Night shifts are quite good writing periods, no? Also, I have no excuses.

Published December 15, 2011

The Invasion of Pirateland

"RIDLEH!" Kraid bounded into the bar, thoroughly destroying the foundations of the room due to his immense size. Knowing that his drinking day had ended, Ridley glared at the goliath.

"Yes? Did you get your tail caught in a door? Do you want me to kiss it better?"

Kraid shoved a finger in his ear, wiggling it around with a goofy grin. "That would be awesome, but we've got about two hundred billion federation ships landing in my driveway right now. Do we give out parking tickets?"

"We have WHAT?"

"Ya, it's a big invasion out there right now. I ate a star ship!"

"That's fantastic." Ridley stood up, shaking his head. "Oh boy, I'm going to have a marvellous time fighting drunk. I'm going to go 'assist the aerial forces' AKA make Dark Samus sweat."

"I'll come too!"

He paused in what remained of the doorway. "Kraid, I have a very important job for you. I want you to go a different way from me and kill everything you see that isn't a pirate. Can you do this? That's a stupid question and I don't expect an answer. So don't answer me." He flew out the new hole in the roof.

While Ridley killed time outside, Samus was having a very different encounter inside. The teleporting pirate commander was moving from fun to shoot at into annoying motherfucker territory. She blasted a hole in another pirate mook's face, eyes always searching for the red-crowned leader.

Swatllum teleported onto a higher level, waving his arm through the air. "Attack my minions! Mwahahaha!"

"YOU!" Samus sent a flurry of beams his way only to have the recently promoted Commander phase away again. She ground her teeth with enough force to shatter a lesser human's jaw.

Her foe appeared behind her, tapping the huntress on the shoulder. "Excuse me, did you leave your dignity behind?" He disappeared in time to avoid her left hook, popping up behind cover just as more reinforcements arrived. "Tee hee hee!"

"Bastard manchild, you have no idea what kinds of things I will do with your corpse!" Samus roared. She shot through the heads of all back up pirates, resuming her hunt.

"Do tell."

-Outside-

To Ridley, this had been the best day in a long time. First, Dark Samus was in an unrivalled panic, running from place to place to shout orders with an uncharacteristic frantic air around it. Next, he found what looked like Samus splattered like a meatball at the base of a tower. Though it was later identified as Gandrayda, this was almost as welcomed. Now he had run into Draygon, the floating crayfish also panicked.

At the top of the tower of happiness: he was quite drunk.

"Hello Draygon," Ridley greeted, tipping his head to his mortal enemy.

"What's good about it?" Draygon snapped, brushing by him and continuing down the hall.

Ridley grinned. "I wouldn't go that way if I were you."

Draygon stopped, glaring back. "And why's that?"

"The hall gets a bit thin that way, and since you've been putting on some weight recently I thought you'd appreciate my concern. Clearly I was wrong."

"Ridley!"

Dark Samus entered from the space dragon's peripherals, floating inches above the ground silently as per usual. He smiled its way. "Ah, it's the glorious leader. To what do I-"

The next second he was sent tumbling into a wall by a blast of Phazon. It took him a moment to regain his bearings, and by that time the humanoid abomination was at his side. "I've had enough of your insubordinate attitude. You should have been up there fighting an hour ago, yet you've done nothing but laze around these tunnels. If I were just a bit less benevolent, I might consider this an act of treachery to be dealt with accordingly."

It wrapped its fingers around his neck, pulling Ridley to his feet. "Go to the seed. Samus Aran is currently in one of the access tunnels, but I know you can easily out-speed her. Success is mandatory, High Commander Ridley. Now do as I say."

Dark Samus disappeared in a flash of blue. Draygon had a cocky smirk patched on his mug which Ridley barely resisted surgically removing. After all, he was not a good surgeon. Those claws made tools hard to hold, and if he tried to use his fingers instead it was just messy in the end. That type of thing was best left to someone trained in the field. And the analogy is forgotten.

"My thoughts are starting to sound like the dumbass…"

-Back at the fight-

To Samus Aran's hate, Swatllum was still alive. He was still breathing. He was still annoying. Luck was on his side, making it so that every shot which should have been fatal missed by inches despite the perfect aim. To add to the frustration, his teleportation device was in perfect working order.

"Lucky me! That last shot would have killed me if you hadn't slipped on that pirate's blood. Whoops!"

