World 4-1: Mask of the Phanto
Luigi wandered the endless grasslands of Subcon, unsure of just where he was going. The surrounding landmarks seemed at once both familiar and completely alien to the green-clad plumber who was just about ready to call for help in the hope that the others would be able to hear him and open up a portal or something to come grab him. However, before he finally gave in, he started to recognize the mountains around him as the same ones he'd seen when he and the others had first arrived in Subcon and realized that he did know where he was, relatively speaking. Not that it particularly mattered considering that he didn't know where anything else was relative to that area. Considering the dreamlike qualities of the world he was in, he couldn't even be sure if he was where he thought he was or not.
That didn't matter all that much, though. The more important thing was that he saw two figures walking in the distance and quickened his pace to catch up to them. Hopefully, it would be some of the others but even if they were enemies, at least he could follow them or something to get a better idea of where he was or where he was going.
As Luigi got closer to the distant figures, the question of whether they were friends or enemies proved to be more complicated than he would have thought. It soon became clear that the larger, yellow one was Roshi but the pink and red figure walking beside him was a member of Wart's gang, Birdo, if he remembered correctly. He would have tried ducking behind a log or something so that he could stay out of sight until he could find out what was happening and figure out what to do but it was too late. He could tell from the way that Roshi was waving to him that they'd both already seen him. So, he just had to walk up to them instead, hoping against hope that nothing was wrong.
"Hey, boss!" Roshi called out as they finally reached each other. "I was hoping we'd run into each other here! You probably haven't seen Ridley or Samus yet, have you?"
Luigi shook his head. "Not-a since we got split up. Are… Are you-a alright?"
"I'm fine," Roshi said before letting out a sigh and plopping down on a random fallen log nearby from one of the palm trees that were growing throughout the area. "My feet are tired, though. I don't think I've ever had to walk so much before."
"This was nothing," Birdo said, standing stiffly off to the side.
Luigi glanced awkwardly back and forth between the two a few times before Roshi finally noticed his confusion.
"Oh, right," he said before gesturing towards the pink yoshi-like girl. "I suppose reintroductions are in order. This is Birdo. She said that she's never had a friend before, so I volunteered myself to be her first and she agreed to work with us instead of Wart.
"Birdo, this is Luigi, my boss and my friend," he switched his attention to her. "I'm sure that you two will get along once you get to know each other."
"We'll see," Birdo glanced to the side, unwilling or unable to make eye contact.
"Are you-a sure about this?" Luigi asked him, glancing nervously at Birdo. "She's-a part of the 8-bits, right?"
"I'm sure," Roshi said with a level of confidence that Luigi wasn't used to seeing in the normally timid yoshi.
"Alright, I-a guess I'll-a give you the benefit of the doubt for now," Luigi told Birdo before turning his attention back to Roshi. "What happened to you after we got captured? Do you know what happened to the others?"
They then took a few minutes to catch each other up, Luigi informing the other two of his battle with Mouser while Roshi shared the conversation he'd had with Birdo atop a nearby mountain and the events leading up to her deciding to defect to their side of whatever was going on at this point. Unfortunately, it seemed that neither of them had any idea where their other friends may have been taken. Birdo, however, was much more well-informed than them.
"That girl in the armor was taken off by Tryclyde and Clawgrip into the desert, while Wart took your dragon buddy back to the castle," she told them. "I think he wants to recruit him."
"Well, we shouldn't have to worry about that," Roshi chuckled weakly. "Ridley would never join someone like him."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you," Birdo shook her head. "From the story he shared earlier, it sounds like that pirate has a lot of darkness in his past and Wart has a way of bringing out the worst in people when he wants to. I'd be surprised if the Ridley you know is even still in control of himself at this point. Time is weird here, but Wart could have had anywhere from a few hours to a few days to work his magic on him by this point."
