This is probably the hardest story to write content for. This one's kind of short but it's better than nothing.

Published March 20, 2010

One of the Ing

"As a member of the Ing Horde, you are expected to swear allegiance to Emperor Roger," a Hunter Ing explained. "So why won't you?"

Ridley sighed at this. "Possessed by weird one eyed spider things or not, I will not bow down to something named Roger!"

"Please?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"You're embarrassing yourself."

"I'll embarrass myself a lot more if it makes you swear allegiance."

Ridley just wanted to see what he would resort to at this point. "Go ahead." Yes, he could be very cruel at times.

The Hunter Ing seemed to grow very happy. "Well I'm glad you asked, because I've been rehearsing this for ages!" He pulled out a cane and put a top hat on his head. "One, two, three, four!"

"Oh when you're part of,
Our great Ing Horde
You'll at last be given life's
Greatest re-ward!
Unlimited joy
Is what you will see.
Part of the hive mind
Is what you will be!
You'll never be alo-o-o-one,
Just say in your best to-o-one:
I swear alle-"

Ridley grabbed the Hunter Ing and pinned him against a wall. "Never. Ever. Sing. NEVER make me relive Kraid's Broadway musical phase. I can make you suffer, and it will hurt. It will hurt a lot."

The Hunter Ing became intangible.

"I hate you already."

-Light Aether-

Samus was not a happy person. She had just had a large group of Ing take most of her suit's abilities, discovered some kind of dark version of her, and dropped her Kit-Kat. Now what would she do during her break?!

On the plus side, mission complete! She had found the missing squads almost immediately afterwards. They were all dead of course, but that had no effect on what she had to do.

Unfortunately, her ship had kind of been struck by lightning and was now broken. So Samus was stuck on the planet for a while. The squad's log had said something about space pirates, perhaps she would pay them a visit…

Back at the pirate base, Crocomire had just returned. "Find Ridley, I have something vital to tell him!" Crocomire ordered.

"Ridley went in to look for you and hasn't come back," a pirate said. "Kind of funny how things work like this, isn't it?"

"Aw dammit!" Crocomire ran back into Dark Aether.

"Shouldn't we have kept him here to deal with Aran?" another pirate asked the first.

"Nah, she'll kill half of us, get bored, then leave."

"You don't sound worried about how we're being slaughtered by the hundreds."

"I'm not."

"I'M BAAAACK!"

"Oh god, it's Kraid."

The giant lizard known as Kraid ran though the room screaming for Ridley. "RIDLEY! I found something really really awesome! It's called a Blogg and it's my second best friend! You're my best friend Ridley. RIDLEY!"

"Shut up, he's not here!" a random pirate yelled, ending Kraid's rampage. "He went into Dark Aether a while ago and hasn't returned yet."

Kraid attempted to go through the portal. He failed, and many died.

About an hour later, everyone that wasn't fighting Dark Samus was gathered in the base's main room. "Alright, both Ridley and Crocomire are MIA," a commando said. "We'll need a temporary leader. Who's the highest ranking officer here?"

Kraid began jumping on the spot. "Ooo, ooo, me me me me!"

"Is there anyone else? Please tell me there's someone else."

"Nope. He's the highest ranking officer in the base at the moment, and he's in charge. Men, prepare your cyanide pills… just in case."

"I'm in charge of the whole base?" Kraid asked in shock. The commando reluctantly nodded. "This is so sudden, I didn't even have a speech ready! Oh wite, yes I did! Ahem… Dearly beloveds, I thank you for the honour of holy matrimony in SPACE! Know that you may rest in peace when I'm here. Long live the People's Republic!"

Meanwhile, Dark Samus was noticing that pirate resistance had thinned out recently. This made it much easier to steal the Phazon.

At that moment, three terrified pirates approached it. Dark Samus stared down the fidgeting aliens. "Um… Ms. Aran," one cautiously began, "we've been asked to call you names until you left. We'd like to ask you to not kill us while we do so."

Dark Samus shot that one.

"We'll just go." Dark Samus shot that one as well.

-Dark Aether-

"We are extremely proud to introduce the Ing of all Ing, the King of Thing: Emperor Roger!" All of the surrounding Ing began to cheer wildly as a shapeless mass began to form in the middle of the room. It quickly became a cylinder with a circular head on top. Many tentacles sprouted out of a yellow 'mouth'.

"Why do all of you crowd around me when he does that? Go do your work!" All the Ing quickly left the room. "Idiots. So I've heard that you are the newest soldier in the Ing Horde."

"Not willingly," Ridley told Emperor Roger. "Your parasite that's in me has been making me walk here this whole time. You can probably tell that I'm not very keen on this meeting."

