Chapter 19:
Samus went evasive as her parents charged towards her. She managed to dodge their rushes towards her and turned to face them, activating her Scan Visor so she could scan them and, hopefully, find some weaknesses in their armor or shields. She first scanned her mother, the Techno Lord wearing the silver armor, the scan coming back, reading, Morphology – Techno Lord: Blaster-class. Techno Lords are the highest-ranking and most powerful of the known Techno Soldiers. In addition to the standard abilities and armaments of a Technoble, the Techno Lord possesses stronger armor, more powerful energy projectors, a higher top speed, both in atmosphere and in outer space, and energy shields. Designed for ranged combat, the Blaster-class of Techno Lord is armed with numerous energy projectors and energy cannons, and has an energy siphoning system that allows it to absorb beam weapons and channel the energy to its own weapons systems. Armored suit is invulnerable all but the strongest of heavy anti-starfighter and capital ship-grade weaponry and has no identifiable weaknesses save for possibly the Wavebuster, but only once the shields are breached and subject is firing his or her energy weapons. Subject inside armor is human female identified as Virginia Aran, formerly of Earth colony K-2L, mother of Samus Aran and wife of Rodney Aran. Scans indicate that the subject has undergone an extensive brainwashing and reprogramming regimen. A single blast from the Wave Beam should neutralize brainwashing and reprogramming once the armor is removed.
She then focused on the soldier in the gold armored warrior, her father, and scanned him, the scan reading, Morphology – Techno Lord: Blade-class. Techno Lords are the highest-ranking and most powerful of the known Techno Soldiers. In addition to the standard abilities and armaments of a Technoble, the Techno Lord possesses stronger armor, more powerful energy projectors, a higher top speed, both in atmosphere and in outer space, and energy shields. Designed for close-range combat, the Blade-class of Techno Lord is equipped with numerous blades and energy swords. However, the Blade-class of Techno Lord still possesses the standard chest-mounted energy projectors that all Techno Soldiers Knight-class and above possess, and at the Lord-class, making the Blade-class of Techno Lord still viable in ranged combat. Armored suit is impervious to all but the strongest of heavy anti-starfighter and capital ship-grade weaponry has no identifiable weaknesses save for possibly the Wavebuster, but only once the shields are breached and subject is firing his or her energy weapons. Subject inside of armor is human male identified as Rodney Aran, formerly of Earth colony K-2L, father of Samus Aran and husband of Virginia Aran. Scans indicate that subject has undergone an extensive brainwashing and reprogramming regimen. A single shot from the Wave Beam should neutralize brainwashing and reprogramming once the armor is removed.
Once she finished the scans, the life and shield bars of the two Techno Lords appeared on the upper part of her HUD, just below her own Energy Tank and shield status readouts. She then readied her arm cannon and steeled her resolve to save her parents, no matter what it took. Her scans indicated that they could still be saved, and she would not fail them, not now; not after having searched for them ever since she discovered that they were still alive. She had lived almost her entire life without her parents, her last memory of them being her mother dying to save her. She would not fail here. She would defeat them and save them without killing them. And then, she would slaughter Ridley.
Both Rodney and Virginia took to the air and flew to the ceiling of the cavern. Drawing their swords, they pointed them at Samus, with Virginia pointing her left hand towards her daughter. The swords began to glow, prompting Samus to sprint towards them in a zigzag pattern, hoping that the evasive pattern would prevent them from getting an accurate bead on her. As she sprinted towards them, she charged her Wave Beam, hoping that a Charged Wave Beam shot would manage to get past the shields of one of them and short out the armor, forcing them to transform back to normal so she could reverse the brainwashing with her Wave Beam. She targeted her father, since his suit did not seem to have an energy siphoning system installed. Once she had locked onto her father, she let fly with the Charged Wave Beam blast. As soon as she fired, her father moved to his left, accelerating to supersonic speeds in an instant in order to evade the attack. Against a slower beam like the Ice Beam, such a ploy might have worked, but the Wave Beam traveled at close to the speed of light. As he began to evade her blast at blinding speeds, the Wave Beam blast followed him and phased through his shields, scoring a direct hit on his armor. Electricity arced across his armor, but he did not seem to slow down at all. Checking her father's life bar, she found that the Charged Wave Beam inflicted no damage at all to him. She gave a small sigh. She had to see if it would work, for she knew that none of her other beam weapons would be effective against her, and her missiles and Super Missiles would not be strong enough to breach their shields. That left only her Power Bombs, Power Missiles, and possibly her Grapple Voltage and Screw Attack.
She then felt a weight hit her in her right side and saw her mother standing before her. Thirty units of energy were depleted from her Energy Tank and she was sent flying. Her mother had struck her with her sword. As she flew through the air, Virginia pointed her now glowing sword towards Samus and let loose a blast of pulsing scarlet energy. The energy blast scored a direct hit on Samus and took out an entire Energy Tank from her shields. She then felt another impact to her back, arresting her momentum, and saw that her next Energy Tank was taken down to forty units of energy. Looking behind her, she saw her father standing behind her, thrusting a red beam sword into her suit. Her shields stopped the initial impact, but since the sword was energy, it continued to inflict damage to her shields at a rate of five points per second. Seeing that this was an opportunity for her to inflict some damage to their suits of armor, as well as test to see just how effective her Power Bombs would be against them, she flicked her left wrist towards her mother and a purple stream of energy erupted from her grapple mount. The Grapple Beam struck her mother and reeled her in. As she did so, the beam turned blue as it was draining her shield of its energy, and replenishing her own in the process. She noticed that the shield bar of her mother was dropping, though the life bar was not depleted by the energy drain. Eventually, she had managed to replenish all of the energy she had lost. She quickly curled into her Morph Ball form and dropped a Power Bomb. Using her Boost Ball, she rocketed away as her parents fired several scarlet energy blasts her way. She managed to evade their fire, but the blasts of energy created explosions that were twice as large as the detonations of Super Missiles, which were easily capable of destroying Federation main battle tanks. However, Ridley soon got a piece of the action as he soared into the air and bombarded Samus with a stream of plasma. His attack scored a direct hit on Samus and she lost a third of her Energy Tank. The Power Bomb she dropped eventually exploded, engulfing her parents in a sphere of destructive energy, and she accelerated around the room until she had activated her Speed Booster. Once her Speed Booster was active, she came to a stop for a brief moment and then Shinesparked up through the ceiling, breaking through the rock and continuing up the mountain. As she did so, she checked her parents shield and life bars, noticing that the Power Bomb that she had dropped inflicted noticeable damage to her parents' shields, their shields being taken down to five sixths their original strength. Still, their life bars were unchanged, indicating that none of the energy managed to bleed through and damage their armor in any way.
Eventually, she reached the top of the mountain and stopped. She uncurled herself and proceeded to make her way towards the hole. As she did so, though, she quickly found that the ground beneath her was giving way. Spin jumping into the air and activating her Screw Attack, a stream of pulsating energy came up from underneath her and buffeted her Screw Attack shields. Despite the fact that her Screw Attack shields were up and resisting the energy, the energy attack was so powerful that a far too large amount of energy managed to bleed through the shields and inflict damage to her suit as she lost an entire Energy Tank to the attack, despite her Screw Attack shields. She suspected that if she had not had the Screw Attack active, that she may very well have been killed, for the energy blast that struck her was powerful enough to destroy a city. It was even stronger than Mother Brain's Hyper Beam attack during her last mission on Zebes. Eventually, the stream of energy ceased, the energy that her Screw Attack had deflected around her had continued up to the mountain's ceiling, blasting through, and continuing on into outer space, where it eventually dispersed. Light shown from the new hole that had been created by the energy stream as several boulders fell to the ground, throwing up rocks and debris upon impact.