"I-a guess we'll have to consider that possibility but I'm-a with Roshi on this one," Luigi said after giving it a moment of thought. "I-a know Ridley has a history he doesn't like to-a talk about but he's done a lot to-a put that behind him. He wouldn't-a give in easily."
"Fine, suit yourself," Birdo shrugged. "So, what do you want to do now."
"I-a think we should try to find Samus, first," Luigi said. "You-a said that she was in-a the desert, right? Can you show us the way?"
"Yep." Birdo nodded. "It's this way."
Sand blew through the air by the scorching desert winds as a lone figure wandered the wastes obscured by a thick brown cloak that helped keep the sand from getting caught in the joints and circuits of her armor. Even with its heavy shielding, you could never be too careful with that sort of thing.
Samus wasn't sure how long it had been but it felt like days. The memory of that pleasant meal she'd shared with the two (or four) idiots when she'd been captured grew distant as she'd been forced to survive off of little more than snake meat and cactus water since then. Not for the first time, she'd found herself appreciating her survival training from her time in the Federation Police and, later, the army. Not to mention her childhood being raised by the Chozo on a hostile alien world that even with her genetic and cybernetic enhancements was still incredibly hostile to a human, let alone a little girl. Compared to what she'd had to endure in the past, this was nothing.
Checking the three-dimensional map in her helmet's HUD display, which was gradually coming together based on what the various sensors built into her suit picked up of her surrounding area, Samus was sure that she had almost reached the end of this seemingly endless desert that she'd been left to rot in. But she wasn't quite there yet, of course.
However, she soon discovered that she'd been paying too much attention to her map and not enough to her environment when she ended up taking a wrong step and falling into a surprise patch of quicksand that pulled her in far faster than it should have. She was dragged down into an underground cavern that had been carved out and built into an ancient temple of some sort. Likely related to the many strange pyramids that she'd seen scattered around the sandy dunes.
Of course, Samus was no stranger to exploring caves or underground ruins. At times, it felt like she spent her life going from one to another with the rest of her time merely being the brakes in between. So, she didn't even hesitate as she began to explore her new surroundings in search of a way out. Given how these things usually went, part of Samus even suspected that the way out of these ruins would be the way out of the desert as well.
Eventually, Samus found herself climbing a tall tower of brick walls and metal railings that served as platforms for her ascent, which led her to a lone red door at the uppermost level. Expecting to find some sort of trap on the other side, Samus opened the door and stepped through to find herself in a large open room supported on all sides by stone pillars that didn't quite match the architectural style of the rest of the ancient temple and, according to her scans, where made of a different mineral altogether. More concerning, however, were the smiling yellow-brown masks that had been placed around everywhere for decoration. Most of them seemed about the right size for an average humanoid to wear but there was also one massive mask carved into the far wall, its narrow, slanted eyes obscured by shadow. Her sensors didn't pick up anything unusual about them, however, so she began to wander around to see what she could find.
It didn't take Samus long to see a large golden skeleton key sitting on a podium directly in front of the giant mask carving, it's style far too modern to fit in with its surroundings though matching the similarly anachronistic doors that she'd been seeing everywhere. She would have questioned it if she wasn't already aware that she was literally in a dream, or the fact that she'd seen enough ancient civilizations to know that different species on different planets developed their technologies and senses of style completely differently from each other. She'd even once visited a planet where the inhabitants had invented aerosol cans before the wheel.
With nothing else to do, Samus walked over to the key and picked it up. There didn't seem to be a way to integrate it into her suit at all and it was too large to convene carry as-is, so Samus decided to dismiss her chozo armor for a moment. The rough cloak that she'd scavenged from discarded cloth she'd found in her wanderings fell around her bare shoulders now that she was clad in nothing but the fancy blue dress that her captors had given to her earlier. She'd kept the clothes and the two engagement rings, though had moved the rings to her left middle finger since she wasn't actually engaged to the hydra or the crab and had no desires otherwise. With nowhere else to stash the key, she dropped it down the low-cut neckline of her dress before rematerializing her suit. The cloak was pushed back up to the bulky shoulder plates of the purple and pink armor and she turned to leave.