The only reason he was still alive was because he was the quirky comic side character. If he didn't have the position, he'd be long dead and they both knew it. She had to remove this luck somehow…

Inspiration struck.

"I heard that the pension plans for Commanders with you guys is pretty kickass," Samus shouted.

"Really?" was Swatllum's predictable reply.

"Yeah. How long have you been Commander for?"

"Uh, almost two months I think. Yeah, around there."

"Wow, just two more days you'd be able to quit this as a really rich guy."

"Really? That's awesome! I'm getting out of here as soon as I can. I mean, yeah, we have dental, but I don't get any time to myself anymore. I downloaded six terabytes of Midi-Chlorians porn and I'm barely into two!"

He was silenced when Samus's super missile exploded on the back of his skull, emptying the space where it used to be. She tried to blow the barrel but just fogged her visor. "Such a shame. He was only two days from retirement." Now satisfied, our heroine set off down the tunnel.

The seed was not far from the scene of the battle, taking barely fifteen minutes to reach. With a bit of platforming she was in the central chamber, ready to blow up another monstrosity.

"This is usually the part where something attacks me," she stated, standing in the middle and looking in every direction. "Any minute now…"

"ARAN!"

"There we are!"

Ridley swooped down at her, skidding to a halt deep inside her personal bubble. He snapped, trying to rip her face off, but she curled into ball form and boosted away.

"Don't you ever get tired of losing? This is, what, the fourth time we've fought since this series of adventures began? Repetitive much? I'd like to fight someone else every so often."

"I WILL FUCK YOUR FACE WITH MY HATE-DICK."

She sighed. "Ridley, I think it's time we let this rivalry go. It's getting ridiculous at this point. Your irrational hatred is just leading you into a downward spiral that no amount of flapping will bring you out of."

"Oh, so when I kick you it's reason for a blood vendetta, but when you roast my flesh with missiles, push me down a chasm, leave me to die in an explosion, blow up a bomb in my mouth, and send me down a sixteen kilometre hole in the ground, well that's completely misplaced hatred right there."

"Sounds about right." Samus ducked under a breath attack. He was way too easy like this. It was sad.

Ridley snarled, drawing on the Phazon energy inside of him. He knew that she was brought here to kill Dark Samus, but the pirate had a lot of anger to work off. Besides, if he could beat her then he should logically be able to beat the devil incarnate too, right?

Ridley started the battle with a series of breath attacks, none meeting their mark. She countered, hitting between the eyes with a super missile and using a grapple beam to wretch open his chest armour. "I see you still have a perfectly preserved love bite from our last few fights. I'm touched." Switching into hyper mode, she hit the sensitive area with a stream of Phazon.

"RIDLEH!"

Ridley switched off his radio immediately. He snapped the chest plates shut, condensing Phazite armour around his torso to keep them closed.

"RIDLEH!"

He closed all other forms of communication channels. Samus's visor changed colours and she began to blast through the Phazite with precision nova beam strikes. He entered close combat, attempting to keep her on the defensive.

"RIDLEEEH!"

With all of his hate, Ridley tore the signal receiver out of the plating around his skull and crushed it to bits. At his enemy's confused pause, he explained. "Kraid." No more needed to be said.

"He won't take that sitting down," she warned.

Ridley chuckled dryly, grinning. "He doesn't even know how to sit down. I have you to thank for that."

"That's why I'm here: I'll ruin any chance of happiness for you until one of us dies... well, dies permanently."

"In this day and age? You know how small the chances of that are."

"True. Even then, they'll just clone one of us."

"Wait, they can do that? Then why hasn't either of us cloned an army of super soldiers yet?"

Samus shrugged. "Probably a few kinks left to work out. I'm sure they'll get it right someday."

They stared at each other for a moment. "I should be killing you."

-Meanwhile-

"Keep moving forward!"

"We've got them where we want them!"

"Just a bit more, soldiers!"

From a high above vantage point, Dark Samus watched as its legions were slowly but surely conquered by the federation invaders. The space pirates began to panic, their ranks falling apart so that the humans could gain even more ground.

However, that was all about to change. Despite all their weapons and strategies, there was nothing they could do to stop its secret weapon. It held up a remote control and pressed the only button with one of its twisted fingers. The floor opened, a platform rising to meet its foes.