Samus dropped another Power Bomb over the hole, transforming into her Morph Ball form for a brief moment to drop the bomb, before returning to her normal form and rocketed away from the hole as quickly as her Screw Attack spin jump would allow, as her mother came shooting up from underneath her. The Power Bomb exploded and inflicted more damage to her mother's shield, but the blast did not slow down Virginia's charge and she quickly escaped the blast sphere before suffering too much shield damage. Once she arrived, she stretched out her arms towards her daughter and fired several pulsing red balls of energy towards her. The balls struck Samus's Screw Attack shields but failed to breach them, or inflict any damage. However, they did push the bounty hunter backwards a bit. She was soon joined by her husband, who was now holding a staff in his right hand, the end of the staff glowing a deep red. He pointed the staff at Samus and fired a series of blood-red energy blasts from the end of the staff. The blasts of energy were deflected by Samus's Screw Attack shield, with some of them being deflected into the ground, throwing up large piles of dirt and dust.
Samus then charged towards her father in an attempt to ram him and hope that her Screw Attack was capable of inflicting damage to his shields as well. Rodney made no attempt to evade his daughter's charge and merely hovered there as she collided with him. Much to Samus's surprise, her Screw Attack was able to inflict damage to the shields of her father's armored suit. In fact, it was inflicting a noticeable amount of damage to his shields. For a fleeting moment, she hoped that her father was beginning to resurface and was keeping himself from being able to fight her. However, that hope vanished as she noticed that his energy projectors were glowing a bright red, signaling the preparation of an attack. Allowing herself to fall to the ground, Samus barely managed to avoid sustaining a point blank attack from the large energy wave released by her father. The scarlet blast sailed over her as it continued to the wall and blasted a significant hole in it. He then swept the beam down towards Samus, creating a massive rend in the floor as he followed his daughter's movements in an attempt to hit her with the energy wave.
The energy wave eventually ceased, but that did not stop Rodney and Virginia Aran from continuing to attack their daughter. Rodney drew out what looked to be two throwing daggers, but she suspected that there was more to them than that. She was quickly proven right as he threw them at her and they followed her every move as she evaded their initial attempt to hit her. While she was busy evading the daggers, her mother was bombarding her with some "mid-level" energy blasts. While she managed to evade most of the blasts, some of them still managed to hit her, each draining fifty units of energy from her Energy Tank. In addition, with each hit she sustained, she was staggered for a bit, allowing the two tracking daggers to strike her suit and inflict additional damage. By the end of the barrage, she was down to seventeen Energy Tanks, with her current Energy Tank already having lost thirty units of energy, while having only inflicted relatively light damage to her parents' shields. And given how this battle was going, so far, if things did not change, she would almost certainly lose. The problem was how she could launch an attack on them without getting annihilated? Her parents were too fast for her to simply be able to stand, or even simply run around and focus on them while preparing a Power Missile. Besides, chances were that if they saw the missile coming, they would either be able to evade it, or knock it back at her, which could be disastrous for her since it was as powerful as a tactical nuke. Still, it was likely her best bet at being able to breach their shields and hopefully allow her to inflict some real damage to them.
A plan then came to mind. She began by charging around the room as her parents continued to toss energy blasts and energized tracking throwing daggers her way. As they continued to rain down attacks on her, she fired her Wave Beam at the seeker daggers and shot them out of the air. She rushed over and picked up one of the daggers and attached it to her suit before finally running fast enough to activate her Speed Booster. Once she activated her Speed Booster, afterimages appeared behind her and a large blast sounded as she went faster than the speed of sound. Stopping for a second, and drawing the dagger, she Shinesparked towards her mother. She collided with her and the force of the Shinespark carried the two of them to the ceiling, where they crashed. Samus suffered no damage from the collision, but she noticed her mother's shield level drop due to the impact, along with her life bar decreasing by a single sliver. Virginia was dazed by the impact for a moment before regaining her senses and taking the opportunity to focus the energy of her projectors and cannons on Samus just as she curled into her Morph Ball form and dropped a Power Bomb. As she uncurled herself and activated her Screw Attack, her father appeared next to her and brought his staff upon her. Despite hitting her with the bladed end of the staff, her Screw Attack did not suffer any shield damage. The force of the strike, though, was enough to send her crashing to the ground. This proved to be most fortuitous, though, because it got her out of the path of Virginia's energy barrage. The scarlet streams of energy erupted from her energy projectors and cannons and blazed a path to the far wall of the cavern. The energy stream instantly blew a hole in the wall, vaporizing the rock and continued on into outer space, eventually colliding with an unfortunate Galactic Federation Assault Transport that was making an attack run of a Federation in Exile corvette and destroying it.
As she was firing her energy stream, the Power Bomb exploded and engulfed the two Techno Lords in a field of fiery destruction that was thirty meters in diameter. Part of the ceiling of the cavern was even vaporized by the blast of the Power Bomb. Samus noticed the shields of her parents fall to below half strength. Seeing this as her chance to inflict some real damage to their shields, she locked onto her father and armed a Power Missile. Taking a deep breath and ironically praying that the Power Missile would be powerful enough to inflict shield damage to her parents, but not so powerful that it risked killing them, she fired the red-tipped warhead at them. The missile burst from the arm cannon and flew straight at the Techno Lords. Despite seeing the missile coming, Rodney made no attempt to evade it. Even Virginia merely hovered close by, as if waiting for the missile to strike and hope that it inflicted some damage to them. The missile struck Rodney Aran and detonated in a massive explosion of fire. Samus jumped into her Screw Attack so as to protect herself from the detonation. The entire cavern was filled by the blast and the walls and floor gave way beneath her, along with the ceiling being blown out and the cavern being exposed to the air outside. Light now shined down on the combatants as the explosion dissipated and the Techno Lords appeared from the epicenter of the blast, their armor smoking but otherwise, seemed to be unharmed.
Samus soon landed on what was left of the floor, a small ledge around what used to be the walls of the cavern, with the right wall being exposed to the air, and the left wall opening into another chamber. Checking her data, she found that the Power Missile had taken their shields down to less than one-tenth their original strength, but their life bar was unchanged. Remembering her battle with the Techno Squire, she figured that her parents would be able to survive a direct hit from a Power Missile if she could get them close together without killing them, but she hoped that she would not have to put that theory to the test. She intended to exhaust all other options before resorting to using what amounted to a tactical nuclear weapon against an unshielded opponent.
Her parents quickly recovered from the attack and took the offensive once more. Powering her energy projectors, Virginia unleashed an endless barrage of relatively "low power" scarlet pulsing energy blasts, each one strong enough to blast a hole into the floor below. Samus entered her Screw Attack mode and spin jumped through the air as her mother relentlessly pounded her with an endless barrage of energy blasts. Those that were not deflected by her Screw Attack shields blew holes into the floor that were several meters in diameter. The next floor below her was beginning to crumble due to the weight of the energy fire. She knew that if any of those blasts managed to hit her with merely her normal shields in play, that she would be killed very quickly. She then ascended towards her mother in the hopes of colliding with her so as to drain more energy from her shields, and finally collapse them. Her father had other plans, though, as he tossed more seeker daggers her way. The daggers bounced off of her Screw Attack shield, but that did not deter him. He then charged her, producing a shield from a device on his arm and he rammed her, sending her flying. The strike did not inflict damage, but the shock did knock her out of her Screw Attack, which left her vulnerable to her mother's energy attack barrage. The ensuing volley of low powered energy pulses scored direct hits on her and sent her flying. Each hit staggered her and sent her sailing through the air, and crashing to the ground, where she rolled to a stop. By the time she recovered and spin jumped into another Screw Attack, she had lost two more Energy Tanks.
