Samus Aran

Appearance
Samus is very tall for a woman. Her canon stats give her height at 6'3" and her weight at 198lbs (something usually handwaved in the fandom as being attributed to her genetic tampering in childhood). She has long (about waist-length) golden-blonde hair, usually swept back into a high ponytail (it looks at first glance like she has bangs, but when she lets her hair down, you can see the "bangs" are just her hair swept out of her face back into her ponytail), and light blue eyes. She spends about 90% of the time in canon in her Power Suit (described in greater detail in "abilities"), but when she removes it, she is either wearing her skin-tight Zero Suit or rather skimpy clothes, like short shorts and a tank top. Although she is never pictured with any sort of scarring (partially due to the shift to showing her in her Zero Suit), the mun tends to run with her having some evidence of battle scars, just because it's not realistic otherwise, all based on canon-supported injuries (a large bite mark across her arms, back, and chest from when Ridley bit through her suit and silver-blue lines running through her arms from inert Phazon contamination being the top ones).

Abilities
Due to changes in her physiology combined with lifelong training, Samus is much more acrobatic and agile than most humans, capable of high leaps, tricky flips and somersaults, and is somewhat skilled at hand-to-hand combat. This is just when she doesn't have her Power Suit, however. When she wears her Suit, she is capable of contorting her body into a small ball (Morph Ball) to zip through open areas quickly or slide into narrow passages, can leap very high (depending on what upgrades she has), use an assortment of weapons including a plasma beam and missiles, and drop bombs. With her Varia suit upgrade, her suit is temperature controlled, allowing her to survive in extreme hot or cold temperatures, and she also has state of the art computer systems built into the suit, displayed on the HUD in her visor, that allow her to scan for data, hack into computer systems, quickly download necessary information, or control her ship remotely.

Suit Abilities
Here is a list of Samus' complete suit functions, as well as their Facility 1 nerfs:
 * Arm Cannon: Power Beam, Wave Beam, Wide Beam, Plasma Beam, Ice Beam, Grapple Beam, Missiles, Super Missiles (Completely disabled in Facility 1, except for Ice Beam, which works just enough to lightly chill water)
 * Morph Ball: Folds into a small ball about half of her body size. Zips through areas very quickly/slips through narrow areas. (Able to use bombs and super bombs usually, but not in Facility 1)
 * Spider Ball: Clings to the walls and ceiling of metal structures while in Morph Ball.
 * Spring Ball: Jump while in Morph Ball.
 * Force Ball: Similar to Screw Attack, only she does it while in Morph Ball. (25%)
 * Boost Ball: Similar to Dash, again, only in Morph Ball. (50%)
 * Dash: Allows her to run at speeds far exceeding human. (50%)
 * Spin Jump: Basically a mid-air somersault. Not considered an upgrade, she usually has it to start with.
 * Space Jump: Chains Spin Jumps to go upward indefinitely.
 * Screw Attack: As she Spin Jumps, she's surrounded by a cloud of energy that knocks out baddies. Considered the most powerful ability in the games. (25%)
 * Varia Suit Upgrade: Samus' most iconic suit, only a starting suit in the Prime series for aesthetic reasons. It's the one with the big shoulders and all it adds is it's temperature controlled. (Works enough to keep her alive in Facility 1, but not necessarily comfortable.)
 * Gravity Suit Upgrade: Allows her to walk through water or other low/zero-gravity environments like it's regular Earth gravity.
 * Hydraulics: Purely fan speculation to explain why she can run around in a heavy suit all the time and hardly make any noise. Would make sense given the jumping functions/upgrades.
 * HUD: Displays her vital signs and ammunition. Can also pull up a map or other data.
 * Scan Visor: Like "Scan" in the Final Fantasy games, allows her to get readouts on anything she uses it on if the data is available. Unlike the FF games, it's not just used on enemies. Can also be used to download new data. (Cannot take in new data in Facility 1.)
 * X-Ray Visor: What it says on the tin: let's her see through stuff, and can make certain invisible enemies visible. (Disabled in Facility 1.)
 * Command Visor: Allows her to control her ship remotely. (Disabled in Facility 1.)
 * Gunship: A recent addition to the Facility, in Facility 1 it's only about as fast as a go-kart and can't fly so much as hover, and doesn't have the ability to restore her to full health or fix her suit. In Facility 3, it's completely operational, and can be remotely controlled with the Command Visor.

Personality
Samus was raised to be the ultimate weapon of peace and justice. Although she harbors no delusions that her beliefs are the truly right ones, if she can see where doing something potentially harmful will help keep people safe in the long run, she has no qualms with doing it and facing the repercussions. Being that she was taught that she would be the savior of the galaxy since she was three, Samus walks a lonely road, a lone wolf figure who believes that letting people get close to her will just get them in harm's way (and evidence in her history suggests that she may be right). Although she has regrets about some of her extreme actions, it's not because she knew what she was doing was wrong at the time, but because she didn't discover the negative effects until later.

