Published June 23, 2009

Chapter 2: Meta-Ridley and Recruits

"Anyone seen Ridley?" Kraid asked.

"Dude, he died, like, weeks ago," the Omega Pirate said from their spot in the Phazon Mines.

"Okai!" Kraid said. "Are we nearly done my part of the mines…? I'm cold in this one."

"Reviving Ridley is kinds our main focus, being in charge and all…" the Omega Pirate explained. He hated babysitting duty with Kraid, it also meant answering questions that were answered last session. "You have to wait."

"Okai!" Kraid said. The Omega Pirate wondered why he said it like that. "I'll just play with my ACTION FIGURES!"

He opened up a box and took out 3 pirates, one Phazon Elite, and a large beetle. "'Hello Mr. Happiness, how are you?' 'I'm sad, my wife cheated on me.' 'I know how to cheer you up, Mexican Hat Dance!'"

"Kraid, those aren't action figures, they're our troops. Aside from the beetle, where'd that come from?" the Omega Pirate added.

"Please save us!" one of the pirates begged.

"POSSESSED DO- I mean action figure!" Kraid began slamming the pirate into the walls. The Omega Pirate began shaking his head. Kraid finally threw the pirate in a trash can.

"KRAID, KIKUKALLACHA," a voice ordered over the intercom.

"AH, Mother Brain's ghost!" Kraid screamed in fear. After the base had exploded, some pirates had salvaged Mother Brains remains, downloading its mind into a hard drive while they created a new body. The mind was in the facilities main computer system, hidden… far away from Kraid.

"Just listen to the disembodied voice and stop killing our troops," the Omega Pirate said. "We lost 45 000 to you since Zebes! Just go away, quit bugging me, I need to eat now."

"Fine, I'll make my own friends! So have you seen Ridley?" This would be a long day.

-Frigate Orpheon-

Meta-Ridley sat in his stasis tube, eyes closed. He was 40 percent machine with metal armour on top for extra protection. At the moment he needed rest.

"HI RIDLEY!"

Ridley jumped, smashing his head off the top of the tube, making it fall to its side. One of his glowing eyes was twitching.

"Kraid, how did you get this number?! I told them not to tell you where I was!"

"They didn't, I began calling random numbers! We aren't welcome at Radioshack anymore…" Kraid sniffed in sadness. Ridley rolled his eyes.

"Kraid, they said that I shouldn't be put under any stress until my body adapts. You may or may not know, but you are the definition of stress," Meta-Ridley explained. "And I need to stand this thing up first…"

"I'LL HELP!"

"Wait, how will you-"

A massive impact with the ship caused Ridley's tube to fly across the room, landing upside-down against a wall before falling over and rolling across the room. The lights flickered.

"Did that help? If it didn't I can throw another one…"

"GAH! KRAID, YOU INSOLENT ASSHOLE, IF YOU EVER TRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr iogsjkodsaflkdasoiogfxjoerhagrERrorCODeforTYEIghtefoafkmlMFOafiowg…" Ridley's neck began twitching as his head caught on fire.

Some pirates ran in. "He's overloading, his rage gauge is through the room!"

"Get a fire extinguisher!"

Down on Tallon IV, Kraid was shaking his cell phone. "That's odd, Ridley got cut off… OH WELL!" He ran to go talk to the Omega Pirate.

It took them two hours to lower Meta-Ridley's rage gauge, but when they did Ridley was still angry. "Get me Kraid."

"But sir, if he caused you to go into hyper-fury mode, then shouldn't-" Ridley bit his head off.

"NOW!" They all ran to find Kraid's number. They finally got it.

"HI, KRAID HERE!" Kraid screamed, overjoyed that he got a call.

"Kraid, buddy, I think it's time that we set some… what's the word… guidelines," Ridley told him. "First off: Stop killing our troops. Sound reasonable?"

"Uh-huh."

"Secondly: Cease your attempts to talk with me, they make me mad, and that makes me catch on fire! Does that sound easy?"

"Yup."

"Lastly: go to a brain surgeon, get it fixed. Do you understand?"

"Checkmate!"

Ridley's neck began twitching. "Kraid, WERE YOU EVEN LISTENING?!"

"Of course, mix the sugar with the baking soda, right?" Kraid asked. Ridley's head caught on fire.

-Later still-

Ridley was once again sleeping, suspended above his old tube so that there was no chance of falling over, when all of a sudden the place began shaking. "What the hell?" Samus ran into the room.

"THIS WHOLE PLACE IS BLOWING UP!" she screamed.

"You have got to be shitting me!" Ridley yelled.

"No!" Samus screamed in reply.

"Stop yelling!" Ridley snapped.

"I'm screaming, not yelling!" Samus screamed.

Ridley broke out of his confining wires. "I'll show you screaming!" He bitch-slapped Samus across the room, where her suit lost all its abilities.