The barrage of energy attacks came to an end when she Screw Attacked once more. This prompted her father to take charge of the fight, with Virginia hanging back to cover him. He then charged towards Samus, his staff in hand, and brought one of the blade ends of his staff down on her. However, she was ready for the attack this time, and let the attack strike her, knocking her down a bit, but not stunning her and knocking her out of her somersault. She then rocketed back towards her father and barreled into him, inflicting more damage to his shields. As she did so, though, he powered his chest energy projectors and opened fire on her. Much like with her mother's attack, her Screw Attack was unable to deflect the entire attack, but it was able to deflect and block most of the attack. By the time the energy assault ceased, she had lost one whole Energy Tank in the attack. Despite having fourteen Energy Tanks remaining, she knew that she could not afford to take many more hits like that. After all, she also had Ridley to deal with, who had no interest in getting between the two sides at the moment, for fear of having a stray blast inflict damage to him. After she recovered from the attack, a quick glance told her that her father only had a sliver of shields left on his suit. Another Screw Attack strike might be enough to collapse them. However, she would have to get past her mother, first.
Virginia came to her husband's aid and drew her sword, pointing it down at Samus, along with deploying her energy cannons, targeting her daughter. A vicious stream of energy was released from the sword and energy cannons. Samus methodically jumped into another Screw Attack in order to avoid taking damage, as was the routine this entire fight. The energy blasts glanced off of her Screw Attack shields and she proceeded to propel herself towards her mother. Virginia merely rose a little higher into the air, and allowed her daughter to sail underneath of her, her sword beginning to glow red. As Samus sailed beneath her mother, Virginia thrust her sword downward towards her daughter. The sword struck the Screw Attack shield, but it did not inflict any damage to Samus. She strained against the defenses of her daughter as she tried to breach the shield, but was unable to do so.
Seeing this as her only chance to collapse her mother's remaining shields, Samus allowed herself to take the hit by curling into her Morph Ball mode for an instant in order to drop a Power Bomb. As the bomb was dropped, the sword was thrust into her Morph Ball form and she was shot downwards to the ground, breaking through the floor and into the chamber below. She uncurled herself and flipped, landing gracefully on her feet, losing only half an Energy Tank to the attack. The Power Bomb detonated as soon as she was propelled downward by the sword strike, allowing her to escape the blast. The blast engulfed her mother in its vaporization field, forcing Rodney to retreat from the blast. Checking her mother's shield bar, the bounty hunter saw that her armored suit's shields had been depleted by the blast, and the energy siphoning system had sustained damage as well. Meanwhile, Rodney soon descended to the level that Samus was on and rocketed towards her, plowing through stalagmites on his way to reach her. He drew out his staff and thrust it towards her, its edge glowing a deep red.
Before she could initiate her Screw Attack, she took the full brunt of the attack, taking out the remainder of her current Energy Tank, and sending her flying backwards. He continued to charge towards her, but this only prompted her to grin. She flipped and landed on her feet, skidding backwards as he rushed forward using his dash jet system. She sidestepped her father's attack and flicked her wrist towards him. The purple beam that emerged from her Grapple Beam system connected to her father and the beam turned blue as she started to drain his shields of their remaining energy. His shield bar decreased and soon was completely drained, but she did not stop there. She continued to siphon energy away from his shields and use them to replenish her own. As she did so, her father merely drew his staff, but did not power it at all, which surprised her. She continued to drain him of his energy as he thrust his staff towards her, forcing her to dodge his repeated attacks, but he still did not use his energy projectors, shoot an energy bolt or volley of bolts from the staff, or even create a power field around the blade. It was as if the weapons systems were completely offline while she drained his suit of its energy. She could see his life bar flashing, but it was not decreasing, which meant that there was no system damage being inflicted and that all she was doing was draining energy from whatever powered his armored suit. Still, she decided to milk this energy drain for all it was worth, for she wanted to have as much energy as possible for when she went to fight Ridley.
She was forced to disconnect her Grapple Voltage beam from her father when a beam sword slashed the energy beam that was siphoning power from her father's suit. Standing before her was her mother. As soon as the beam's connection was cut, her father rocketed into the air, his life bar no longer flashing, but also showing no signs of having taken any damage. Checking her suit's readings, she currently had restored three Energy Tanks, bringing her total up to sixteen. She had hoped to be able to draw away more energy from her father's suit of armor than that, but it would have to do. And it was better than nothing. Checking on her other systems, she found that she had all two hundred and fifty of her missiles remaining, along with nine Power Missiles, and six Power Bombs. With her mother's energy siphoning system having been damaged, and both her parents having lost their shields, she was hopeful that an attack with her Wavebuster when her parents went to attack her. If that was not successful, then she would have to risk everything with her Power Bombs and/or Power Missile.
She charged her Wave Beam, continuously moving so as to prevent her parents from getting an accurate bead on her since they were refraining from using their energy projectors, likely believing that they would be vulnerable to attack at the instant they prepared to unleash their attack. She also considered the possibility that they might have been going easy on her, the original personalities of her parents still putting up some resistance against the new personalities that had been installed into her parents' bodies. Still, she knew that she had to do something fast, for if her parents were still resisting, and that was the reason they simply did not constantly use their energy projectors against her, despite the fact that the energy waves launched from them could still inflict damage on her when she was using her Screw Attack. As soon as the blast was charged, she rushed towards her parents, targeting her mother first, since her mother was still on the ground, thus closer, a ranged specialist and she wanted to neutralize her threat before facing down her father, who was stronger in close range combat.
She continued to go evasive until her mother prepared to launch a wave of energy from her chest energy projectors. Seeing this as her opportunity, she closed the distance between her and her mother, her father merely watching to see her strategy, and she focused on the energy projectors at the exclusion of all else. She knew it was risky to do so, but if she was going to exploit the only potential weakness of her mother's armor suit, she would have to do so now, and pray that her parents were not luring her into a trap. The projectors began to glow and electricity arced around several of them, their protective fields about to collapse and allow her mother to release her energy. The moment her mother fired, Samus dodged the expanding cone of energy to the left and lightning erupted from her cannon and arced towards her mother. The stream of lightning hit her directly in the chest, scoring a direct hit on one of her energy projectors, and electricity began to arc across her body. Checking her readouts, though, she found that her mother's life bar was not fluctuating at all and she was not suffering any damage to her suit. After a few seconds, she ceased the stream of lightning and continued to go evasive so as to avoid the remainder of her mother's attack. She soon saw several energized seeker daggers coming her way, forcing her to shoot them out of the sky before they found their mark and inflicted more damage to her suit.
As soon as she had avoided the last volley of attacks, she grimaced. Her only option now was to use either her Power Bombs or her Power Missiles and hope that they were powerful enough to damage her parents' armor, but not so strong that they outright killed them. Remembering her battle with the Techno Squire onboard Orbital Ring Eight, she knew that the Power Missile was strong enough to destroy the armor of a Techno Squire, whose armor was weaker than that of a Techno Knight's. Thinking back to that battle, she felt that it would be safe to use a Power Missile on her parents. She was beginning to hope that it would be powerful enough to inflict enough damage so that other weapons would become viable against their armor.
She went forward with her current plan by targeting her mother, but her father had other plans as he charged forward, an energy shield glowing on his left arm as he held a beam sword in his right hand. As she sidestepped him, she performed a spinning back heel kick, which while inflicting no damage to the Techno Lord, sent him careening towards her mother. While he was still sailing through the air and attempting to reverse his momentum, she locked onto the beam sword with her Grapple Lasso and tugged on it, pulling the energy sword out of his hand, the blade disappearing as it left his grip, and the hilt flying through the air until it clattered on the ground close to Samus just as he collided with his wife. She rushed over and grabbed the hilt, attaching it to her waist as she shifted her target from her mother, to her father, since he was now the closer combatant. Upon targeting her father, she readied her Power Missile, placing her ring finger in the secondary missile launcher slot. As she did so, her arm cannon opened and a ruby-red tipped warhead appeared in her cannon. Zeroing in on her father, she said a silent prayer that this would work, and that it he would emerge from this attack alive, and she fired the missile. The missile erupted from her arm cannon and rocketed towards her father. After firing the missile, she immediately Screw Attacked up to the now collapsed ceiling to wait out the blast. The missile struck her father and detonated.