That was when the room began to shake and an alarm went on in her suit. She turned around to see the shadowy eyes of the large mask begin to glow an ominous red and she prepared herself for a fight. The attack didn't come from the giant mask, though. Instead, Samus was struck from behind by a large, fast-moving projectile that nearly knocked her off her feat. It took a moment and a few more close calls before she finally managed to find that the thing attacking her was one of the smaller masks, which was flying through the air seemingly of its own volition and occasionally making a dive at her.
Samus fired a barrage of different elementally charged energy blasts and Super Missiles at the seemingly mundane object but nothing seemed to have any effect on it. Her Scan Visor couldn't even tell what material it was made from and indicated that nothing she had would work on the mask, which was identified as 'Phanto'. She even tried experimenting with some of the more exotic weapons that she'd regained during her adventure on ZDR thanks to the assistance of her 'sister', Bailey, but not even the Screw Attack or Power Bombs could so much as put a scratch on it. The most she could manage was knocking it back so that it bounced harmlessly against a wall or stone pillar.
Out of options, Samus was finally forced to resort to trying what was likely the most powerful weapon in her arsenal, the Sonic Boom. Despite its name, the Sonic Boom was not simply a sonic blast but a matter/anti-matter explosion that could rupture the very fabric of spacetime in a localized area, shattering reality like glass. If anything, it was probably more comparable to a mini-black hole than something traveling at mach speed. And yet even that didn't seem to affect Phanto at all even while the chamber they were in started to crack around them. It seemed that the only thing that Samus could do was run, so she did.
Samus charged through the door she had taken to enter, not even bothering to open it before Speed Boosting her way back into the underground tower and dropping down the shaft as quickly as she could manage. At first, it seemed that Phanto didn't follow her out of the chamber and she thought she was safe. Then the mask popped out of a wall like a ghost and rammed into her again. It seemed that getting away from that thing wasn't going to be as easy as she would have liked.
Luigi and the others finally desert where Birdo claimed that Samus would be, a sprawling sea of sands spotted with the occasional mountain or pyramid in the distance. Looking around, it was clear that finding their bounty hunter friend was going to be much easier said than done.
"So, where-a do you think they might be?" he asked their guide, who simply shrugged.
"I don't know where those idiots like to hang out," she said.
"Well, maybe we can find someone who'll know?" Roshi suggested optimistically before pointing off into the distance. "Hey, what's that?"
Luigi turned to where Roshi was indicating, to see a tall, vase painted white with ornate red stripes rolling down a sand dune nearby. With nothing else to do, he and the two yoshis went over to investigate it. At first, there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary about the stray piece of pottery but when Luigi took a look inside, he was surprised to see that it wasn't empty.
"What is it?" Roshi asked, noticing the strange look on Luigi's face.
"There's a some sort of broken diorama in here, with-a some knocked over furniture and-a broken dishes everywhere," Luigi described before his eyes eventually settled on something familiar and blue folded up in the corner. "Hey, what's a this?"
"I wouldn't do that if I were you-" Birdo's warning came too late as Luigi reached his hand into the pot to grab what he'd seen, only for the plumber to suddenly find himself pulled inside.
The next thing he knew, Luigi was sitting on the cool stone ground, looking around at the doll-sized furniture around him. Except it wasn't doll-sized anymore.
"Are you alright?" Roshi's loud voice echoed from outside and Luigi looked up to see a giant yellow yoshi staring down at him through the entrance hole.
"I'm-a fine!" Luigi called back. "But what-a happened?"
"These pots shrink whatever goes into them," Birdo explained from beside Roshi, just as big from Luigi's perspective. "Don't worry, everything goes back to normal when it comes out."
