Metroid: Project Ridien

During the time between Metroid Prime and Super Metroid, the Project Ridien incident occurred.

Project Ridien was originally called A.S.H., standing for Anti-Space Hunter. The project was originally started to create a super-being that could be used to fight off all Space Hunters. However, during Samus' invasion of Zebes, it was reorganized to stop her specifically. After countless attempts to create a super monster that could destroy Samus (one of attempts resulted in the fake Kraid) they changed what their goal was. Using cameras and other technology, they managed to almost duplicate Samus's basic suit.

The plan was to create a duplicate robot of Samus that could, being equal to Samus, destroy her with the help of other Space Pirates. Unfortunately, the robots that were placed inside the suit could not function well enough. When pitted against other space pirates, the robots were easily defeated. Samus's invasion almost over by now, and her approaching Tourian, the space pirates changed A.S.H. to a codename, Project Ridien, in case Samus were to stumble across evidence of it while invading Tourian. When the time bomb was set off, Project Ridien, its creators, and its blueprints were evacuated to the other side of the planet. There, in the Coron Skystation, a giant station floating in the clouds, further tests were conducted.

There the space pirates working on it determined that they could not create a robot programmed well enough to destroy Samus. For about 2 weeks the project was ignored, but then a new discovery was found. A search team of space pirates looking for metroids (that survived the explosion the time bomb caused) discovered the remains of a metroid. When the metroid DNA was tested to see if it could be used to create new metroids, the results were negative, but they did find something very interesting in the DNA.

When this specific metroid latched onto Samus, it had been bombed off. However, the metroid had sucked out enough of Samus's energy to extract some of Samus's DNA. The creators of Project Ridien picked up the project again, this time hoping not to have to use a robot but instead of clone of Samus.

The original idea was to create a perfect clone of Samus- body, mind, and abilities. They already had the entire mind they needed (having receptors picking up Samus's brainwaves when she was invading Zebes), which they merely needed to focus into the clone’s own brain to learn them. The creators' idea was to recreate the Samus we all know and love, a perfect clone.

However, this plan did not work. They soon realized that the DNA that had been extracted from the Metroid remains was, like the Metroid DNA, not intact and had missing parts. Original attempts to create a clone without repairing the damage ended up creating a random blob of cells. After numerous attempts, the creators decided they'd have to repair the DNA.

Attempting to repair the DNA with artificial particles, the result was horrible. Although the results were human-like shapes, the bodies was mangled, disproportioned, missing limbs, and usually dead. The few that did come out alive only lasted for about a minute. They twisted and twitched for a minute, then their bodies collapsed and they died. Finally, the space pirates were close to giving up Project Ridien. In addition, funds had been running low as a large amount of energy was being put into Mother Brain's recovery; after Samus defeated her on Zebes, there was a flash and a burst of flames, thought to be the Mother Brain exploding. However, in reality, it was her teleporting away... To a hideaway on Coron Skystation. In an attempt to advance her biological section's recovery, natural plants were brought in to help it feel less mechanical... But the plants grew, and took over, consuming the metroid cloning area as well and corrupting the metroid's DNA into Kesonoids, a planty mutation of metroids. Faced with this new problem, the researchers were told that they needed to complete their project immediately or give up. As a last attempt, they intercepted a Federation Police vessel, invaded it, and took a female officer's dead body back to the Coron Skystation. Using parts of her DNA to reconstruct Samus's, they started cloning again.

The results started out bad. The clones looked normal now, but their brains and some organs didn't function properly and they never lived. However, the space pirate scientists kept trying to recreate the DNA perfectly. Although the pirates grew ever closer to creating a working clone, disaster struck once again on the cursed project. The pirate base of Tallon IV fell at the hands of Samus, and a large explosion in the phazon crater caused by Samus blew a large chunk of the crater into space. The fragment had been thrown into space at a particularily bad time- when Zebes' orbit was closest to Tallon IV's. The pirates, trying desperately to regroup after the assault on Tallon IV, completely ignored the meteorite... Until it crashed directly into Coron Skystation. The fragment extremely damaged a large portion of the station and superheated the area. Large amounts of Deoxidation Drones had to be dispatched to the area in order to stop the flames by cutting off the oxygen and transforming it into carbon dioxide. Not only this, but the damage majorly cut the station's power supplies. Nearly all power had to be redirected to Mother Brain's recovery. Life support and lights had to be removed. The station's workers were replaced by drones, and the lights replaced by a gel-infused metal which glowed green with even the slightest light. Even with all this, all power had to be cut from Project Ridien. In addition, the crater the fragment had created had been found to possess Phazon... Not only that, a search team had discovered an offspring of Prime's- a minirature Prime that had formed from some of the original Prime's phazon veins. Even more power was diverted to helping the spread and mining of the phazon in the crater. Further complicating matters, the Ridley Cloning station had recently been built into Norfair beneath Coron Skystation... But things had gone wrong. The station was designed to mass-clone an army of Ridleys led by one Super Ridley... But the Super Ridley had wreaked havoc on the entire Cloning Station and it was in a state of Chaos. Mother Brain's Recovery, the station's damage, the cloning station, and the crater's developement had taken away all of Project Ridien's resources.

Finally, when Project Ridien was all but abandoned, one of the scientists on the team pointed out that all of these recovery processes that were taking away from Project Ridien were all caused by what Project Ridien wished to stop... Samus. A small amount of resources were granted. Now, with the bare minimum equipment, a miracle was given. They finally created a working clone. She wasn't exactly Samus- she was slightly thinner, slightly stronger, her hair was a dark brown (the color of the Federation Police officer's), but she was a very close clone. The clone and the suit created earlier were both named Ridien, after the project.

However, the project did not end there. Using technologies that were used in Mother Brain's mechanical armor and the turrets in her chamber, they reinforced the Ridien suit, and it's beam to make it more than 10 times stronger than Samus's. Finally, Ridien was suited up in her suit and placed in the Brainwave chamber to have Samus's mind placed in her. However, thehorrible luck that had plauged the project was about to come to a final blow. The scientists made a large mistake, they had not edited Samus's thoughts at all. They had hoped to teach Ridien all that Samus knew about battle and the world, her skills. They had also implanted extra information into Ridien so she knew what she was, where she was, what space pirates were. However, when Samus's thoughts entered Ridien's head, Ridien became Samus. COMPLETELY Samus... Her memories had not been wiped. And she knew what to do, and what space pirates really were. And she hated them, and she knew that there was only a thin laser door between her and the rest of Coron Skystation. And so she knew that she had been placed in the heart of an enemy world, for she was now Samus- and that she must destroy the Coron Skystation and stop Mother Brain from being resurrected, to slow their plans until the Federation could catch on, to slow the ressurection of Ridley before the Federation was ready. She was not the real Samus, she knew... But she was Ridien.

And she would fight.