It's been a looooong time since I updated here.
Main reason being severe writer's block rendering me unable to think ap anything funny for 'Kraid's Lair'. I wrote the neevil attack ages ago and this has been shelved pretty much ever since.
However, a resolution has been found! The result seems to me to be an odd mix between Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Lewis Carroll. So yeah, rock on.
The spelling of 'Raid' has changed since last chapter because I realised the joke I had planned really wasn't funny.
Chapter 9, In Which Our Hero Battles Neevils and Descends into Raid's Lair.
Salami Amok reached the bottom of the shaft where he had first ascended through Brisket, and stepped through the stone arch into the cavern beyond. There was an eerie silence, which the bounty hunter completely failed to notice. His attention was fixed on a heap of rocks, upon which sat a Bozo energy tank.
From behind its rock, the Neevil leader saw this as the opportune moment, and made the signal.
Slightly puzzled but not perturbed by the sudden and unexpected sound of a disembodied voice whistling 'If I Only had a Brain', Amok strolled across the room and reached out for the energy tank.
The Neevil leader finally spotted the flaw in his otherwise perfect plan, and watched the precious energy tank absorb into the bounty hunters suit while wishing they'd for the life of them thought to choose a shorter signal. He finished humming about dancing and being merry, 'life would be a ding-a-derry, if I only had a brain' at record speed, 437 shoe-thirsty neevils leapt as one onto the unprepared hunter.
Salami found himself held fast by the weight of the neevil colony crushing onto him. Hauling seven badgers along was one thing, but this… Amok grunted with the effort of trying to push himself down into a crouched position, but failed even that. The vast numbers of neevils held him fast, preventing him from entering Moth Ball form. He tried firing his beam, but as he couldn't move to aim it, the shots didn't help him, and those neevils he hit were replaced by more. Somewhere below his shins, his suit was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
Amok writhed under the weight of the neevil colony but failed to move more than a few inches. He realised he was still gripping the firing mechanism on his Power Beam, and promptly let go of it. A shot of high speed currency fired from the beam which Salami had unintentionally charged. At once a number of neevils lost interest in the hunter and leapt after the cash, fighting madly to gain it. In an instant, Salami Amok was away, rapidly crossing the 2 metre distance between himself and the next wall of shoe-eaters. He froze, spun around and found himself facing another living wall rapidly closing in on his from behind. The neevils who had left him in their dive for material gain were rapidly gathering up the last of the Charge Beam's notes. He had another Charge shot ready, but it would never get him past so many enemies.
A desperate idea occurred to him, and he leapt off of the ground.
Unfortunately, the pile of neevils reached the ceiling, so his plan to jump over them no longer seemed so plausible. However, as he leapt and curled into a summersault, the Charge Beam's secondary function took effect, and coinage and bank notes went flying in all directions, filling the room up with more cash than the neevils could have imagined. Salami Amok landed on top of the writhing heap. The walls that had been so close to bearing down on him had vanished. Finding the experience somewhat like trying to take a pleasant walk over a lake of quicksand, Salami Amok scrambled across the pile towards the shrine, looking for the floor of, uh, 'mud', that would yield to the Moth Bombs.
Thirty seconds later, one of the neevils towards the top of the pile yelled suddenly, "Hey, he's getting away!"
As one the neevils looked up to see the hunter disappearing round a bend in the passage. Seconds later they were racing after the hunter in one huge, shoe munching wave of neevils and bulging wallets.
VVVVVV
Salami Amok was in Moth Ball form, coated in 'mud' and dropping bombs faster than a trigger-happy World War 4 pilot. Goo splattered everywhere and Amok dropped down into the shaft below and began bouncing down the shaft like he was made of rubber, passing a couple of air-turtles who began muttering about how kids these days had no patience. Back in their day- Four hundred and thirty three neevils poured over the edge of the shaft after the hunter and fairly ended the air-turtles reminiscing.
It should perhaps be noted that the remaining four neevils who did not pour down the shaft with the others instead toddled off to the shrine of Elvera, Goddess of Beef, to apologise for all the noise. Their names were Ernie, Bernie, Mildred, and Ron. They will forever be recognised as the most devout neevils of their generation.
VVVVVV
Salami Amok reached the bottom of the shaft and dropped in front of a blue energy door as the hoards of neevils came ever closer. He popped out of Moth Ball and fired at it with the Pwoar Beam, and the door wheezed and opened. The bounty hunter dived through as the weight of four hundred and thirty three neevils crashed to the bottom of the stone passage and as one, turned towards the door. It sealed behind the hunter and the colony thudded against it with an unpleasant crunch. Amok made the tactical decision to not wait around and quickly spotted the energy lift descending in the centre of the room. He jumped into it and sent it descending downwards into the depths of Chibis.
On the other side of the door, the neevils gathered round, nursing minor injuries and damaged pride. "His shoes really weren't that good you know, metal is metal and leather is leather, doncha know," They consoled one another. "Well, what goes down must come up. 'E can't stay in there forever." And so the neevils made a tactical retreat back to their homes for a nice cup of tea and a sit down.