"I-a see," Luigi replied before turning to look around at his surroundings again.
With a better look, Luigi could see now that he was looking at the remains of what appeared to be some kind of party. A single round table and three chairs were strewn around the place along with various dishes, a violin and a few other miscellaneous items. There wasn't any sign of people there, though. He eventually spotted the thing that had first grabbed his attention and walked over to the blue clothes strewn about on top of the changing screen that had been knocked over in the mess. Picking it up and unfolding the exotic, almost rubber-like fabric, he quickly realized that it was the blue bodysuit that Samus always wore under her armor.
"Samus was-a here!" Luigi called back to the others, turning around to show them what he'd found. "But, um, we-a might have a problem!"
Luigi found himself turning beet red as he realized the implications. If Samus didn't have her clothes, then that implied…
"What about anyone else?" Birdo called out to him, snapping Luigi back to focus.
"They must have left!" He looked around again but still couldn't see any signs of anyone else being in there with him.
"Well, then come out of there so that we can keep looking!"
Luigi nodded before folding up Samus' clothes and stuffing him into the front pocket of his overalls, sure that he'd need them later when they finally found her. He was a bit surprised to discover how much the exotic material could compress, to the point where it didn't even make a noticeable bulge in his pocket. Luigi wondered if that was a side effect of being in a dream, some strange property of the alien cloth it was made from, or some combination of the two.
It didn't take long for Luigi to exit the pot, or vase, or whatever it was and he was glad to see that Birdo was right about him returning to his normal size. He'd barely even noticed the difference while he was in there since everything else around him had been scaled down like he had but it would have been quite the problem if he'd been stuck being the size of a doll for the rest of their adventure.
"Where do you think they could have gone?" Roshi wondered aloud, looking around at the mostly empty desert they were it. "I don't see any tracks or anything."
"And we-a don't know how far this thing rolled to get here," Luigi pointed out. "Samus could-a be anywhere right now and there's-a no telling what they could be doing to her right now!"
A host of unsavory thoughts flashed through Luigi's mind that made him shudder.
"Well there's no point in just standing around here," Birdo pointed out.
"You're right," Luigi agreed, then turned to the nearest landmark, a large pyramid off in the distance. "Let's-a check that place out. We might be able to find something there."
And so the trio hiked through the desert, which was far from a pleasant experience. Despite the nature of Subcon, the sun baring down on them was just as harsh as it would have been back in the real world and Luigi found himself growing parched. But just when he was just starting to wonder if they should turn back and leave the desert for their own safety, they reached the top of a hill to find an oasis on the other side, a small lake surrounded by lush grass and palm trees.
"Is this a mirage?" Roshi questioned, having read about travelers seeing things that weren't there in stories but not having any experience with that kind of thing himself.
"There are no mirages here," Birdo explained. "If you see something, it's real. Or at least as real as it can be in a world of dreams."
"Let's stop here for now," Luigi said. "We need rest and water before we can keep going."
Samus slid to a halt as she reached the end of a long corridor, Phanto still in pursuit. Looking up, she spotted several rays of light filtering in from the ceiling high above and knew that meant she must be close to the surface. Channeling the Speed Boost charge that she'd just built up, Samus activated her Shine Spark ability to send herself flying straight up like a glowing, supersonic cannonball. As she predicted, she smashed through the ceiling with enough force to break through, launching herself high into the sky before finally losing enough momentum that she began to fall back down to the ground.
When she landed, Samus found herself on the edge of a small, tropical oasis in the middle of the desert, where two familiar and one not-so-familiar beings jumped up in surprise at her sudden arrival.
"Samus!" Roshi called out to her. "You're okay!"
"We were-a worried about you!" Luigi stepped forward, sounding relieved.
Samus took in the situation. She'd unexpectedly managed to find two of her three missing companions, but instead of Ridley they were with one of Wart's lackeys, the pink saurian creature, Birdo. However, she didn't have time to figure out what was going on.
