Title: After the Game - Rituals
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Something was off.
She couldn't figure it out. She stood in front of the Space Pirates' new base on the Sita Rille galaxy planet 492, waiting to be taunted by or possibly fight Ridley.
The dragon wasn't there.
It was hard to imagine that he would actually be dead. There was no conceivable way for him to still be alive, resurrected or not; the BSL lab had crashed on to SR388, annihilating everything on both the station and planet. There wasn't a consciousness to extract, no body to raise. He was gone.
She still couldn't believe it. After all these years of fighting him, being harassed by him, he was just... gone.
Finally, she shook herself off. Feeling slightly off-balance, she barged into the base and as usual killed every living thing in sight.
---
Something was off.
He tried to stretch his wings, but it was as if the whole area was numb. He felt nothing but a buoyant feeling as he stood swaying awkwardly, as if a weight he had carried so long was lifted from his shoulders. He flexed his claws in front of his face; on that note, his whole head felt oddly small yet heavy...
Those aren't claws, his brain told him.
He glared at the Pirates surrounding him. They backed off despite his frail body, fearing the creature inside.
"Sir, allow us to explain..."
"Go ahead," he said sharply. "And once you're done, if it isn't to my satisfaction, I will find some way to tear all of you into shreds, even if I have to rip off one of your arms to kill the rest with!"
All recoiled at his outburst. "Ridley, sir, after the incident on the BSL Laboratory Station, w-we couldn't rescue - you," one finished lamely. "W-we had to start from scratch, sir."
Another took up where he left off. Instead of pausing in his nervousness, he spoke in a rush. "The Hunter has already started to strike the base, sir, so we had to do something, sir. We didn't have time to make you a body like your old one, so we had no choice but to get you a new one, sir. We used your uploaded consciousness you left on the computer, sir, and transferred it to this body," he finished in a small voice.
Ridley paused to digest this information. It didn't mollify him in the least. "Then tell me, why did you choose a human body? Why not a race that doesn't implode on contact with a mere missile?"
Before any of the bumbling scientists could answer, the guard at the door broke into the conversation. It was a Wave Trooper; he would have been invisible standing beyond the light of the screens if he didn't have glowing lines of purple streaking across his armor. That class of Pirate never had any great deal of respect for him in the first place, and probably had less so now that he was in the body of a human. "Because we didn't have time to fetch you anything better, sir," he rasped mockingly. "All we have is a whole lot of dead Federation troopers lying around."
Before Ridley could retort, a warning siren went off, bathing the area in flashing red light. "The Hunter!" the surrounding Pirates hissed, scampering away to defend the base, followed by the Wave Trooper.
Still standing in the center of the room, Ridley felt a grin starting to slide across his expressive human face. Perhaps he could have fun with this until he could get a worthy form... He started sending out orders to prepare.
---
Bounty hunter she may be first, but she was still female. Despite the shortcomings of this, she had never doubted the useful intuition before, and mentally kicked herself for ignoring it then. The area she stood in, marked 'Medical Station' on her map, was devoid of life. There were no Space Pirates or guard systems. In an inhabited Space Pirate base, that never happened. She had walked into a trap, she knew it.
The only company she had in this room was a suit of Marine armor, empty. The Pirates take no prisoners - they take research specimens. She felt a stab of pity for wherever this man was, for whatever they were doing to him couldn't be pleasant.
As soon as she stepped into the center of the room, the door closed and locked behind her. Yes, definitely a trap. She must of tripped some sort of silent alarm, though nothing burst into the room to kill her. Maybe they just weren't prepared. Samus amused herself with the thought of a Space Pirate somewhere watching her and cursing to himself that she tripped the trap early.
A noise beyond the other door sobered her and she readied her gun. She stood silently, waiting for whatever it was to unlock the door.
Click. The lock fell apart and the blast door was shot open. She responded with a shot of her own immediately, with reflexes born of years of fighting.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" someone called. Dumbfounded, she paused. Pirates didn't speak English, so that meant...
