World 4-3: vs. Ridley?
"Well, here we are," Birdo said, gesturing her hand out in front of her.
The ancient Yoshi girl had guided Luigi and the others through a long trek to Wart's castle that somehow felt both exhaustingly long and surprisingly short. Instead of a castle, however, they found themselves standing before what appeared to be a large elevator sitting in the middle of an open field.
"This is it?" Samus asked, sounding sceptical. "Not much of a castle."
"Maybe it's bigger in the inside?" Roshi suggested hopefully.
"This isn't the castle," Birdo explained. "This is the way to the castle."
"Ah, so it's underground?" Luigi asked, but Birdo just shook her head.
"Come on, you'll see," she said, pressing a button to open the doors and stepping inside.
Luigi, Roshi and Samus looked at each other questioningly before deciding to follow her. Once they were all inside the elevator, the doors closed behind them and they began to move.
"Are we going up?" Samus asked.
"Yes," Birdo replied. "When Wart arrived here and took over the place, he claimed the old king's castle as his own. And that castle was built on the clouds."
"But aren't-a clouds made out of water?" Luigi asked.
"So is ice," Birdo replied. "Remember, this world doesn't work by the same rules as the one you know."
"I've been to a Cloud City before but it wasn't that literal," Samus mused. "We won't have to worry about falling off, will we?"
"Didn't I see you fly earlier?" Birdo replied sarcastically.
"Technically no, but I can get pretty close," Samus admitted. "I was more worried about these two."
"You should be fine," Birdo said. "This elevator is a service entrance that leads straight to the castle."
The four of them then stood around in silence as they slowly rose higher and higher into the sky.
"This is taking a while," Luigi commented after a while. "Is it supposed to-a be this long?"
"We're going above the clouds," Birdo pointed out. "It's going to take a while to get up there."
"I'm actually pretty used to this kind of thing," Samus said. "You'd be surprised how many elevators there are on most of the planets I've explored."
The awkward silence returned as they continued riding the elevator into the sky.
Alucard's search for chairs proved unsuccessful. Fortunately for Princess Peach, though, she didn't need one. She had a perfectly good seat in the form of her betrothed's shoulder, which was where she was perched, looking down at the magical video feed of Luigi and the others displayed on the surface of the water around them.
"I don't suppose you have room for one more up there, do you?" Daisy asked, looking down at her wet dress. "Ugh, if only we got sent here in casual clothes."
"Princesses only," Bowser replied.
"I am a princess!" Daisy pointed out angrily.
"Oh, right." Bowser reluctantly bent down so that Daisy could climb up his shell, taking a seat opposite Peach. "Huh, this is more comfortable than I expected."
"It's more comfortable than when he slings you over his shoulder to drag you off against your will," Peach giggled.
"Sorry about that," Bowser grumbled. "I'm… not great with people."
"Well, I'm sure that we'll have plenty of time to work on that," she patted his head assuringly.
"It feels weird that you two are actually getting married," Daisy said, giving the two of them a weird look. "Like, consensually."
"What, and you and Laraby getting married isn't?" Bowser asked.
"His name is Luigi!" Daisy yelled with a punch to Bowser's shoulder that he barely would have felt. "And we've been dating for ages! You two were enemies until, like, yesterday."
"It was a few months ago, actually," Peach pointed out. "But yes, I still have trouble believing that I agreed to marry this thuggish brute."
"Hey!" Bowser objected. "I'm not that bad!"
"Do you have any idea how many times you've kidnapped me?" Peach asked.
"I'm going to assume that you don't want the actual number," Bowser said sheepishly.
"You've also destroyed the universe a few times," Rosalina added from where she was floating nearby.
"...I what?"
"Well, technically those were versions of you from other timelines, but they're still you, more or less," she explained.
"What do you mean, other timelines?" Alucard walked up to them.
"Yeah, you don't really talk about that stuff," Daisy noted. "Come to think about it, we've barely even talked before now. Are you even a real princess?"