"Run!" Samus shouted just as the yellow mask phased through the ground and swooped through the air overhead.
"Oh, great," Birdo said dryly as Samus rolled out of the way of Phanto's dive. "You grabbed a key, didn't you?"
The seemingly haunted mask made another run for Samus, who jumped over it at the last moment while noticing that her opponent seemed to be ignoring the others entirely.
"Yes," she replied. Clearly, the saurian knew something about this thing attacking her.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Birdo let out an annoyed huff. "Though the stupid thing away, already! Phanto only attacks people who have its key!"
Samus used her Flash Shift to suddenly shoot out several feet to the right in order to avoid another hit from Phanto before dematerializing her armor again. There was a high likelihood that this was some sort of trap but she was out of options and this thing was really starting to get on her nerves. So, she reached through the opening on her dress where she'd dropped the oversized gold key and fished it out before tossing the seemingly cursed relic into the lake. Almost as soon as the metal object parted from her fingers, Phanto came to an immediate halt and its glowing eyes began to dim before the mask dropped through the floor, hopefully never to be seen again.
"What was that thing?" Samus asked, intent on getting answers from the pink dinosaur.
"We don't know," Birdo replied. "All we know is that it's been here longer than anyone seems to know and for some reason, it goes after anyone holding a key. The Shy Guys seem to know something about it but refuse to say anything."
Samus just grunted and shook her head, already fed up with that thing. At least she wouldn't have to deal with it again, hopefully.
"Well, at least that's over with," Samus sighed before turning to Luigi and Roshi. "And it looks like most of the team is back together… again… Why are you covering your eyes? This dress doesn't show off that much skin!"
The two men, or rather one man and one dinosaur, froze and, after a few seconds, started to move their hands out of the way of their faces and hesitantly open their eyes again.
"Oh, good," Roshi let out a sigh of relief for some reason. "We thought you were, well…"
"We-a thought you were naked," Luigi explained.
"...What?"
Luigi then pulled something out of his pocket and held it out…. Oh, that was her zero suit. They must have found where she had left it and assumed… Well, things were starting to make sense.
"Whoops, can't believe that I left that behind," Samus chuckled. "Yeah, no, I'm fine. Thanks for getting that for me, though. Can you hold on to it for now, this thing doesn't have any pockets and I didn't think to try adding one onto my cloak."
"Oh, um, sure," Luigi stuffed her underarmor back into his overalls. "Um, what exactly happened to you?"
"And where did you get that dress?" Roshi asked.
"Long story." Samus shook her head again and blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. "Hey, you wouldn't have happened to find my hair tie, too, would you?"
It seemed that they hadn't.
"Oh, well, no big deal." Samus pulled her hair back before manifesting her armor around herself again. Getting the cloak to stay on over it was a challenge. "So, we should probably get ourselves caught up, now. I have a feeling that a lot has happened."
Author's Notes: New year, same bad writing habits. I wrote about half this chapter just a couple days ago and got the rest of it done right before posting this. Despite that, the break has done me well and I'm ready to finally get back to this story. Unfortunately, I probably won't be updating Super Ridley Bros as often as last year, though. Last year I put a lot into fanfic writing, managing to upload 1~2 chapters per week every week for 10 months straight. This year, however, I'm going to be scaling back because I want to spend more time on other things, which I won't be able to do if writing takes up all my free time like last year. I do want to try and upload a chapter a week if possible but instead of alternating between this story and God's Blessing, God Knows with other stories uploading on Fridays when they're ready, the off weeks between GBGK chapters will just be whatever I have ready to go. Sometimes that will be this story, sometimes it won't. In the meantime, I want to focus more on art and, in particular, I'm going to try and start up a regularly updated webcomic that I'm hoping to start posting either later this month or sometime next month at the latest. If you're interested in learning more about that, then check out my Discord channel (link in my bio, or PM me).