VVVVVV
As the Neevils stood around and counted the money they had won from the hunter, it occurred to them to wonder where so much currency had materialised from.
Meanwhile, many miles away on the presidential planet of Forminoov, the president of the Galactic Institution of Trade and Society, Erwin Doe, was running through the annual accounts and was horrified to find that huge amounts of cash seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
It eventually came to light that his calculator was broken. Obviously this tale has nothing to do with the quest of Salami Amok, but it is included to warn you, should you find yourself in such a situation: check the quality of your calculator before having your accountants fed to an Uber-Cycow.
Raid's Lair
Raid's Lair was a place of shiny metal cylindrical interiors. The lift brought Salami Amok down into a perfectly round metal shaft, marked with regular steel ledges. Two energy doors, one normal and one stronger, also led out of the shaft nearby. Bug-eyed Raid-Krabs ambled around the cavern, crawling slowly over the walls and ledges, bouncing into things (including each other). The sensors in Salami's suit stated that the whole place was filled with a psychoactive gas, which might have explained the creature's odd behaviour.
Salami moved cautiously down from his ledge towards the basic energy door when one of the Raid-Krabs wandered close to him and said in a distant voice, "You'll be looking for that Parrot General, Raid, won't you?"
"Uh, yes," Amok answered unsurely.
Another Krab approached, grinning, "Raid is funny," It giggled, "He said… he said…" Unfortunately whatever Raid said remained a mystery to the bounty hunter as the Krab suddenly erupted into a fit of giggles.
"Can you walk on walls?" The first Krab suddenly asked, gravely.
"No."
"Ceilings?"
Amok shook his head.
The Krab looked disapproving, "That won't… won't do at all… If you wanna see Raid you gotta be able to walk on warbles…"
Salami was now very confused. "What's a warble?"
"But don't you worry about any little thing!" The Krab's voice rose again, "If you turn on the lifts you can get to Raid without… without wazzat."
The second Krab suddenly burst out laughing again. Salami faced it nervously, "Uh…"
The first Krab got his attention again, "Doncha worry about him! You gotta worry about the lizard!"
"Lizard?"
"The GIRANICAL LIZARD that guards the contours for the lifts!"
The second Krab laughed so hard it fell off of the wall and disappeared into the depths of the shaft. Its cries of mirth echoed up towards them.
"Doncha worry about a thing!" The remaining Krab declared! "The lizard… The lizard's been dead for… for, you know, what are those things you get if you stick enough months together?"
"Years?"
"That's the… the…"
"One?"
"No; eighteen." The Krab scooted off down the wall, muttering to itself.
"Wait! Where are the lift contours? Uh, controls!"
The Krab cried up, "The red door! It's… It's… The LIZARD IS RED!"
The Krab disappeared, leaving Salami Amok utterly oblivious as to the lizard's mortality. Wondering if anything the Krab had told him was true, he shot a moossile at the secure door and headed through.
The passage beyond was shiny, metal and perfectly cylindrical, which made walking along it something of a challenge. Scrambling along it, Amok encountered another Raid-Krab which, when not singing, did manage to inform him that the lift controls were down this passage and the lizard was indeed dead. This information was repeated by the next five Krabs and he was beginning to feel more confident as he strode through a door at the end of the passage into another shiny metal vertical cylinder. He climbed up through the shaft until he came to another red door with 'lift controls' written over the top. With a grin he shot it with a moosile and wandered through.
The room beyond was largely taken up by a large pool of orange acid with was bridged by a number of pillars, pointing up out of the acid and providing platforms to stand on, just above the surface. On the pillar in the pool's centre was an Energy Tank and on the far side was a large computer console.
Amok quickly crossed the pool round the edge to the console, which he examined. It consisted of a lot of blinking lights and in the centre a single large purple button labelled 'lift control'. Salami pressed it, and a disembodied female voice announced coolly, "Lifts have been: activated. Have a nice day."
"That was easy!" Amok announced cheerfully and leapt to the platform in the centre of the pool and picked up the energy tank. It was absorbed into his suit. "Energy tank obtained, Energy Capacity restored and increased."
And then the pillar on which Salami Amok was standing exploded as massive teeth, each at least a foot long, grabbed round its edges and crushed it in insanely powerful jaws. A head that seemed to consist of a horrifyingly huge mouth and three pale emotionless eyes the size of beach balls slammed into Amok and sent him flying through the air and crashing into the computer console.
Twenty metres of long, sleek body emerged from a hole in the pool's bottom and coiled itself around the four remaining pillars.
The Gigantic Tyrannical Lizard who guarded the lift controls of Raid's Lair was long dead.
The Great and Terrible Acid Worm who was hired by the Space Parrot's as its replacement, evidently wasn't.
I heard somewhere that in the original 'Metroid' you had to fight a mini-boss in 'Kraid' that was basically a less impressive version of Kraid himself, but then in 'Zero Mission' it was taken out and the acid worm made its appearance. Hence the 'lizard is dead' thing. WI don't care if that's true or not; comedy is all that matters!
Well, comedy and reviews. Speaking of which…