"Neither am I. Honestly, I don't give a damn about you."

"Love you too."

"NEVER SAY THAT WORD AROUND ME!" Emperor Roger roared, thrashing his tentacles around the room.

Ridley blocked what could have turned into a rather nasty whip wound. "What, love?"

"No, not love. Why would I hate that word? Never say any form of 'too' around me… Which one is it? Is it a number? Why does it mean three things?!" He went off on a rant about how English sucks and that they should be speaking German.

"You must hate 'there' to- as well."

"Why?"

"There's three."

"WHAT? DAMMIT, WHO MADE THIS LANGUAGE?!"

Ridley briefly wondered where he had placed his cyanide tablet.

-Light Aether-

Samus walked through the entrance to the space pirate base with no resistance. "Something isn't right." She cautiously made her way into a large room, ducking behind some machinery. It wasn't needed though, as the room was empty. "Where is everyone?"

"Dead or panicking," a passing janitor said. "Did you change suits?"

"No…"

"Weird, I could've sworn you were black."

"Black… Oh hell, that thing's here?"

After a few dozen pirates had been slaughtered by Dark Samus, Kraid decided to take care of the problem himself. "HAY!" Dark Samus watched with horror as Kraid rampaged over to it. "Stop stealing our blue goo! It's our blue goo, not yours!"

"Who are you?"

"I'm the leadamer of this base," Kraid proudly announced, posing for a moment. "You know pretty lady, your suit looks very weird. It's all dark and organic. Wait a minute… You took my advice!" He grabbed Dark Samus in a hug that was almost fatal. "I gotta tell Ridley! He might try to kill you though. But we can work through that together!"

"Release me."

"Okai!" He dropped Dark Samus on its rear. "Wanna Go Fish? I'm really good." Dark Samus glowed blue and took off, flying away from the lizard. "The cards are on my desk! I'll be waiting here."

Dark Samus happened to encounter Samus in the next room. "You," Samus growled. "Why do you have a suit like mine?"

Dark Samus brought up its arm cannon and fired a shot, but Samus had ducked behind a machine by then. And so their first fight started.

-Dark Aether-

Crocomire pulled himself through the Sky Temple Grounds in his search for Ridley. All he was trying to find was a massive, winged dragon; how hard was it to find one of those? There were lots of one eyed spiders roaming the dark world but their teams had proven that those were the inhabitants – the Ing. They occasionally possessed squad members but none had gone after him yet.

"So did you hear about that big dragon guy?" a Hunter Ing said to a Warrior Ing.

"Yes," the Warrior Ing irritably answered. "Everyone is talking about him, but I don't care that he won't swear allegiance. I'm honestly regretting doing so myself. Emperor Roger's an idiot."

"That's pretty treasonous talk."

"And you won't tell anyone." The Warrior Ing shot a beam through the Hunter Ing, killing it. "I never liked that guy."

Crocomire thought about what he had just heard. So the Ing had Ridley…

-Light Aether-

Samus curled into her Morph Ball and rolled out of the way of Dark Samus' attack. No matter how much she threw at it, the monster just kept on fighting. She used charged shots, missiles, even smashing its face off of one of the many Phazon tanks in the room. All that did was delay its next attack. The orange bounty hunter's main question was why it had a better arm cannon than her.

A very accurate shot of Phazon hit her in the temple, knocking her onto her side. Dark Samus tried to follow up with Phazon powered missile but Samus was already attacking with her own barrage of missiles. Dark Samus hid behind a tank.

"Two missiles," she said to herself. "Just two more." Even hitting it at point blank range didn't work. "Maybe..."

Dark Samus was suddenly beside her, its cannon charged and held up to her back. It fired, the energy exploding on Samus' back and sending her sprawling forward. She had had worse and was able to roll into a standing position, her back just aching. Then she saw her chance.

Samus fired two missiles, one at Dark Samus and another at the base of one of the Phazon tanks. Dark Samus evaded behind the tank letting Samus run up to it and slam her shoulder into the tank. Thanks to the weakened base it tipped easily, crashing down on top of the dark copy. Dark Samus managed to catch the tank, but Samus didn't give up. She pushed even harder and eventually overpowered it, letting the metal tank crash down to the ground.

Samus went to the side and saw Dark Samus' hand sticking out from beneath the bottom. She watched as the hand disintegrated. "And with that out of the way…"

She walked into the next room and found something that no sane person would ever want to see in front of them. "HAI! Did you bring the cards?"

"Kraid… What cards?"

"The ones you flew off to get two minutes ago you silly tube sock. Speaking of tube socks could I borrow some? It's cold here."