintaining her perfect record. What’s the cure? No amputations, I hope.” 

“You should be familiar with this type of cure.” Adam said slightly forebodingly. “The local fauna have a natural resistance to these toxins that can be administered in the form of a vaccine that alters your genetic makeup. You would be, in effect, part Zoadican, the animal most commonly used. A not insignificant amount, as this cure often carries certain side effects.”



“Just one more for the list then. Part Chozo, part Metroid, probably part-some other things by now…” Samus felt the strength leave her limbs as the machines overhead prepared the injection. 

“I am concerned about the after-effects of this vaccine as a result. Your genetic makeup is unstable from all the shared DNA, ” Adam added. “It may be prudent to delay the administration and stall the effects through other means until a full medical analysis and estimate of the long-term effects can be run-”

“Adam, I feel like I’m going to cough out my own lungs if we wait any longer. I’m sure all of the scans say the same thing, don’t let your concern for me get the better of you. Computers are supposed to be objective.” Samus said weakly, her stoicism running out. “Whatever happens, it can’t be that bad. You know me, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks at worst.”

Unable to stall any longer, Adam wordlessly lowered the syringe, piercing her zero suit. Samus resisted the urge to cry out as the vaccine spread through her system, Adam assuring her that the effects should be swift. An oxygen mask was lowered over her administering sedatives, Samus fading out, certain that she’d wake up with a few aches and pains and that’d be the end of it. Sure, she’d been warned that her genetic makeup was a house of cards, but really, what was the worst that could happen?

–

“Adam! Adam, we’re out of shoda again! What happened to my shtash?” Samus wheezed, waddling through her ship’s corridors, already out of breath as she’d jogged between her room, the living room, and the kitchen in search of something with her desired level of sugar in it. Her gut bounced and wobbled like a bowl of jelly, sweat dripping down it from the effort of maneuvering her obese body around. Samus Aran, now severely overweight, slowly waddled around her own spaceship, her glasses fogging up from her own breath as her foggy brain relied on muscle memory to remember the layout of her own home.

 She squinted through her thick glasses as she opened the fridge for the fifth time, hoping that if she dug her chubby hands around in it far enough, she’d magically find herself another can of her favourite energy drink. “Come on Adam, I have a mission and you know I get shleepy if I don’t have something to keep me going!”

“My apologies, lady.” Adam stated in the most neutral of tones. “It seems that last night’s gaming session exhausted your supplies that were intended to last for another three days…”

“By now you should be taking those into account and ordering extra.” Samus said childishly. She put her hands on her hips for emphasis, a wide motion as she had to stick her bloated chicken wings out as far as they’d go to be able to place her hands on her  “That’s your fault, not mine. I thought you were supposed to make shure my missions go shmoothly.”

“Perhaps you should focus on adjusting your sleep patterns so that you aren’t reliant on-”



“I don’t tell you how to do your job, Adam.” Samus said, gritting her teeth and exposing her thick corrective braces, which were a permanent addition to her teeth.

“Adam, I told you not to put anything that mattersh up there!” Samus slurred, her thick braces still something she wasn’t quite used to. She could usually contain it with effort, but when she was flustered it came out.  “You know I can’t reach it!”

In addition to being obese, Samus was what felt like half the woman she used to be. Under five feet tall, Samus had shrunk a severe amount in the last year, and frequently asked her doctor if she was going to get even shorter. It had stabilized by now, he had to reassure her, watching her come in rounder and rounder each time she saw him, and she should focus on adjusting to her new body, perhaps instituting an exercise routine in order to best adjust to her new mobility…

Samus inevitably made some vague excuse, and then asked for a new prescription for her glasses, feeling like she was getting even blinder without them. Her vision had rapidly deteriorated along with her height and muscles, no longer able to make out even the elements on her HUD without contact lenses, which she was too lazy to put in anyway. Her thick-rimmed glasses were old-fashioned but highly necessary, lest she spend her days bumping her cascading gut or thick rump into things. As thick as the frames were, they failed to hide the dark cycles under her eyes.



“My apologies, lady.” Adam stated once again. “Shall I remind you where the stepladder is?”



