"Ridley here, over."
"Have you scanned the Quellon system for any sign of Aran?"
"I have. No sign appeared. My next destination is Brantoo."
"Roger that, Ridley. PirCom over and out."
Ridley turned off the communicator. It got easier and easier to lie to command every time.
He descended to the cargo hold of his ship to watch her again.
Samus Aran, nude, comatose, suspended in a tank filled with life-sustaining fluids. There was a big scar, roughly the size of a human fist, down and to the left of her belly button.
---
He had been stalking her for weeks, waiting for an opportune moment. One came on some desert planet he couldn't even remember the name of. She was tracking a nest of scorpion-like creatures, and for hours had no luck. The planet's sun never set, and eight hours into her hunt, she tossed off her helmet, cursing about the air conditioning failing.
Ridley struck.
He soared high into the air first, then free-fell towards her kneeling, panting form, claws and tail first. He intended to impale her. At the last second she stood, and the tail went just between her thighs, scoring a decisive hit against the rock ground. His claws fared much better, though; they penetrated her armor and left six deep gashes on her back. She cried out in alarm and pain, and quickly swerved and fired off a dozen plasma rounds. Ridley dodged and drove his tail forward again, driving an impressive dent into the front of her torso piece.
"Fuck it," she swore, disengaging the armor lock. She jettisoned the torso piece and her gloved arm, leaving her blaster arm and leg armor.
After that, the battle's pace stepped up and became a blur in Ridley's memory. Him snapping at her, her delivering a solid kick to his midsection, him tossing her, her singeing him...it went on for quite some time.
Exhausted, he and Samus just stood facing each other, weapons at the ready. Ridley knew he wouldn't be able to dodge or make it to her before she would let loose another volley of super missiles and kill him again. But then the ledge Samus was standing cracked, crumbled and fell, taking Samus with it.
Ridley couldn't believe his luck. Rejuvenated by the sight, he strutted toward the edge (being careful not to fall as well) and looked down.
Samus had fallen forty feet into a sandy valley. The arm which held her weapon was at a funny angle; her shoulder was dislocated in the fall, Ridley speculated.
The moment before he was to leap down and pull her head from her body, a strange chittering/hissing sound filled the valley and reached Ridley's ears. Samus swung her head toward the base of the cliff, a place Ridley himself couldn't see. She frantically struggled to bring her cannon to bear, but her arm refused to obey. Finally, Ridley saw what Samus saw. The creature did indeed resemble a scorpion. Particularly its stinger, which it wasted no time driving it into Samus' belly.
Ridley acted on autopilot. He leapt down and flattened the beast, its white innards spilling out onto the sand. More of that awful chissering sound alerted Ridley to its friends. He picked up two of them and smashed them together. The third he threw against a wall, watching its carapace crack, the alien scorpion sliding to the ground, twitching as it died. 'Why did I save her from these things?' he mentally asked himself. 'Because you want to kill her yourself,' he told himself.
He turned now to his arch-nemesis, rearing his own tail up for a strike that would obliterate her heart, ending her life. But he hesitated. 'Why am I hesitating?' he asked himself. 'You want to beat her in a straight fight, not because she tripped,' he told himself.
So, he scooped her up and took her back to his ship. He cleaned her wounds and removed as much poison as he could, but the toxins had already started to make their way into her system.
'What now?' he thought. 'Take her to a Federation hospital?'
'No,' he told himself. 'They would shoot you on sight. Even if you escaped, Pirate Command would order you to kill her while at her most defenseless.'
That really left only one other option: taking care of her himself. First, he stripped her. He stowed all her items on her ship (he had tracked it) and hid the ship in a large cave.
As fast as he could, he warped to a Federation planet and broke into a hospital at night. He scanned the databases as fast as he could, but there seemed to be no record of the creature that had stung Samus. Rather than go away completely empty-handed, he had stolen the medical equipment he was currently using to keep Samus alive.
---
"Brantoo was a bust. I did get a lead for Kelneh, though."
"Roger that, Ridley. PirCom over and out."
The lead was real, but not in the context Pirate Command believed it. He was tracking down somebody he believed had, or could develop, an antitoxin for Samus. He kept slipping through Ridley's scaly fingers, though.
He returned to the cargo hold to stare at Samus again.
"Don't worry," he assured her. "Once I get that guy, he'll make the antitoxin and you'll wake up from your coma. Then, we can spend a few weeks together while you get back to full strength. Then...I guess we battle to the death."
That's what he kept telling himself. He almost believed it, too.