Much as before, the detonation engulfed her parents and caused tremendous damage to the surrounding area, destroying the floor beneath her parents. Her parents fell through the new hole to the level below. There, they hit the ground, producing depressions in the rock below, sending up jagged rock shards and other debris. Samus checked her HUD and found that about three quarters of each of their life bars had been depleted by the missile. In addition, their armor's integrity had been compromised, indicating that they were now vulnerable to damage via more conventional weaponry. They emerged from the small depressions as Samus jumped down to face them once more. This time, she drew the cylindrical hilt and igniting her beam sword, a scarlet energy blade springing into existence. Her parents slowly rose from the ground, their armor showing numerous sparking cracks and glowing red furrows. Despite the external damage to their armor, though, they were still able to fight at full strength, which they demonstrated as they charged towards Samus, their sword and staff drawn respectively. They arrived at Samus, but the enhanced bounty hunter was too quick for them and she dodged the initial slash from her mother and sidestepped the attempted stab by her father, all the while slashing her parents' armor with her newly acquired beam sword. New furrows appeared in her parents' armor as their armor's integrity decreased even further.
Deactivating the blade and attaching it to her waist, she turned around to face her parents, and charged her Wave Beam. She intended to give her Wavebuster another try. Once the beam was charged, she unleashed a second stream of lightning at the now compromised armored suit of her father. Lightning arced across his armor and the indicators on her HUD told her that she was inflicting significant system damage to her father's armored suit. The energy projectors on his chest burst in a bright flash of scarlet light, and Samus's HUD indicated that the systems and armor integrity were now down to critical levels. She cut off the lightning, having fired on him for only three seconds. Once the lightning from the Wavebuster stopped, her father was violently hurled backwards towards the initial hole that had been produced by Virginia's initial energy blast. He struck the ground and skidded to the hole, falling over the edge and to the first level of the Space Pirate Mount Coronet base. There, he struck the ground, his armor sparking, with pieces of it beginning to fall off. Samus's sensors indicated that the suit was no longer functioning, but that her father was still alive, and seemingly unharmed.
She then faced her mother and locked onto her as her mother prepared to unleash another wave of energy towards her. Before she had the opportunity to launcher her attack, Samus charged her Wave Beam once more and unleashed another Wavebuster lightning stream towards her. The stream of lightning arced from her cannon to the damaged Techno Lord and scored a direct hit on the energy projectors before they could build up the necessary energy to fire on Samus. Electricity arced across Virginia's suit of armor and Samus read that her mother's systems were shorting out. Much like her husband, the chest energy projectors of Virginia Aran erupted in a bright flash of scarlet light and some of the energy that was arcing across her armor was now scarlet. Samus cut the stream of lightning from her Wavebuster and her mother was violently thrown back towards the hole. She did not even hit the ground before falling through the hole, and down to the first level of the mountain base, eventually crashing into the ground right next to her husband.
Samus followed her down to the first floor, falling through the holes and eventually landing next to her parents, who were still clad in their Techno Lord armor, but instead of looking formidable and shiny, it was chipped, and burned in numerous sections. Electricity still sparked from numerous breaches, and the helmets of both of her parents appeared to have been dented, though her scans indicated that neither of her parents had suffered any head injuries. As she went over to them they struggled to stand, but seemed to be unable to do so. Their armor soon transformed into pulsing fields of scarlet energy and promptly vanished from their bodies, revealing their still immaculate K-2L uniforms. One thing that Samus was quick to notice, though, was the fact that their weapons, particularly their sword and staff, did not disappear with the armor. As she approached, she noticed two mechanical worms crawl out from underneath them. Switching to her Plasma Beam, she destroyed the spiders with single shots from her arm cannon. It was finally over. She had defeated her parents without having to kill them.
She soon went over to check on them to make sure that they were okay. While her sensors indicated that they were unhurt, she did not want to take any chances with their safety. As she approached, however, she noticed Ridley's name appear on her HUD once more, his name appearing in bold, along with his health bar. This prompted Samus to turn and face him as he unleashed a stream of plasma towards her parents. Unwilling to let her nemesis spoil her victory she stood between herself and the dragon as he unleashed his plasma assault. The stream of fire struck her suit and scored a direct hit on her chest. Her suit's shields were buffeted by the plasma stream and wisps of fire were deflected to her sides, and around her parents. She held out her arms in order to make sure that her shields absorbed the entire strike and that the flames that were deflected did not strike her parents. She was very willing to sacrifice an Energy Tank to ensure the safety of her parents. As Ridley was finishing his attack, she switched to her Wave Beam so she could take down the shields of his armor with her Wavebuster and allow herself an opening to disable his plasma. However, just as she was going to unleash her assault on Ridley, she felt a thump to the back of her head. She noticed that another Energy Tank had vanished just after Ridley had ceased his attack. She turned and found her parents standing before her with blank expressions on their faces. They had their sword and staff in hand respectively with each pointed at her. A look of shock crossed her face as she gasped, "Mother, Father, what are you doing?"
"Following their programming," Ridley explained from behind, laughing at his nemesis. "You may have destroyed their armored suits and the robot spiders that were directly controlling their actions, but you did not neutralize the brainwashing and other programming that was done to them before we resorted to the use of spiders." He neared her as she turned and saw them level their weapons at her again. The movement of their body was slow and jerky, though, as if there was a part of each of her parents that was still fighting to regain control of their bodies. Still, they were unable to keep their bodies from drawing an accurate bead on Samus. She did not want to move out of the way to avoid their next strike, for that would open them to an attack by Ridley. And she knew deep down, Ridley wanted nothing more than to kill her parents again and force her to watch as they died. She had to do something quickly.
To that end, she charged her Wave Beam once more and unleashed a stream of lightning from her Wavebuster, knowing full well that she would sustain another attack from their weapons from behind. Another thump hit her in the back and she witnessed another Energy Tank vanish. Still, she had accomplished her short-term objective. With Ridley now taking damage from her Wavebuster, he would be forced to focus on fighting her, rather than murdering her parents, and she could use this opportunity to draw him away from them. She dashed to her right, being careful to maintain the connection between her Wavebuster and the Space Dragon as both of her parents fired another shot, each, from their sword and staff. The two energy attacks struck Ridley squarely in the chest and greatly assisted Samus in depleting the shields of Ridley's suit of armor. Within a couple of seconds, Ridley's shields were breached and Samus was inflicting direct damage to the beast and his suit of armor, her parents now standing motionless, as if they were organic statues.
With his shields gone, Samus switched to her Ice Beam and charged it, a large, blue ball of ice forming at the end of her arm cannon. Remembering his battle with Samus on Z-1A, Ridley took to the sky and prepared to unleash a glob of plasma on her. Plasma leaked from the corners of his mouth as he prepared to launch his attack. Samus, her Ice Beam fully charged and ready to attack, unleashed an Ice Spreader shot towards Ridley just as he had fully charged his plasma attack and released it on her. The two blasts of elemental energy collided with one another and they were stopped in midair. The plasma ball that Ridley had spit towards Samus was dissipating, but it was also managing to shrink the wave of ice that was headed Ridley's way. Eventually, though, the ice wave overpowered the plasma blast and continued towards him, albeit at significantly reduced strength. That did not stop Samus, though, from charging her Ice Beam again. As her weakened Ice Spreader blast hit the massive Space Dragon, he recoiled from the blast and was knocked back a few steps, roaring in anger as he suddenly felt a freezing sensation come over his body, despite the armor. Samus charged towards him as he was roaring and unleashed her Charged Ice Shot directly into his mouth.