“Forget it!” Samus huffed, impulsively turning into the nearest room and accidentally ending up in her training room, where she froze up immediately. She unwillingly stared at her treadmill, her legs aching just looking at it. Her eyes tried to move to something else, her weights, covered in a fine layer of dust. She couldn’t even lift the bar, she thought with complete shame, and like with anything that made her uncomfortable these days, Samus immediately fled, wheezing once again as she retreated to her room, kicking over a number of empty cans as she climbed into her bright blue gaming chair. She reached for a handful of chips from the desk, thankfully still having some left over to stuff her mouth with. Samus drank energy drinks like water, but food was the domain of stress eating and constant snacking. The former was common, but the latter typically assured that her snacks would last through the night, before she passed out on her bed come daylight and snored away in a pile of crumbles. Not that her ship had daylight, as she was typically camped out in the hangar of some bustling space colony, or transport hub station where she could get the best prices on the snacks and treats that ate up most of her bounty hunting gains.

This was all that damn cure’s fault, Samus seethed on a regular basis. It had knocked her DNA completely out of whack, the building blocks of her genetic makeup going tumbling down due to the utterly unpredictable combination of species that made up Samus Aran.

The effects had only taken a couple of weeks to start kicking in. Samus felt that her weight routines were getting harder, until week by week, she had to progressively lower the weights, watching her arms get skinnier and her six-pack slowly fade away. Her zero suit felt loose, until she realised that she was losing millimetres by the day and inches by the week. Her hair seemed perpetually unkempt no matter how much she combed it and lathered it in expensive hair products, a sign of her naturally poor appearance to come. Her face, then the rest of her body started gaining a fine coating of freckles that grew heavier on her cheeks, until her soon to be pale skin was completely covered in them. Her vision deteriorated, requiring the use of glasses, Samus waking up and looking at herself in the morning realising that she had at some point gone from statuesque amazon to pint-sized nerd.

As if to add insult to injury, even her teeth started to go out of control, growing at strange, unsightly angles, mandating a set of what appeared to be old-fashioned but were in fact quite sophisticated braces designed to keep them in check. Samus wouldn’t have minded, were it not for how they made her slur her words and have at best a bit of a lisp. Her voice, altered by her lowered lung capacity and scrambled genetics, was thin and weedy, wheezing out many words and lacking any sort of force to it, giving her a natural whine.

The only part that wasn’t quite her body’s fault was her weight, although Samus would never admit it out loud. Sure, she had a natural propensity to gain weight quickly and lose it slowly now, as her body focused primarily on energy conservation over building muscle, but gaining weight was not magical, and required energy to come from somewhere in order to stockpile it. With decent eating habits and regular exercise, Samus likely could have at least remained slender, if extremely petite. 

Instead, Samus had given into her body’s new cravings and succumbed to the loss of her natural athleticism, finding running to be difficult and painful, and stuffing herself to be extremely stress-relieving. Even when she had a moment of perspective and realised that she was an increasingly bloated butterball cramming her face with fast food to fill the void, another burger and a tub of ice cream could make her forget about that too.

Unfortunately, Samus had hit the ground of her new life like a pancake and never gotten walking, let alone running. It wasn’t all downsides though. She could obviously no longer fit into her suit, but that didn’t mean that her career as a bounty hunter was over. She just had to pilot it remotely, where she could maintain most of her original performance without worrying about getting herself hurt. Which she was more than happy for, as she had almost completely lost her pain tolerance, and minor scrapes and stubbing of toes practically brought her to tears. These days, she couldn’t picture herself in active combat in person. It seemed really scary, after all, and a totally unnecessary risk when she could just sit back in her comfy seat with her favourite snacks.

Comfortable and cute, Samus thought to herself as she glimpsed herself in her room’s mirror, pleased with her appearance for what it was, flashing a quick smile and adjusting her circular-frame glasses, her second chin squashing as she made something resembling a pose. Samus had decided that she couldn’t really do the whole strong and handsome thing anymore, driving her to find other ways to indulge her feminine side. She couldn’t be cool, but perhaps she could be cute!

She wore a zero suit patterned tank top that gave her a bit of cleavage for her boobs that had grown to a respectable size thanks to the sheer amount of fat poured into them, and a bright orange hoodie in the colours of her power suit, of which the zippers could never possibly be brought together over her bulging front. It was obviously too small for her as a result, but as long as her arms fit into it, Samus would continue to wear it. Besides, they didn’t make them any bigger. She had a comfortable pair of extremely stretchy blue shorts on, and a pair of blue striped thigh-highs that she thought made her look cute and stylish. It was impossible for her to look genuinely stylish when she was that fat and obviously wearing what may as well have been her pajamas, but it made Samus happy and that was a small victory for these days. Her getup went well with those adorable cat-eared headphones she’d bought, in her opinion.

