Samus' gunship landed in a small clearing just outside of the Forest of Illusion, where the Hunter waited alongside Ridley and the others. A hatch opened up on the underside of the ship and the two who had assisted Samus earlier lowered down to the ground via some form of tractor beam.
"What's going on?" The boy in green asked, visibly confused by what he saw.
"There's been a change of plans." Samus responded. "We're going to be dropping this bounty, at least for the time being."
"Never expected to hear you say that." Said the one wearing a blue Chozodian Power Suit. "What happened?"
"I'm not quite sure myself." Samus shrugged and shook her head. "But it would appear that I'm not the only one who's changed."
"I don't get it." The kid scratched his head in confusion.
"You don't need to." Samus said as she walked up beside him. "Now let's head home. I asked a friend to look after my apartment while I was gone but I don't really trust Douglas to feed my pets."
"Didn't you need the money from this bounty to pay off your rent?" The ship's onboard A.I. asked.
"Ah, I'll figure something out."
"Well, you could always take me up on my offer." The blue-clad warrior suggested.
"For the last time, Armstrong, we ain't, er, we're not moving in together."
"Worth a shot." Armstrong shrugged.
"Anyway," Samus tried to bring the conversation back on topic. "I guess its time to go. I still don't really feel comfortable letting you live but I guess I'll let you save the princess or whatever it was you were doing. As for the rest of you, well, it was nice meeting you, I guess."
"Hey, before you-a leave, could-a we ask you for a favor?" Luigi suddenly asked.
"What?"
"Well, we need to get to Dark Land to rescue the Princess from Bowser but we don't have a boat to get there. Could you give us a ride there on that spaceship of yours?"
Samus considered this request. "I don't see why not. It'll be a bit of a tight fit though, ADAM's not really meant to hold that many-"
The ground suddenly began to tremble violently beneath their feet. The ocean waves beating against the nearby shoreline rose higher and higher, almost reaching as far as the point where everyone was standing.
"Everyone, on the ship!" Samus shouted and jumped into the ship without waiting for ADAM to beam her up. She dashed to the front of the ship and jumped into the pilot's seat, knocking away a small furry brown creature that had been sitting there.
"Oi, watch it!" The alien creature yelled as the others clambered into the ship.
"Sorry, Diesel." Samus grabbed the ship's controls and took off as soon as everyone was aboard. "ADAM, status report!"
"There appears to be a major seismic disturbance in the area, originating from a large underground cavern just a few miles west of our current location." ADAM explained.
"The Valley of Bowser?" Luigi wondered aloud.
"Records indicate that is what the locals call it, yes."
"How bad is it?" Samus asked the computer.
"My sensors indicate a magnitude of somewhere in the range of 8.5 to 9.5, though there is also some heavy electromagnetic interference that may be messing with my readings. Assuming that my readings are accurate, I predict an 78% chance that the disturbance may grow large enough to potentially destroy this entire continent if it does not subside soon."
"How do we stop it?" Yoshi began to panic.
"A better question is what's causing it." Samus muttered. "This can't be natural."
"I believe that may become obvious if you turn us around to face it."
Samus followed ADAM's suggestion and turned the ship around so that they could see the entrance to the Valley of Bowser through the reinforced grobnite windshield. What they saw was the massive stone structure formed in the image of King Bowser rising up out of the water, almost as if it were alive.
"What the frak?" Samus muttered under her breath while Diesel shouted the same question at the top of his minuscule lungs.
"Is that who I think it is?" Luigi asked as he clambered up to the front of the ship for a closer view, which was not an easy task as there was barely any room to move. Ridley could feel at least three people standing on his tail, to say nothing of his wings.
"ADAM, zoom in on that blue thing." Samus ordered, gesturing to the same small blue speck atop the valley entrance's head that Luigi was pointing to.
A large window popped up on the digital overlay embedded into the windshield, displaying a closeup view of a yellow turtle-like creature dressed in blue robes and a pointed hat dancing on top of the titanic Bowser effigy. The red jewel at the end of the golden scepter it carried was glowing brightly.
"Kamek?" Yoshi gasped in surprise from the back of the overly crowded ship.
"He appears to-a be casting some-a kind of spell." Luigi pointed out. "That must-a be what's-a causing this."
"Casting a spell?" Armstrong repeated. "What, you mean like magic?"
"Why not?" Samus asked. "I once fought Phazon-enhanced Chozo ghosts back on Tallon IV. As far as I'm concerned, anything's possible."
"I always thought you made that up." Armstrong sounded dumbfounded.
"I never make stuff up when I talk about my missions." Samus replied. "They already get weird enough without adding on to them."
"Magic is real?" The boy in green's eyes seemed to light up with excitement. "That's so cool."
"Calm down, Joey." Samus let out a small sigh. "ADAM, target that weird wizard lizard thing and fire at it with ship missiles! Blow that alien to smithereens!"
"Roger that."
A targeting reticule appeared on-screen over Kamek before a barrage of high-powered explosives were sent careening down on the exact spot where the magikoopa was casting his spell. When the smoke cleared, there were no signs that Kamek had ever been there.
"That's one problem taken care of." Samus relaxed her shoulders a bit.
"Not exactly." ADAM responded. "My sensors indicate that the lifeform known as 'Kamek' is now flying right beside us."
As if confirming the A.I.'s statement, the blue-clad magikoopa flew around to the front of the ship on his broom.
"Hello, traitors." Kamek screeched as he adjusted his thick-brimmed, opaque glasses. "Prepare to see what happens to those who turn against the great King Bowser!"