"Watch out, Lord Ridley!" she heard the voice of her mother cry as her Ice Shot was about to strike his mouth. He turned towards the sound of the warning, but only managed to turn directly into Samus's Charged Ice Shot, the icy ball of freezing energy entering his mouth, which promptly closed in a vain attempt to prevent the ball from entering his mouth and potentially neutralizing his internal plasma engine. The ball of ice exploded in Ridley's mouth and a bluish aura appeared to surround his head. Samus did not let up on him, though. She charged another Ice Beam blast and fired at the dragon, this time, striking him in the chest. The dragon was knocked back and roared as the ice expanded to encompass his chest and part of his legs for a moment, rendering him immobile. Checking her HUD, she saw that she had inflicted noticeable damage to her nemesis.
Taking advantage of Ridley's immobility, Samus turned her focus to her parents. As she turned to face them, they were once again leveling their weapons towards her. She ran away from Ridley, so as to draw them away from him for when he thawed, which would be soon, and turned back, taking a few wild shots with her Ice Beam to get their attention and to make sure that they pursued her.
Once she felt that she was a safe distance away, she switched to her Wave Beam and waited for her parents to come to her. She locked onto her father first and then fired a single uncharged pulse. The trio of small, undulating, purple pulses emerged from her cannon and almost instantly struck her father. As they hit, electricity arced across his body and he gave a grunt as he writhed and convulsed as fell to his knees, and then to the ground, stunned. She then turned to focus on her mother, who was pointing her glowing sword at her. The sword unleashed a blast of energy, which Samus sidestepped, and allowed to pass her and strike the far wall of the cavern, blowing out a large portion of said wall. Her mother was slow to charge a second blast, which gave Samus ample time to lock onto her and fire a single shot of her uncharged Wave Beam. The beam hit her in the chest and electricity arced across her body, just as it had with her husband. She was silent as she writhed and convulsed before collapsing to the ground, stunned by otherwise unharmed.
To make sure that her parents were okay, she activated her Scan Visor and scanned each one individually, the scan for her father coming back, reading:
Morphology – Human male.
Approximate age – 56 Earth years of age.
Identity – Rodney Aran.
Subject shows signs of having numerous cloned organs, in addition to undergoing healing and artificial regeneration therapy. However, the brain, spinal chord, and heart all show no signs of having been cloned or modified in any way. Subject also has signs of having previously undergone brainwashing and reprogramming as well as a transformation that allowed the use of a Techno Armored Suit of the Techno Lord class. All have since been neutralized and/or reversed, and the subject has returned to normal.
Samus beamed as she read that her father was now normal once more. She then scanned her mother, her scan coming up as:
Morphology – Human female.
Approximate age – 56 Earth years of age.
Identity – Virginia Aran.
Subject shows signs of having numerous cloned organs, in addition to undergoing healing and artificial regeneration therapy. However, the brain, spinal chord, and heart all show no signs of having been cloned or modified in any way. Subject has signs of having previously undergone brainwashing as well as a transformation that allowed the use of a Techno Armored Suit of the Techno Lord class. All have since been neutralized and/or reversed, and the subject has returned to normal.
Relief entered Samus's heart as she knew that her parents were now safe, for the moment. While she was loathe to leave them lying on the ground, she knew that she had to deal with Ridley before he recovered and became a threat not only to her, but to her parents as well. She rushed over to the last spot that she had seen Ridley, but when she arrived, she saw that her nemesis was no longer there. Fearing that he might be back with her parents, she looked back over at them, but she did not see them there either, and her sensors indicated that they were still alive and unharmed. She looked above and saw Ridley flying above her, all of the ice that had immobilized him earlier having disappeared. He looked down at her and grinned after glancing over at her fallen parents. Seeing them remain perfectly still, he, at first, believed them to be dead, but he soon doubted that Samus would be able to kill her own parents; not after everything she had been through after finding out that they were still alive. Still, he taunted, "I see that you finally found it in yourself to take out your parents. What was it like, inflicting the final blow to them?"
Samus gave no answer as she ran towards him, charging her Ice Beam. Ridley's eyes went wide with surprise and he grinned, thinking that Samus had, in fact, been forced to kill her parents so as to end their suffering as Space Pirate slaves. Ridley countered her charge with a thrust of his tail, combined with a barrage of fireballs. Samus jumped over his tail thrust and Screw Attacked into the fireballs, dispersing them. Ridley swore as she avoided taking damage from his attacks. She then uncurled herself and took aim at the Space Dragon's mouth, which was still open. She fired her Charged Ice Beam shot at the dragon, hitting him in the mouth. He recoiled in pain and shock, but he was far from finished.
After recovering from the attack, he charged towards Samus, preparing to release a stream of plasma at her, while she switched to her Power Beam so she could charge a Super Missile. Ridley arrived close to her and bent down. "Now you die, Hunter," he gloated as he opened his mouth to release a plasma blast at her. Instead, a wisp of bluish mist emerged from his mouth. "Aw sh…," he tried to swear, but was unable to finish before Samus force-fed him a Super Missile, grinning. The missile entered his mouth and exploded, inflicting significant damage to the beast. Ridley reared back and roared in agony as the missile inflicted internal damage to the beast. Not one to get complacent, Samus charged another Super Missile and targeted him once more. Again, she fired and a large, green-tipped warhead emerged from her arm cannon. The missile streaked towards Ridley and struck him in the lower jaw and exploded, inflicting even more damage than usual. The explosion forced the dragon to take a few steps backwards and he took to the air once more. It was time for him to get serious.
As Samus switched back to her Ice Beam so as to charge another Ice Spreader blast, Ridley deployed his armor's missile launchers. Two launchers appeared on his shoulders and unleashed two missiles towards Samus. She jumped into a Screw Attack and let the missiles hit her. They struck her shield and exploded, engulfing her in an explosion that was equal in power to that of a normal missile from her arm cannon, but inflicted no damage to her at all. She retaliated by launching her Ice Spreader blast as well as firing a Grapple Lasso at him. The Lasso connected to him and restrained him so that he could not evade her Ice Spreader blast.
The wave of ice reached his armor and scored a direct hit on his chest. The ice exploded from the center of the impact and spread around all of Ridley's body, encasing his armor in ice, his own internal plasma engine, which was still recovering from the Ice Beam that Samus had fed him, being the only thing keeping him from being frozen solid. Unfortunately, the heat from the engine could not heat the armor so when he fell to the ground, pieces of the armor broke off. When he crashed, he lost both of his missile launchers, as well as his bomb and Power Bomb dispensers. Eventually, he burst forth of the frozen armor, unleashing an ear-piercing roar in the process, and rocketed into the air. After he got close to the ceiling, he stopped his ascent and shook off the few pieces of remaining armor. Once he was rid of the armor, he commented, "Now that's a bit more like it. Nothing to hold me back!" he exclaimed. The dragon then glared down at Samus and grinned. "And now, Hunter, we end this; once and for all!" he roared confidently.
Samus quickly scanned the area for her parents and found that they were safely on the other side of the cavern. She then grinned, reflecting Ridley's confident smile. He was right. It would end here, once and for all. "Bring it on," she said with quiet confidence as she charged her Power Beam in preparation to launch a Super Missile. As soon as her Power Beam was charged, she locked onto the dragon and unleashed her missile. The missile streaked towards Ridley and hit him in the chest, detonating in a massive explosion. The explosion knocked him backwards several meters, but he quickly recovered to launch a plasma stream towards Samus. Samus jumped into a Screw Attack and let the stream of plasma wash over her, inflicting no damage. While she was still in the air, she charged her beam once more, maintaining her lock onto Ridley. She uncurled herself to fire another Super Missile and watched as the missile sailed into Ridley. The missile exploded, inflicting more damage to the beast, but upon glancing at her HUD, she saw that the Super Missile did not inflict a great deal of damage. Looking at her current missile totals, she saw that she was down to ninety missiles. At a cost of five missiles per Super Missile, she did not know if she had the firepower to take down the Space Dragon before running out of missiles. While her beam weapons were still effective against him when charged, she did not want to resort to weaker weaponry unless she absolutely had to.