The fact that these were all in her usual colours were not a coincidence, as they were official Samus Aran brand merchandise, a licensing deal that paid for all those energy drinks even as Samus Aran herself ceased to make public appearances outside of a power suit with a conspicuously opaque visor and somewhat robotic movements. They weren’t the only merchandise Samus owned, as, in an effort to remind herself that she was the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter and not some blubbering fat sad sack who started to hyperventilate if she was in public for too long, had surrounded herself with action figures and other memorabilia of her glory days. 

Her cave, as it was best called, was perpetually dim save for the bright monitor that was surely making her vision even worse. Her bedsheets were half on her bed and half on the floor, and only kept from eventually sliding all the way off by the various clothes on top of them that Samus had haphazardly thrown onto it, deciding it was quicker and easier than putting them into and taking them out of her closet. Her room’s most notable feature was the large desk and heavily mechanical articulated gaming chair in front of it, the XL model designed for comfort and to be able to contain her ever-expanding ass long enough to get her money’s worth out of it. The monitor on her desk was hooked up directly to her ship’s Chozo supercomputer, but even that wasn’t enough to stop Samus from loudly complaining that it was her setup’s fault when she lost.

Her desk was strewn with various controllers for various types of games new and old, with most of the remaining space occupied by empty fast food packaging, soft drink cups, bottles, and candy wrappers. Samus typically waited until she ran out of room for new snacks before sweeping off the rest, a practically minded approach for a woman who had long since lost any sense of tidiness. She tuned out the mess, unable to see anything beyond the frames of her glasses as she stared into her monitor for hours and hours on end, until finally the energy drinks couldn’t keep her going any longer, and she passed out on her bed at some random hour of the day. The advanced memory foam of her bed had long since developed a permanent recess in the middle that made it difficult for her to climb out of in the morning.

Her Zero Suit was currently crumpled up on her bed underneath some sweatpants and her pajamas, which she wore for surprisingly similar reasons as how she had worn it while she was still a bounty hunter: you didn’t have to think about anything else. Sometimes she didn’t just want to wear her pajamas all day, but she was too lazy to dress up in something cute, and her lowest-effort outfits were out to be washed, or more often had already been washed, but she was too lazy to walk all the way to the other end of her ship and back to get them. The Zero Suit was surprisingly easy to wriggle herself into, modified for her new height and girth. She could throw it on and not have to worry about any other matters of her appearance, as long as she didn’t get a glimpse of herself in any mirrors where she couldn’t see herself as anything other than a sad parody of herself. Luckily, it was easy for her to drown out those feelings with more salt, sugar, and the rush of competitive multiplayer gaming. 

Sometimes she liked to wear it when she was remote controlling her suit, feeling like it was a good way to get into the work mentality. If she sat around in her pajamas or casual outfits as if it were a regular day of gaming, she occasionally found herself spewing trash talk at her opponents whether they could understand her or not, and had cowed at least one criminal into surrender with the sheer amount of verbal abuse she hurled at him for making her have to chase him down. After that, she had made sure to enable push-to-talk to make sure her image didn’t end up in shambles. It was a long, long cry from her previous tendency to not utter a single word out loud while she was on the job in person.

Samus climbed into her chair and settled in for another long gaming session, but soon found herself yawning as she constantly reached out for drinks and snacks that weren’t there, finally starting to feel the lack of sleep kick in, and she was already starting to feel hungry. She grumbled and rubbed her heavily bagged eyes, squirming as she tried to overcome her fatigue to little success.

“Adam!” She eventually shouted, pouting and throwing down her cat-ear headphones onto her desk next to her controller. “How closhe is the nearest shpace shtation?”

Irritable from her hunger, she did little to contain her lisp.

“We’ve already docked, lady. I felt that our supplies would be in urgent need of replenishment and returned to the closest Federation-aligned station.” Adam announced in his ever-neutral tone of voice, without a hint of sarcasm in his synthesised words. “I announced it, but you were preoccupied.”