With a wave of his wand, Kamek vanished out of thin air, leaving the mismatched group of ragtag heroes and bounty hunters alone on the ship facing the now-immobile rock structure.
"Well, that was different." Armstong commented. "Now what?"
"I guess… we won?" Joey said questioningly.
Just then, blue light poured out from the gaps between the massive boulders that comprised the Valley of Bowser's form and its eyes lit up with deep azure flames. The stone colossus let out an impressively powerful roar, particularly since it lacked any kind of vocal cords, and began to walk slowly towards them. With each lumbering step it took, massive waves were sent crashing in every direction. The normally calm seas of Dinosaur Land suddenly became even the most experienced sailor's worst nightmare.
"This is bad. This is bad. This is very, very bad." Yoshi began to say over and over again as he failed not to have a panic attack.
"That's it, I'm out of here!" Diesel shouted as he tried to wrestle the ship' controls away from Samus using the long, tentacle-like limbs that sprouted out the sides of his small, rodent-like body.
"No! Bad Diesel! My ship!" Samus kicked the cyborg Craftsmen away to get him to let go, sending him crashing into a wall and nearly hitting Armstrong in the process.
"I object to being called 'your ship'." ADAM stated. "I'm my own ship."
"No, you're not." Samus argued. "You were given to me by the federation, therefore you're my ship."
"The same Federation that currently has a bounty listed on your head? One of the largest bounties in history, in fact?" ADAM asked sarcastically. "I was lent to you for a single mission, after which you technically stole me and made all kinds of unauthorized modifications. Not to mention this paint job."
"Hey, ya'll agreed tah come with me!" Samus pointed out angrily, her accent slipping once again. "And what's wrong with ye'r current paint job? Orange is great!"
"I preferred purple. And it's less the color so much as the quality of the paint job that I have an issue with."
"Well excuse me for not being able to do a better job." Diesel said sarcastically. "It's not like I can get good quality paint when I spend most of my time having to scrounge around scrapyards for parts! I may be the universe's greatest mechanic but there's only so much I can do with what I'm given!"
"Hey, can we get back to focusing on the giant dragon golem currently marching towards us!" Ridley snapped angrily, causing everyone to quickly shut up and calm down. "That thing makes Kraid look small and I'm pretty sure that it's about to attack us with something."
"I do sense a build-up of atomic radiation building up inside of it." ADAM commented.
"Wait, what?" Samus was just barely able to swerve the gunship out of the way as the Valley of Bowser fired a massive blast of energy from its mouth directly at them.
"How does it even know where we are?" Armstrong questioned. "It's made of rocks, isn't it? It shouldn't have eyes or anything."
"Why is this not the first time that I've been attacked by a pile of rocks?" Samus yelled as she steered the ship out of the way of another atomic energy ray.
"Oh, right, Thardus." Ridley scratched his chin. "It's a shame we never got that thing under control. Then again, it turned out we couldn't get anything powered by Phazon under control and it turned out our attempts to do so were worse than useless."
"Enough reminiscing!" It was Armstrong's turn to try and get everyone back on task. "Let's just focus on figuring out a way to beat this thing."
"Right, right." Samus turned her attention back to their titanic golem that was continuing to fire massive blasts of radioactive blue fire at them. "Any of y'all have any ideas on how to stop this thing? That ship missile we fired earlier didn't land so much as a dent on that thing even though it was probably the strongest thing in mah arsenal."
"Have-a we tried-a jumping on it?" Luigi asked. "That-a normally seems to-a work in-a these kind of-a situations."
"Don't see how that's supposed to do anything." Samus shook her head in confusion.
"This world is weird." Ridley offered unhelpfully. "Personally, I'd say to attack whatever part of it happens to be glowing. I guess that would be the eyes right now."
"Preliminary scans do not show any structural weaknesses." ADAM revealed. "And even if they did, attempting to destroy this thing could potentially set off a nuclear explosion large enough to kill everything on the surrounding continent. The resulting fallout could potentially devastate the entire planet's environment and cause a nuclear winter that would result in the extinction of all life on the planet."
"Well, that ain't good." Samus swerved the ship around another blast of atomic energy. "And that's getting' really annoying!"
"Even my island?" Yoshi asked in response to ADAM's statement.
"Yes." The computer answered.
"We can't let that happen!" Yoshi cried out to no one in particular.
"And we're not gonna." Samus tried to calm down the big green reptile before he raised a fuss. There was already too little room in the ship without a panicking dinosaur. "We just need to find a way to take this thing out without settin' it off."
"Ooh, I have an idea!" Joey spoke up, raising his hand and waving it about wildly, smacking Diesel in the face. "I once saw this old movie where the characters had to stop a nuclear missile from blowing up their town so they ended up having to redirect it into a nearby lake so that it couldn't go off. Could we try the same thing with this?"
"The chances of something like that working are slim." ADAM ran the numbers. "But it seems to be our best bet at the moment."
"Then I guess that settles it." Samus announced. "Commence Operation: Flood the Valley!"
ADAM's cockpit was filled with silence for a moment as they dodged another blast.
"So, what exactly are we doing, then?" Ridley finally asked.
"I dunno." Samus shrugged. "But ya'll can't deny that order sounded cool."
"True." Armstrong nodded. "So, I guess we just need to try to knock it over so that it ends up fully submerged in the ocean and see if that stops it without setting it off?"
"Sure." Samus gave a thumbs down as a way of showing her approval of this plan. It was a sign that was far from reassuring for those who were not familiar with this particular quirk of hers, which was roughly half the individuals on the ship. "Now how do we do that?"