She maintained her lock on Ridley as she fell to the ground, charging her Power Beam. As she did so, the massive dragon unleashed a volley of fireballs her way. Twisting and contorting herself, she managed to avoid the first volley, but the dragon quickly followed up with a second volley. This time, a couple of the fireballs managed to hit her, inflicting five units of damage per hit. She felt that she could withstand the fireballs if she could hit him with her Super Missiles. To that end, she fired another Super Missile at Ridley, hitting him in the lower jaw once more, inflicting more damage than her hits to his chest or other areas of his body. Still, glancing at Ridley's life bar, she knew that it would be close. And unless there were crates full of missiles lying around the area, she would be without missiles when clearing the rest of the mountain of Space Pirates. She did not dwell on that, at the moment, and instead, focused on her exchange with Ridley. She powered and fired another Super Missile at Ridley, but this time, he was ready. Whipping his tail at the missile, he swatted it out of the sky, sending it careening into the ground, where it exploded, producing a large crater, but no damage to the beast. He then grinned and unleashed a stream of plasma at Samus.
Catching the bounty hunter off guard, Samus took the full brunt of the attack. She lost almost half an Energy Tank to the assault. She quickly recovered, though, and charged her Power Beam once more. She made certain to close the distance between her and Ridley so that the dragon would not have the time to deflect the missile. She fired when she was a mere ten meters away. The missile erupted from her arm cannon and streaked towards Ridley too fast for him to be able to respond. It scored a direct hit on his chest and knocked him backwards and out of the air. Samus quickly followed up with another Super Missile before he could recover and knocked him further backwards with this missile. Checking his life bar, though, she found that she was not inflicting all that much damage on him, and quickly realized that she would run out of missiles before she managed to take him down.
Realizing that she had to throw caution to the wind if she wanted to beat Ridley, she decided to switch to her Wave Beam and use her Wavebuster on him. However, as she was charging her Wave Beam, Ridley spread his wings and charged towards her. She managed to avoid his initial charge, but his tail whip managed to catch her legs and knock her off her feet, causing her to discharge her Wave Beam blast. However, using her left hand, she managed to push off of the floor and land on her feet. The dragon then thrust his tail into her chest, inflicting more shield damage. He followed it up with a fireball barrage that took out the remaining energy of her current Energy Tank before she activated her Screw Attack and charged him in response. She charged her Wave Beam once more and fired on him, trying to ascertain just how much damage a Charged Wave Beam would be able to inflict. From that, she hoped to get an estimate of how much damage not only her Wavebuster would be able to inflict, but also how much damage her charged Plasma Beam would also inflict if she ran out of missiles during the battle, for she did not want to risk using Power Bombs or Power Missiles with her parents still within the same cavern and without their battle armor. Once her Wave Beam was charged, she fired on Ridley, the trio of purple undulating pulses erupting from her arm cannon and tracking the dragon as he backed off and attempted to evade the shot. His attempt was in vain as the Wave Beam still managed to score a hit on his chest, causing electricity to arc across his body.
After the beam hit Ridley, Samus checked her HUD to see the amount of damage inflicted by the shot, but she was less than impressed with the results. It seems as if Ridley's been working out since we last fought, she noted. From the results she found, she surmised that Ridley had done something to increase his resistance to electric attacks. She scanned him with her Scan Visor; her scan coming back, Subject has used gene therapy to implant DNA from Dragon-type Pokémon of Earth into his body and incorporating it into his genetic structure, making him highly resistance to fire-based and electrical attacks. This caused her to become concerned, since Ridley was now resistant two of her stronger beam weapons and Charge Combos, meaning that the only one he did not have a resistance to was the Ice Beam and the Ice Spreader. The problem was that the neither the Ice Beam, nor the Ice Spreader were all that fast for beam attacks, and if he was fast enough, he could evade the attack, causing her to waste her missiles. She mentally calculated the likely amount of damage that would be inflicted by her Ice Spreader and Ice Beam attacks and found that she would likely have just enough missiles to defeat him, or if she did fall short, that her Ice Beam would allow her to finish him off.
She then switched to her Ice Beam and focused on Ridley once more, not wanting this fight to drag on for much longer. She charged her Ice Beam and locked onto Ridley. She then closed the distance between her and Ridley so that when she fired her Ice Spreader, she would be more likely to score a hit. She approached him and when she was close enough, she fired her Ice Spreader at him. Ridley tried to evade the attack, but the expanding wave of ice managed to catch him and score a direct hit on him. The ice blast detonated against his skin and spread from the center of his chest. He quickly closed his mouth so as to avoid having the ice spread down his throat and freeze his plasma engine. His engine could heat his body so as to defrost him if the ice encased him fully. Eventually, the spread of ice stopped, but his entire torso was frozen, along with his legs, and part of his wings. He was grounded, and his internal plasma engine was having a hard time defrosting him.
When Samus checked her HUD and saw the damage that her Ice Spreader inflicted, she was shocked, for Ridley appeared to take twice the damage he should have taken from just such an attack. She quickly took advantage of this and powered another Ice Spreader blast. She targeted the immobile dragon and fired once more. Ridley was not caught unawares, though, and powered as strong a stream of plasma as he could in order to try to weaken the blast before it hit him and inflicted more damage. He unleashed a cone of flame just as she launched her wave of ice towards him. As with the first clash, the two attacks clashed against each other in midair, with Samus's Ice Spreader pushing against Ridley's plasma stream. Eventually, Ridley's plasma engine was beginning to show signs of strain and his plasma stream was weakening. Samus's expanding wave of ice continued to surge towards Ridley and it eventually made contact. The greatly weakened wave of freezing energy struck Ridley and refroze various parts of him that were beginning to thaw. However, his head was still unfrozen, and his plasma engine was now working to defrost the rest of his body. This time, the Ice Spreader did not inflict all that much damage on Ridley. The bounty hunter felt that it was time to go back to her Super Missiles, since they were not easy to shoot down for an immobile Ridley and she wanted to inflict as much damage on him as possible before he defrosted.
She began her assault by getting out of Ridley's line of fire and targeting his lower jaw. Since he was immobile, he was unable to avoid her attacks until he was fully defrosted. She then charged a Super Missile and fired it on Ridley's lower jaw, inflicting a great deal of damage to the beast. Despite the power of the explosion, though, the frozen area of the dragon did not shatter. She then powered and fired another Super Missile at him; this one also scoring a direct hit on the beast. Again, no part of him was shattered. Only a chunk of ice was blown off his chest, along with some of his flesh, a dark green burn appearing on his body. She then fired again, and again, and again, targeting the burned area of his body. She fired until she only had ten missiles remaining, enough to fire two more Super Missiles. Checking her HUD, though, it seemed as if the more she fired her missiles at Ridley, the less damage he sustained with each missile, for Ridley had at least a third of his health remaining. After the last missile exploded, the ice surrounding most of Ridley's body had been thawed and he spread his wings, breaking the rest of the ice and shaking it off. He then roared at the top of his lungs, zeroed in on Samus and brought forth a massive glob of plasma in his mouth. Seeing that he was powering another plasma attack, she knew that she had to do something quickly, but did not have the time to do so as he let loose the massive glob of plasma.
Samus dashed to the right and allowed the glob of plasma to splash against the floor and spread out, creating a small lake of fire. The lake melted the stones in the floor and smoke and steam rose from the ground. Ridley then curled his wings to himself and his normally purple skin pigmentation changed to black as he hardened his skin to become more resistant to damage. Samus knew that two Super Missiles would not nearly be enough to take him out in this state. She wondered what she could do, for she knew that all he would have to do is enter his hardened state again in order to become immune to her weaponry after she used up her last Super Missile. It was then that she remembered the Light Beam, and its Charge Combo, the Light Missile.