“Good. How soon can you order delivery?” Samus said, regaining a little of her composure as her stomach loudly rumbled. “Oh, and I don’t mean lunch, I mean essentials.”



“Unfortunately, the local supermarkets and direct suppliers don’t offer non-corporate delivery on this station.” Adam broke the news to her gently. “And yes, all local couriers are currently busy.”



“How am I shupposed to get my stuff then!?” Samus whined, gnashing her teeth and showing off her braces.

“I recommend personal locomotion as a transport measure.” Adam’s passive aggression had Samus narrowing her eyes, and not just because the brightness of her monitor was starting to get to her. “

“Ugh.” Samus’s flabby face scrunched up. “I don’t have time to get it myself, Adam!”



“The game you’re playing has scheduled server maintenance in thirty-two minutes.” Adam helpfully informed her. “It will be down for three hours.”



“I’ll just play something else!” Samus gnashed her teeth petulantly, giving her computer a good look at her braces that she was likely stuck with for life. “The ping sucksh here anyway! Last night I ranked down and it totally wasn’t my fault! It was my shtupid teammatesh and their-”

“I believe that some fresh air will be good for you and help mitigate stress, while allowing you to obtain the necessary items.” Adam patiently stated as he interrupted her rant.

“For the last time Adam, I am not going out!” Samus huffed and puffed, once tall enough to nearly look the camera in her room in the eye, now having to crane her neck upwards to make eye contact with him, so to speak. “Hire a private courier to come out here if you need to!”



“Then you’ll have to wait three to five days for the nearest courier service in this system.” Adam stated in his monotone voice.

Samus turned beet red, and the look on her face showed a fierce internal battle on whether to give on or childishly dig her heels in, and the former was winning thanks to her salt-starved stomach. Although Adam didn’t prefer it and considered it an undignified method, nagging tended to get results on an undignified hunter. What he’d told was something of a white lie, as the literal nearest courier didn’t prioritise petty personal deliveries like this. One from further afield could have had those snacks on her table by tomorrow morning at the latest, although it would have been in Adam’s opinion a waste of money and a waste of an opportunity to get Samus to crawl out of her cave for once. Thankfully for him, Samus bit the bait.

“Ugh, fine! I’ll do it myself!” Samus climbed off of her chair and threw on some rarely-worn shoes, tugging down her t-shirt so that it covered all of her gut, tucking what little she could into her shorts’ waistband to avoid it popping out, and inadvertently setting herself up a spring trap for later. She unsuccessfully tried to close her orange hoodie then stormed out the door, where she would emerge into the artificial lighting of a colony for the first time in what might have been several months. 

“Nobody’s gonna recognise you. Nobody’s gonna recognise you. You look normal, there’s plenty of chubby people on a colony…” Samus muttered to herself, trying to avoid constantly taking fearful glances at the ordinary people walking past her who typically towered over her. Her temper had run out after she left the hangar, and now it was only what little remained of her pride that stopped her from waddling back home with her tail between her legs.

It was only a trip to the shops to get snacks, Samus reminded herself. It was pathetic of her that she should be considering this a big deal in the first place. She remembered times when she would walk across alien landscapes in nothing but her zero suit, she was so fearless and confident in her own abilities. Now she was wishing she’d worn her grey tracksuit instead of her cute but brightly coloured shorts and hoodie. Every time somebody looked her way, or seemed like it, Samus lowered her head and tried to hide behind the thick frames of her glasses, hoping they weren’t gawking at the pint-sized blob she had become.

Luckily, the closest supermarket was near enough that even her stubby, out of shape legs carrying an adult woman’s worth of blubber on them weren’t too worn out by the trip, Samus exhaling deeply as she passed through the automatic doors. Now all she had to do was get enough to last her the trip to a more civilised sector that did proper delivery, then skedaddle back to her ship.

Grabbing a hover-trolley, Samus relaxed a bit as she walked through the aisles, impulsively throwing every tasty snack that caught her eye in. Chocolate, soda, potato chips, anything that fell under the umbrella of salty or sugary made it in, and that was before Samus got to her favourite mainstays.

“Why’d they have to put it all the way up there…?” Samus strained on the tips of her toes to reach her energy drinks that were just barely out of her grasp. If she really strained she could just barely reach the corner of the box they were in, oblivious to the fact that she was likely to tip them over directly onto her head if she couldn’t catch it in time.