"HALLO!"

Dark Samus teleported to Kraid's shoulder, leaning against his head as though a shoulder-devil. "My friend-"

"Sorry, but Ridley's got my only friend spot. We can be buddies though too, right?"

"...Yes. Now Kraid, do you see all those puny humans standing down there?"

Kraid gasped at the people staring up at him. "OH MA GOD, NEW ACTION FIGURES! And theys have the Douglas model and the Renaldo model and the Jennifer model and the Charlie Chaplin model and the Henry Frankerstephen model and OH MA GOD A DRAYGON MODEL!" Kraid snatched Draygon out of the air, hugging the alien against the spikes jutting from his chest.

Dark Samus was developing an ounce of respect for Ridley, just for being alive after ten times the exposure to Kraid. It then felt sick at the thought of admiring one of the dragon's traits. This sickness was chalked up to Phazon deprivation. "Release Draygon. He is not a toy."

"They're ACTION DOLLS!" Using more agility than someone of his brain size should ever be allowed, Kraid jumped up and roundhouse kicked Dark Samus through a nearby wall.

-Back at the fight-

Ridley let loose a barrage of missiles at his archenemy. Samus rolled to the side, dodging most of the artillery but taking a shot here and there.

While she was still gathering her wits he charged, boosting forward with his Phazon and ramming her into the side of the chamber. "Got you!" He dug his claws into the floor and pushed, the wall cracking under his weight and hopefully her bones with it. "Not a big fan of having guys throw themselves at you, eh?"

"Ha... ha... hleh-!" The last noise was followed by a series of coughs.

"Aw, I'm hurt. Really though, you can't tell me that you don't get light headed..." He punched her head further into the wall. "...or all warm inside..." Ridley blasted her point-blank with his kinetic breath. "...when I'm around."

"You must think you're some sort of comedic genius."

"I don't like the toot my own horn, but I'll gladly let others toot it for me."

"Someone's full of innuendo today."

"Someone else is about to have her face full of my giant radioactive fist."

"Aw, what happened to the hate-dick?"

"He was killed by his brother Manos: The Hands of Hate. You will be too, and then the two of you can meet each other in the afterlife."

Samus slowly looked upwards. She began to chuckle at something, sending Ridley rage levels to just below their peak. He drew back his fist and smashed it into the wall next to her head, snarling just inches from her visor. "I want you to look at me when I kill you," he hissed, eyes glowing bright yellow. "And I thought you would be able to take out the dark bitch. I guess I was wrong."

"Technically, I can."

"Technically?"

"Hell, you probably could too. It's a wonder that you haven't put those Phazon grenades to some practical use..." She then entered hyper mode.

"What are-" All the damage Ridley laid upon the wall caught up, collapsing half of the ceiling on top of them.

Samus, being in a nigh invulnerable state, blasted her way out of the rubble and calmly exited, cracking her joints back into place. Taking note of how strong Ridley's punches could get and why she should avoid them, the bounty hunter hopped over the rest of the debris and approached the leviathan core. After a quick power up, it was blown all over the room.

"Oy, Rids, you okay under there?"

"Gvvrdefldlell..."

"You need some warm soup and a nice nap. I'll send Kraid an email."

"GVVRGEFLDLELL."

"Your opinion has been noted."

Several minutes after the bounty hunter left, Kraid crawled in through one of the holes in the wall. "RIDLEH!"

"Urgh..." High Commander Ridley slowly sat up, scraping the rest of the ruins off of his mechanical suit. "What do you want?"

"I'ma just letting ya know that the space men came and now they're in charge of the planet. Dark pretty lady ran off with a few million space ships to some magical hole in space and now the space men are planning to follow."

"So they took over, Dark Samus ran off and they're going to follow."

"Nah, I like my way better."

If his lungs weren't on the verge of collapsing, Ridley would have burst into maniacal laughter right there. "This is perfect! They got rid of the wretch, and now they're giving us time to chase off the stragglers!"

Kraid interrupted his thoughts by pulling Ridley into a tight hug, bawling his eyes out. "Phillip's dead Ridley!"

Chykka, meanwhile, was doing circles around the top of the room.

"Of course he is. I feel for you. Now I'm going to pass out for a while. Please do not try to revive me through mouth to mouth resuscitation. If you try, I will hurt you."