A man walked through the door, his standard issue Marine rifle still in his hand but out to the side. He dropped it when he saw Samus, but that might have been out of shock rather than displaying no intent to harm. He had close-cropped black hair and pale blue eyes. Bruises and various cuts mottled his pale skin. The jumpsuit he wore - the kind Marines wore under their armor - was torn in various places. Either he robbed the missing trooper, or he was the missing trooper. It didn't take a genius to figure out the answer. She lowered her gun.
"I won't hurt you. Calm down." A quick scan of the terrified-looking man identified him as PFC M. Carseth. Her suit's computer sent a message across her visor: Subject has an unknown device attached to cerebellum. It could be anything; it set off several internal alarms in Samus, but nothing showed through the reflective surface of her visor. "Tell me your name and how you ended up here."
"Mejjide. Mejjide Carseth." A Veroni name. It explained the accent that was becoming sharper in his still-apparent nervousness, despite his more relaxed posture. "I got here by ship."
A wise-ass. What Marine isn't. "What happened to you? How did you end up here," she stressed.
"I was captured." Simple enough.
"Where are the rest of the men in your squad?"
He shrugged. "Take a guess. I'm betting dead."
Samus wanted to punch him. Instead, she said, "Do you have any idea where the Space Pirates are?"
"How the hell would I know? An alarm went off and they all left me here."
Thank god, an answer, she thought. "I'm going to hack into the system to open the doors. Get your armor on so we can get out of here."
Carseth looked as if he would make some comeback, but when Samus shifted so her gun was more readily visible he turned to do as she ordered.
Luckily the computers in the Medical Station were networked to other computers as well. Hacking was as long and hard a job as she thought; her computer seemed to work on breaking into the system as fast as the Sunburst made its way to a target. She watched the data flow across her visor too fast for her to read; even if she could, it wouldn't make any sense to her. After a length of time that was probably shorter than it felt, the other lock was disabled.
"Let's go. I hope you can pull your weight if we run into trouble."
"With this? Keep dreaming, Aran."
She smirked as she shot open the door. Maybe this won't be a complete waste. At least he knows he's useless.
The area outside the lab was empty. So were the next three rooms. She felt her nerves tensing and un-tensing, expecting something to happen when nothing did. She paused in a round security room to check her map. "We're almost to my ship."
"Good," was all he had to say. He didn't look too pleased with the conditions, either.
Perhaps she had exaggerated a bit. 'Almost' translated to about 'halfway,' but if it made him relax he was less likely to screw up, which was always a good thing. She shot at the door to open it, but her shot reflected off the door and almost hit Carseth.
"What're you doing?" he cried.
Samus ignored him and scanned the door. She didn't have any weapon capable of opening the door. She cursed.
"What's the matter?"
"We're locked in again."
He did the very thing she felt like doing - he punched the wall, then slid against it until he sat on the floor. "My com unit doesn't work anymore. Anyone you can contact?"
She glanced at the computer. "Maybe we can set up a distress signal." If I were alone... But she wasn't, so any extreme methods couldn't work and not kill the fragile Trooper at the same time.
Carseth popped back up. "Let me see if I can do it. Technical stuff is my forte."
"Then why didn't you try to help me with the computer earlier?" Samus asked, annoyed.
"Because you said you'd do it," he replied without sparing her a glance. He poked around the console for awhile, then stood back. "I think that'll do it. Now all we can do is wait."
"How do we know that'll send a message to the Federation? This is a Space Pirate base, after all."
"I changed the frequency," he said, and his tone implied he wanted to add something not-so-flattering at the end of that sentence. He lifted off his helmet and sighed. "I hate those things," he complained. "Don't you ever get tired of that suit, Samus?"
Him using the more familiar name made a stab of annoyance strike her, but it also brought a memory tentatively flickering at the surface. Ridley, grinning at her with his beak-like snout, saying the very same line as he made to tear off her helm... She twitched. He's dead, she reminded herself.
"No."
"Hmm. Whatever. We're going to be here for awhile, though."
Samus made no reply. She watched him with mounting suspicion. Even the most skilled technician can't commandeer a Pirate system so easily...
She leveled the gun at his head. "Who are you?"