“Let me get that for you, honey.” said a middle-aged woman before Samus realised she was standing next to her, the woman of slightly above average height easily reaching it and carrying it down into Samus’ trolley without any effort.

“T-t-t-thank you…!” Samus stammered out, flushing red in embarrassment. “I-I-I could have gotten that on my own, but, you know, thanks anyway…”



“They’re awfully high up, aren’t they?” The woman with slightly greying hair and a motherly face said kindly without a hint of judgement in her voice. “Is there anything else you’d like me to help you get down?”



“N-n-no thank you, I’m… Well, actually, I was hoping to get that one and that one…” Samus shamefully pointed at two boxes of cans next to them, the lady smiling and taking them down for her. She wondered if she should offer to help her get something at the bottom in exchange…

“You know, I used to be just addicted to these. Got me through college!” The woman said conversationally as she placed Samus’ favourite brand into her trolley. “Had to give them up though, too many empty calories. You know, they say that they’re the first thing you should cut out of your diet, and that really did the trick for me. But then I had kids and I put on all the weight I lost all over again!”

“Yeah, haha…” Samus said awkwardly as the woman laughed. She hoped that all of the people on his colony weren’t this friendly, ideally she had wanted to make it back home without even using the voice commands at the self-checkout.

The helpful woman gave a smile and quick wave of farewell to Samus before returning to her own shopping, Samus wishing she could crawl into a hole and die. The woman had her own trolley that Samus hadn’t seen at all, being so absorbed in her efforts, which was filled with vegetables and other healthy ingredients. Samus probably weighed twice as much as the middle-aged woman, who looked a little plump herself. It made Samus wonder if the woman was on a diet, and for a very selfish moment, wished that if so, she wasn’t. If the woman had been much heavier, Samus might have felt a little better about herself…

The rest of her shopping was thankfully uneventful, right up until Samus finished paying for her mountain of snacks, and ran into a logistical problem she hadn’t considered: getting it all back to her ship. She went pale at the sight of the four large bags her snacks were crammed into, her arms protesting just picking them up. She was already huffing and puffing as she carried them out of the store, regretting her gluttony and avarice for the first time since the last time she looked in a mirror.

If she had looked cute in her striped thigh-highs and licensed hoodie, she probably didn’t anymore after she started sweating from the exertion, making slow steps back, arms on fire and legs screaming for relief. Halfway back her arms gave out entirely, Samus letting out an unintentionally loud gasp as her bags hit the floor from which they were barely raised in the first place, the bottles and cans making a loud thunk. Samus paused for a few seconds to try to regain her energy, but when she lifted them again, she just couldn’t get them up off the floor. She strained her stubby arms as best she could, but the bags barely did more than quiver no matter how red in the face she went.

She was burning with embarrassment, realising that she was probably making a scene, plunking them down in the middle of the street. But she was too weak to carry them all again so soon, her muscles completely atrophied from her condition and her total lack of exercise.

“Stupid Adam…!” Samus sniffled as she 

“Um, ma’am? Would you like some help with that?”



The worst thing that possibly could have happened happened: a sympathetic-looking young man stood over Samus, offering to carry some of them for her. He looked like he felt sorry for her over her obvious struggle, enough to approach the pale, obese, undersized, and very dishevelled looking woman who clearly rarely left her home. Even worse, Samus realised that it was either accept this kindness, or leave them there and try to make multiple trips.

Looking like she was about to cry, Samus gave the only answer she could:

“Yes, please…”

–

“You must have had some difficulties getting all that back here.” Adam commented as Samus wheezed getting her shopping up the ramp, dumping it where the ship’s cargo manipulators could start sorting it and putting it away for her.

“It was easy. I’m tougher than you think.” Samus bragged, looking completely dishevelled and having specifically asked the man helping her to leave them far enough away that her ship’s camera couldn’t see him. “And I’m never doing this again! The people on this stupid colony are too nice!”



Samus retreated to her room, where she laid flat on her bed, the exhaustion from lack of sleep finally catching up with her once the caffeine from her last energy drink left her system. Maybe tomorrow she’d start doing some walking on the treadmill and a few dumbbells… Or maybe she’d just play some more video games. The latter seemed far more likely to her…