Seeing that she had nothing left to lose, she switched to her Light Beam, the lights on her arm cannon now glowing a bright yellow, as she charged her beam. Knowing that she would only get one shot at this, she locked onto the dragon as he prepared another blast of plasma. He unleashed the blast of plasma as she fired her Light Missile. The glowing missile erupted from her arm cannon and rocketed towards Ridley at blinding speed. Ridley jetted into the air to dodge the missile, but it performed a ninety-degree turn and zoomed after him. His eyes went wide with shock as the missile followed his every movement. The missile caught up to the dragon and detonated upon striking him at the base of his tail. His eyes went wide and he gave a horrible cry of agony as the missile detonated. The missile's explosion engulfed Ridley in a sphere of golden light and golden glow surrounded him even as the sphere dissipated, revealing that Ridley was now back to his usual purple pigmentation. The dragon fell out of the air and crashed into the ground, creating a small hole in the ground and throwing up rocks with his crash. Samus's eyes went wide as she saw his life bar decrease to the point where he only had a sliver of health left. Stupid, stupid, stupid! she berated herself. You should have done this from the beginning! While even she had expected the Light Missile to inflict this kind of damage to the dragon, thinking back on things, it should not have surprised her, since it was designed to inflict terrible damage to those that were evil, regardless of their strength or the defenses that they put up. She could not dwell on that now, though. Looking over at the fallen Space Dragon, she saw he was still alive, and struggling to rise. He was on his last legs, but she had just used the last of her missiles. It was all up to her beam weaponry now; and if he entered into his hardened state, and it could resist her Light Beam, then she was in trouble. Still, the Light Missile had inflicted obscene damage to the Space Dragon, and she had a feeling that the Light Beam would be able to deal damage to him as well, even if he entered his hardened state.
This was put to the test as Ridley entered his hardened state once more, his skin becoming pitch black in color. Seeing that she had no other options, she charged her Light Beam and zeroed in on the Space Dragon. She fired her beam and a shotgun-like spray of golden pulses of light erupted from her cannon. The pulses scored direct hits on Ridley and forced him backwards a few feet, a sheen of light surrounding his body, but, checking his life bar, saw that they were not enough to inflict damage. She did notice the areas on his body where the Light Beam struck revert to his normal pigmentation. She took a chance and fired a series of uncharged blasts from her Light Beam at the exposed part of his flesh. The golden pulse of light struck the dragon and light flickered around the beast, but he did not sustain any damage. It seemed as if even with the Light Beam, only a Charged Shot would be powerful enough to inflict damage, regardless of if he was in his defensive state or not. Still, she was not out of options.
She unleashed her Charged Light Beam blast upon him once more, only this time, just as she fired her beam, she also flicked her left wrist and slung her Grapple Voltage beam at him. The purple beam erupted from her Grapple Beam attachment and connected with Ridley on his chest, on one of the patches of his flesh that had reverted to its gray color. Samus then proceeded to try and drain energy from Ridley, turning the beam blue. She noticed that her Energy Tanks were beginning to fill once more, but that Ridley's life bar was not continuing to decrease. In addition, he was not showing any signs of being in any pain, just the opposite. The dragon grinned and began to laugh, taunting, "You think that using your Grapple Voltage to drain energy from me is gonna be effective against me? All you're doing is draining the energy from my internal plasma engine. Your Grapple Voltage won't be able to drain my life energy. I don't go down that easily!"
Samus grimaced, but she still had one thing left to try. If draining Ridley of energy was not effective, then perhaps sending some energy to him would be. She tested this theory by sending out a charge from her Grapple Voltage, turning the beam red, and beginning to send an electrical charge along the beam, one that inflicted damage despite his defenses and resistance to electricity. The Space Dragon writhed in agony as he began to convulse under the assault. "Damn," he swore. "How is she doing this?"
Samus gave no answer as she continued to force Ridley to endure the new electrical assault. Her plan was not without risk, though, and she kept a constant eye on her Energy Tanks, making sure that they did not get too low. She also knew that while her plan was successful in being able to inflict damage to Ridley, that he was still more resistant to electrical attacks than he had been in the past, so there was no guarantee that she would inflict fatal damage to him before her own Energy Tanks were drained to a critical level.
Ridley, however, would not go down without a fight. As he was writhing, he brought forth a glob of plasma into his mouth and unleashed it towards Samus. His hope was that she would either have to disengage the Grapple Voltage Beam in order to avoid the attack, or take it head on and suffer the consequences since he suspected that her attack was also draining her own Energy Tanks in the process. He merely hoped that he could score a hit or two on her and force her to cease her attack before she managed to take him out. He launched his plasma blob towards Samus, who jumped to the side in order to avoid a direct hit. The blob hit the floor of the cavern and exploded in a wave of fire. The explosion managed to hit Samus, draining thirty units of energy from her Energy Tanks, but inflicted no further damage.
Seeing that she could not afford to take many more hits like that, she switched to her Ice Beam and hoped that it would be sufficient to freeze his internal plasma engine for the duration of the fight if she could get an Ice Shot into his mouth. As she charged her beam, though, she was caught off guard as he quickly spread his wings and rocketed towards her. Seeing that she could use this to her advantage, she let hit her head on. The strike took off twenty units of energy, and sent her flying through the air. Her Grapple Voltage cut out on its own when she was stunned by the attack. She fell to the floor and slid across, and towards what looked to be a chasm. However, it was merely a basin for one of the underground lakes on this level. Still, the ridge above the lake made for a relatively long fall into the water. Ridley then jumped right on top of Samus and pinned her to the ground. Once he had her pinned, his face split into a grin. "What are ya gonna do now, Samus?" he asked as the rest of his body turned black and hardened itself once more, not realizing that this was part of Samus's plan.
Samus gave a confident smile as she saw Ridley prepare to unleash a plasma attack on her. Before doing so, though, he thrust his tail towards her head. As he did so, though, she charged her Power Beam, not wanting to give away her plan, and shot it before it could strike. The orange energy blast hit the tail and he roared in pain. Despite his increase in defense, his tail was still quite sensitive and, while she did not inflict any serious debilitating damage to the dragon, she did inflict quite a bit of pain on him.
Keeping his tail behind him, so as to avoid taking another hit to his tail, he readied his plasma, which was already beginning to leak from his mouth. Samus steeled herself, for she knew that she would take a hit from this and likely lose half of one of her few remaining Energy Tanks on this plan that was not guaranteed to work. She merely hoped that the Charged Ice Beam would inflict enough internal damage to debilitate Ridley until his skin returned to its normal pigmentation and hardness on its own. As he readied himself to release his plasma, Samus switched to her Ice Beam and began to charge it, keeping her arm cannon on the ground and out of Ridley's field of view while she flicked her Grapple Voltage towards his head. He ducked the line and laughed, "Nice try."
He prepared to release his attack, and Samus her Ice Beam, when suddenly, his eyes went wide with pain. Reflexively, he unleashed his stream of plasma and missed Samus, overshooting her by a couple meters. She looked up at him and found a glowing staff edge protruding from the lower right portion of his abdomen. He went to whip his razor-sharp tail behind him when he felt another sharp pain to close to his rear. He roared in agony as he tried to whip his tail, only to find that it had been cut off. Just then, the tip of an energy-sheathed sword protruded from the upper left portion of Ridley's chest, close to where his heart would have been if he were human. Looking behind the dragon, she saw her parents, expressions of hatred towards the dragon etched on their faces as they twisted in order to inflict more internal damage to him. Ridley tried to turn and fire a blast of plasma when Samus joined in on the attacks and fired her Charged Ice Beam shot into his mouth. The blast of ice entered his mouth and exploded, freezing his internal plasma engine, disabling his ability to use his plasma and fire-based attacks, and restricting him to melee combat. His entire torso turned blue due to the Ice Beam's effects, despite the fact that the attack had damaged his internal organs and muscles.