In general, Samus seems cold and standoffish, keeping people at arm's length if she doesn't push them away entirely. She knows she's an intimidating, even frightening, figure, and accepts this if it means keeping people safe in the long run. Her emotions are kept closely guarded, if she acknowledges she has them at all, believing that her own mental and physical wellbeing are secondary to her mission for peace. There's some fragility lurking beneath the surface (with as much trauma as she's endured in her life, it'd be impossible for there not to be), but it can be difficult to dig past her cold exterior to find it. If she trusts a person as an ally, she'll defend them with her life. She dislikes being told what to do, and it's very difficult for her to answer to someone who claims to have authority over her. She's a mostly silent protagonist in the games, with no actual dialogue and very little given for her personality for the majority of the games, but from context as well as her journal entries in Fusion and the official tie-in manga, we learn most of this information, as well as her tendency to deflect people by joking or flirting, her occasionally foul mouth, and the reason for her professional distance (she was once a very emotional fighter, but that got people killed).

History
Samus was born on the human colony K-2L in the far distant future, approximately Cosmic Year 2000, to Rodney Aran, a mining supervisor, and Virginia Aran, a housewife. At the age of three, shortly after a visit from Chozo Elders hoping to secure some of the mineral mined on the colony for personal use, K-2L was invaded by Space Pirates, lead by the vicious, dragon-like Ridley, who hoped the secure the valuable mineral for themselves. The entire colony was viciously massacred as Samus hid and watched helplessly, the horror compounded when Ridley, injured by an explosion that kept him from accessing the mineral, ate the bodies of the colonists to heal himself. Once the slaughter was over and the remaining Space Pirates left, the Chozo, receiving the emergency transmission intended for the Galactic Federation, returned to survey the carnage. They found the sole surviving child and decided to take her back to their home planet of Zebes.

On Zebes, the Chozo's organic computer adviser, Mother Brain, is initially resistant to the human child living on the planet, but eventually agrees on the condition that she will be trained as their warrior, a weapon to be used to bring peace to the galaxy. Samus was then infused with Chozo DNA, making her half-Chozo so that she could survive the harsh climate and dangerous wildlife of Zebes. This also increased her strength, speed, and agility past human levels. From then on, she was trained extensively to prepare for her destiny as a warrior, given her Power Suit in early childhood so that she could adapt to it and learn its operation.

At the age of fourteen, following an attack by Space Pirates on Zebes, Samus is sent out into the galaxy to confront her destiny. She initially joins the Galactic Federation as a soldier-cum-officer in charge of stopping the Space Pirates, where she was noted for her difficult disposition but incredible strength and skill. Samus eventually met a commanding officer that she was willing to follow, as he treated her with respect and dignity and earned her (grudging) respect as well, but when he sacrificed himself to save her on a mission that went wrong, she quit the Federation, instead working as one of the shady bounty hunters the Federation keeps on retainer for especially dangerous and possibly sketchy jobs.

Samus is something of a legend in her home universe, the lone wolf warrior of peace and justice with remarkable skill and power, mostly thanks to her Power Suit. Young Federation recruits often treat her with awe and reverence when they confront her, but the fame is about the only thing Samus doesn't miss about being home (although she misses the money that comes with it).

Aside from being part-Chozo, Samus' physiology has been further altered: first, she was exposed to Phazon energy, which gave her the ability to enter a "hyper state" that greatly enhanced her abilities, but at great cost to her health and sanity. With the destruction of the planet Phaaze, the origin of Phazon, this energy now lies dormant in her system. Later, on a routine scouting mission for the Federation, she was infected by the X Parasite, a deadly parasite that drains the life of an organic creature as it copies its DNA and assimilates itself into its victim's surroundings to infect and reproduce. The only hope of survival was to infuse her with the DNA of a metroid, the only known natural enemy of X, while she was unconscious. It saved her life, but added an inner layer of metroid flesh to her Power Suit and made her and her suit both more susceptible to cold (freezing being the only way to kill a metroid). Samus' discovery that the Federation may have exposed her and other bounty hunters to Phazon intentionally as part of an experiment, and knowledge that they planned to harvest X for use as a biological weapon, lead to her severing ties with them for good.

Facility Facts

 * Willingly had her left hand cut off when the Facility had power-liming bracelets rather than collars. It's currently replaced by the hand from her suit.
 * Chronic insomniac, she only sleeps once every three or four days.
 * Facility fight record: of the four fights she's participated in, she's won one.
 * A vegetarian who also doesn't eat eggs for cultural reasons. She is also one of the few people in the Facility who doesn't mind the food provided, as it reminds her of the kind of food she brought with her on missions.
 * Lost her virginity to Folken during OOC week. Since that's "the week that never happened", she still considers herself a virgin.