"My, my. Such hostility." The accent faded away, leaving a voice that sounded vaguely familiar, distorted as it was through the human vocal cords. "Don't you trust me?"
"Don't you trust me?"
"What kind of question is that? Like I'd ever even consider trusting you," Samus spat, squirming in the dragon's claws.
"I'd never drop you, Samus. Don't worry. You're far, far too fun to mess with." Ridley received a missile to the face for that comment. He chuckled. "My, my. Such hostility. I'm just taking us to a place with more... atmosphere." A Super Missile this time, and Ridley squawked indignantly. "I just wanted a nice place for our battle, Samus, but if you'd rather, I'll just leave you here!" The tight claws surrounding her gave way to rushing air as the ground sped toward her - no, she was falling to the ground...
"Ridley."
"Correct, old friend." He smiled charmingly, perfectly at ease despite his strange body and gun at his face. "What a pity, eh, that we have to meet like this? Desperate circumstances called for desperate actions, and, well, this is all we had," he said, gesturing to the stolen body of Mejjide Carseth. "I would love to fight you, but what a one-sided battle that would be!" That shrieking cackle sounded so strange coming from a human.
Just shoot him. Shoot him, dammit! She couldn't change the thought into action. Instead, the gun lowered slightly. Ridley waltzed closer to her.
"And your suit is such a mess. What happened to it?" He raised a critical eyebrow, trailed a finger along her chest plate. "How interesting. Organic structures these webs are, yes? What has been added to your dirty blood now?"
Her finger twitched angrily, causing a beam of energy crashed through his stolen trooper armor, blasting a hole through the shoulder guard. "Oops," she said scathingly, then remembered what he had said to make her anger flare. "Don't you remember what happened?"
"Of course not!" he said, completely ignoring the hole in his armor. "This consciousness was uploaded before I was taken to the lab, obviously. I remember nothing of the sort."
"Too bad. I'm not going to tell you." It made Samus feel like a child to say such a thing, but she felt a sort of vindictive pleasure at his irritation.
"Fine. I'll find out later."
"How do you know there'll be a later?"
"Because if you were going to shoot me, you'd have done it by now." His nerves back, he reached up for her helmet before she realized what she was doing. The helmet depressurized before it was pulled off hastily. Samus pushed him away and reached for her helmet, but it fell to the floor. She shot a glare at the accomplished-looking Ridley.
"What?" he asked, now feigning innocence. "You don't feel comfortable without your helmet? Such a pretty face shouldn't be kept covered."
This time, she forwent shooting and tackled him roughly to the ground before delivering a crushing punch to his chest. He winced, biting down a cry of pain, then turned his eyes on her. She could feel his breath puffing against her cheek, but she refused to let up.
"That's right," he hissed. "You don't like what I'm saying? Go ahead and hit me. This is how we've always played the game, so why stop now? Just know this." He pulled her by the hair until their noses almost touched. "I own you. You always dance right into my hands. I know just the right buttons to push and when, and there's nothing you can do about it. You're probably going to kill me, but somewhere out there, the remainders of my crew have the microchip that contains me on it. I'll find you again, and you won't know it's me until it's too late.
"Or maybe you will, and before I see you, you'll blow me up. But I'll just be resurrected again, and I'll find you yet again."
He tugged harder on her hair, pulling her in for a quick, violent kiss. "Keep on your toes, Samus. I won't let you rest until you're dead."
In response, Samus crushed his skull with her gun. But the damage had already been done. She knew she couldn't let her guard down now, when Ridley could be anyone, anywhere. At this very moment the Space Pirates could be constructing him a new, nondescript body.
She stood, replaced her helmet, and waited. The Federation would be there soon; she would decide what to do then. It wasn't her style to plan too far ahead. Let him come. Next time, I'll be prepared. She could only hope that was true.
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Note: This isn't overly original, really. Another story I can think of that does this is "I'm human?" by someone whose name escapes my memory. Oh well. I think it's an interesting idea, dammit. And you know Ridley's pissed when he starts breaking out the italics. My, how scary. I bet he says "miss-ile," too, instead of saying it like "missle."