"That was for those who didn't survive K-2L," Rodney Aran seethed as he partially withdrew the edge of his staff, and then merely pointed it upwards before thrusting it through again, the scarlet glowing edge of the blade emerging from his chest, close to his shoulder.
"And this is for making us try to kill our own daughter," Virginia echoed as she powered her sword, withdrew it from the beast and fired a powerful scarlet energy pulse. The pulse struck Ridley in the back, breaking through his hardened skin, returning the parts that were not already frozen to normal.
Samus then punched him hard in the chest, causing him to exhale forcefully, a few droplets of green blood issuing from his mouth. Just after she punched him, her father let loose an energy blast from the end of his staff while it was still inside Ridley. The pulse of energy emerged from the upper right portion of his chest, vaporizing it, and sending him staggering. Samus then grabbed the dragon by the neck and after standing back up, hurled him over her back and close to the edge of the drop off into the lake below. He hit the ground, headfirst, and skidded along the rocky bank until he stopped a few inches from the edge. He was breathing heavily as he struggled to rise. As he spread out his wings and charged towards his attackers, Samus switched to her Plasma Beam, not caring about his strength against plasma, charged it, activating the Spazer setting as well, and fired a Charged Spazer Plasma Beam at the stricken dragon. The blast spread out from her arm cannon and drilled numerous small holes and furrows into his body and wings, shredding his wings and making them useless for flight. The attack sent him staggering backwards.
Ridley fell to his hands and knees and struggled to remain standing. Battered, wounded, and broken, he gazed up at Samus as she charged her Plasma Beam once more, deactivating her Spazer setting and leveling her cannon at him. She then touched her left hand to her neck and her helmet disappeared, allowing the two hated enemies to look each other in the eyes. Their glares merely going to show just how much the two hated each other. She then pointed her arm cannon at the dragon, her expression unchanging. There was no satisfied smirk or grin on her face, merely a fierce determination to end the fight once and for all. Her parents soon came up to their daughter, pointing their weapons at the wounded dragon, the blades of the weapons glowing, ready to unleash more energy blasts on the Space Dragon.
Ridley chuckled to himself. So this is how it will end, he thought. I'm going to die at the hands of the child I tried to kill so long ago on that accursed K-2L, as well as the parents of said child who had supposedly been killed in that raid, one of them by me in my attempt to kill Samus. He then seethed. This was not how he was supposed to go out. He was supposed to die of old age, if such a thing were possible for his species. And if it was not, then he would proudly live until the end of the universe, and strive to find a way to survive outside of space and time, if he had to, and live forever. To be killed by a human was too ignominious an end for him to accept. He let forth a sigh and still felt an icy coldness emanating from his chest. It was likely that his plasma engine was still cold, if not frozen; and if it were still frozen, then there was the possibility that it could actually have sustained damage. Nevertheless, he tried to exhale a small bit of plasma or flame. All that came up was a cold, blue mist. He gave a sigh.
Looking up at the family that had leveled their weapons on him, he knew that he would die. But he would not go down without taking at least one of them with him. He spread his wings one last time and gave a roar. As he did so, he tried to leap forward towards Virginia, deciding that he would finish what he started all those years ago and finally kill her once and for all. However, before he could make his leap, Samus fired her Charged Plasma blast at him, striking him in chest, blowing a large hole through his body, taking out at least one lung, and possibly a portion of his heart as well. He was sent staggering backwards as Rodney and Virginia unleashed their own attacks on the dragon. The blasts of energy burned through the front of Ridley's chest, and out the back, drilling holes into his body and producing massive green burns along much of what was left of it as well. The force of the blasts sent him reeling backwards, stepping closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. Eventually, his foot could not find land and he fell over the edge. He gave a final roar as he fell, being silenced as he hit his head on a rock outcropping and continuing to fall, unconscious, until he hit the water below. Samus rushed to the edge so she could watch him sink. Upon hitting the water, Ridley floated on the surface for a bit, his body following a current in the water, before beginning to sink, bubbles rising to the surface as he was fully submerged. After a few moments, the bubbles stopped coming, but she saw his shadow move a bit to the right before it vanished. Samus put her helmet on and checked her HUD to see if Ridley was truly dead, and she saw his seemingly drained life bar appear. However, she noticed a single sliver of energy still appear on the bar, but it flickered, indicating that the wound inflicted was fatal and that he would not survive. After a few moments, Ridley's life bar disappeared from her visor. It was finally over.
Once the battle had finally concluded, Samus rushed over to her parents and hugged them fiercely, removing her Power Suit before embracing them, a smile splitting her face. Her parents looked her in the eye, and she in theirs. "You've grown, Samus," her father said. "You've become so strong."
"You've made us so proud," her mother said, beaming. Seeing the two together, it was easy for Rodney to see the resemblance that his wife and daughter shared.
The family continued their embrace for a few more moments before eventually disengaging. When they did so Virginia told Samus, "As much as I want this moment to continue, we cannot stay here forever. It won't be long before the remaining Space Pirates and Mother Brain learn what happened here. They'll begin their evacuation shortly."
"I know," Samus said in a melancholy tone as her Power Suit reappeared over her body.
Before she could say anything else, her father informer her, "Their command center is one level below. There is an elevator at the south end of the cavern. I know that it wasn't damaged in the fighting. There's also a recharge station near the base of the elevator. If you hurry, you should be able to recharge before the Space Pirates deactivate it."
Samus quickly turned around and went to the south. Before heading to the elevator, though, she told her parents, "Stay close to the base's exit, just incase things go wrong."
"We will," both of her parents assured her. When she went to head over to the elevator, they told her, "Good hunting, Samus."
She looked back at them and smiled. With that, she headed over to the elevator, which was camouflaged by the ground, but easy for her to spot with her Scan Visor. Once she arrived at the elevator, she stepped onto the lift and waited for a second until it descended below the surface, and took her into the basement of Mount Coronet.
Meanwhile, in another sector of the basement of the mountain, Space Pirate general, Weavel, made the final preparations for the only remaining warp capable evacuation transport. It had enough room to store all of the fifty-six surviving Space Pirates, plus Ridley and Mother Brain. He waited near the basin of an underwater lake that was fed from a lake a floor above. After he performed the final check on the transport, he exited its cockpit and exited the ship. As he exited the ship, he noticed several Space Pirates looking out into the lake. Going over to them, he asked, "What's going on? Why are you staring out into the center of the lake?" Just as he asked the question, he got his answer as the body of Ridley surfaced, his wings in tatters and his body pierced with several severe wounds, and many smaller burns. His eyes went wide with shock. "Fish him out!" Weavel cried as he went over to try to grab hold of Ridley's body. As he did so, he noticed the faint throbbing of blood through Ridley's veins. As he and two other Space Pirates pulled him out of the water, took out a scanner and scanned Ridley. The scans indicated that Ridley was still alive, but he was fading fast, having suffered a severe head injury, plus the loss of a lung, a kidney, and severe damage to both his liver and his heart. The general directed two Space Pirate Troopers, "Prepare a stasis chamber immediately! He's still alive!"
As they went to prepare the chamber for Ridley, he knelt down to his commander and told him, "Hang in there, Lord Ridley. We've got you." He then did his best to patch up Ridley's wounds as the other Pirates brought out the chamber, a round device with a clear-glass canopy that was barely large enough to hold Ridley, and that was only with his wings and tail folded in. Once it was brought out to Weavel, it was laid flat and opened. He and the others then lifted Ridley into the chamber and, once he was inside, closed it and hoped that he was not too far gone to be saved. With that, they took him onboard the transport and placed his pod inside the cargo bay.