"What an ass," she muttered.

-Tallon IV, in the mines-

"HEY OMEGA PIRATE!"

The Omega Pirate's eye twitched, as he turned toward Kraid. "What?" he hissed.

"Wanna play Scrabble?"

"NO! NO I DO NOT WISH TO PLAY SCRABBLE WITH YOU, NOR DO I WISH TO DO ANYTHING THAT EVEN REMOTELY ASSOCIATES ITSELF WITH YOU! THAT INCLUDES SCRABBLE, MONOPOLY, SUPER SMASH BROS MELEE, BOARD GAMES, CHECKERS, CHESS, MARIO KART, AND JAK X! LEAVE ME ALONE, GO AWAY, AND DO NOT BUG ME AGAIN YOU IDIOT LIZARD! IN FACT, IT WOULD BE THE PERFECT BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO WATCH YOU GET DEVOURED BY THE METROID PRIME! GO, GO AND STAY AWAY FOR AS LONG AS YOUR PITIFUL EXISTENCE ALLOWS!" The Omega Pirate was gasping for air.

Kraid was silent for a moment. "Wanna play Dominos?"

-In orbit-

"Stop chasing me you bitch!" Meta-Ridley roared, shooting a beam of plasma at Samus' ship, which saw the incoming blast.

"Do a barrel roll!" a voice on her radio said. Samus shrugged and did it, avoiding the plasma.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"Who am I?! Who are you?!"

"Samus Aran."

"Sorry, wrong number."

Samus shrugged. "That was weird…" She shot a missile which nailed Ridley in the wing, causing him to go spiraling toward the atmosphere. He narrowly recovered.

"NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Both of them stopped their combat momentarily. "Did you hear that too?" Ridley asked.

"Rather clearly," the bounty hunter replied. For a few minutes they discussed where the noise came from, both speculating. It slowly got off topic, and ended up with them conversing on their view on current politics. They talked about that subject for a few minutes before Samus remembered that she wanted him dead.

"Call me, we'll finish later!" Ridley said, doing the phone hand-motion beside his ear.

"Right…" She continued attacking him. Ridley flew into the atmosphere, using his metal armour to protect himself from the heat of the air's friction. Laughing, he flew around as Samus attempted to follow.

"Like to see you hurt me here!" He flew into a large cloud, making her lose view. This worked until there was a flash of lightning and she heard a loud yelp, followed by a large form plummeting toward the ground.

"Sucka! And now, I have to track him…"

Ridley crashed in the Phendrana Drifts, buried for the most part under snow. "Someone needs to die." A Sheegoth tried to each his tail. "You'll work! DIE!" There was no more Sheegoth.

-Phazon Mines-

Kraid yelled out in victory as he beat the Omega Pirate in Dominos. The aforementioned Pirate was about ready to kill someone when Meta-Ridley trudged in. "Well, Orpheon is wrecked," he said. "I flew around the Drifts for a bit to see if I could find Aran but got shit."

"Out of all the possible souvenirs, why would you get shit?" Kraid asked.

"Ignored. So was any progress made in the operations?"

"We made a new spot for the Metroids, and now have a break room which Kriad isn't allowed to know the location of," the Omega Pirate explained.

"What of Prime?"

"Nothing new, it hasn't tried anything recently."

"That's because those cages are damn hard to break out of!" a new voice interjected. They all froze and turned to see Metroid Prime. "What, something on my face?"

"If we don't move it can't see us!" Kraid whispered, staying completely still.

"That doesn't work you idiot!" Ridley whispered back, kind of freaked out by the colossus.

"Hey, where'd the big one go, he just disappeared!" Metroid Prime exclaimed. They all stood completely still. "Now they're all gone!" It left the room and they all sighed in relief. "Just kidding, I saw ya the whole time!" It attacked, thoroughly kicking their asses.

-2 hours later-

"Now that the incident has been resolved, time to move on to business," Ridley said as he held an ice pack to his left eye, reattaching his shoulder plate. "I'd like you to meet a new recruit, he applied a few weeks ago and I just accepted. He's very experienced at murder, deceit and aerobics. Meet Thardus!"

Thardus rolled into the room and uncurled. "Kerblackulolul!" it screamed.

"Great, another gibberish speaking wacko," the Omega Pirate muttered. Thardus coughed and threw up a guitar.

"Sorry 'bout that, I was choking. Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Thardus Van Dullio IV, daughter of Thardus Van Dullio III, expert at kicking asses," Thardus introduced, bowing.

"Nice to have you j- Daughter?" Ridley suddenly realized.

"Yes, when my species is born you cannot differentiate between males and females, thus I was given my father's name out of sheer randomness," Thardus explained. "They were too stupid to give me a unisex name."

"Because we know that the name 'Thardus' distinctly proves you're a male." Thardus smacked the Omega Pirate over the head.