"That doesn't really seem relevant to anything right now, but technically yes," Rosalina sighed. "My past is… complicated, and I prefer not to talk about it. The short version is, I've been helping to oversee reality through the rise and fall of countless universes. Though I didn't know it when I took up the position, my role as the mother of lumas means that I am responsible for the creation of new realities every time an old one meets its end."
"And here I assumed I was the oldest one in this group," Alucard said. "But it seems that my six hundred years of half-life make me a mere babe compared to you."
"You know, you shouldn't comment on a girl's age like that," Daisy pointed out playfully.
Alucard just looked away before muttering to himself. "Maria used to say the same thing."
That was about when Peach finally noticed the last member of their little group walking over. Though the masked swordsman calling himself Meta Knight was small enough that she really only noticed him because of the ripples through the water that he made as he went.
"Did you go somewhere?" she asked him.
"I needed to contact some old allies," he replied. "If I am correct, then we have a terrible battle ahead of us and will require all of the help we can get."
"Yes, so you've mentioned," Alucard said. "But who is this 'enemy' that you keep bringing up?"
Meta Knight seemed to consider the question, though it was hard to tell behind the 'v'-shaped visor of his armored mask.
"Very well," he said at last. "I suppose that it is only fair that I let you know what we may be up against so that you may be prepared. It all began-"
*Ding*
The elevator doors slid open, allowing its passengers to finally disembark. Roshi may not have been claustrophobic but he was still relieved to no longer be cooped up in the relatively small room after so long.
From the inside, Wart's castle didn't seem too different from Peach's, which surprised Roshi, who was expecting something more similar to Bowser's castle. That got him to realize that he'd somehow managed to go from having never seen a castle before to having now been to three of them.
"Something's wrong here," Birdo said, drawing Roshi's attention to her. "Where are all the shy guys?"
"I'm not picking up any signs of life in the area," Samus said, looking around and probably using her fancy space suit detector things to scan their surroundings.
"That's-a probably not a good sign," Luigi gulped, pulling out his whip.
"Maybe they're just not in this part of the castle?" Roshi suggested hopefully.
"They should be pretty much everywhere," Birdo said. "Mh, anyway, the way to the throne room is this way. That's probably where you'll find Wart, and I'm assuming that stopping him first will be your first priority."
"We should-a try to find the-a captured toads," Luigi said.
"It will be easier to rescue them if we stop the bad guy first," Samus pointed out.
"And we need to find Ridley, too," Roshi added.
"Yeah, sure." Samus shrugged unenthusiastically.
"He'll probably be with Wart, who, as I said, will be in the throne room," Birdo said.
"Then I-a guess we'll go there for now," Luigi said. "But we-a probably should have-a come up with more of a plan before we-a got here."
"I prefer to just wing it as I go," Samus shrugged again, then made a face. "Huh, I wonder if that's because I was raised by birds?"
"You might be taking that phrase a bit too literally," Roshi told her.
"It's called a joke." Samus suddenly tended, pointing her arm cannon up at the ceiling and looking around. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Luigi asked, concerned.
"It looks like we're not alone here, after all," she said. "But whatever my sensors just picked up, it's already out of range."
"Then I-a guess we'll just need to keep our eyes peeled," Luigi said. "We've all-a fought worse things than whatever's out there before."
That would have sounded more reassuring if Luigi's knees weren't shaking when he said it. But still, they had to keep going, so Roshi did his best to keep up a brave face as they made their way further into the old castle. The building seemed like a maze of twisting corridors and there were a few points where it seemed like they were going backwards or going down hallways that should have passed right through others they'd already gone through but somehow different. But, eventually, they found themselves standing before a pair of big red doors trimmed with gold. Even Roshi could tell just by looking at them that they led straight to the room they were looking for.
"This is it," Birdo said at last. "Wart should be waiting for you on the other side of these doors."
"You?" Samus repeated questioningly. "So you're not coming with us?"
Birdo shook her head. "I brought you this far. I have no intention of fighting Wart myself."
"Thank you," Roshi said with a smile, trying to be as encouraging as he could. "We couldn't have made it this far without you."
"Don't remind me." Birdo turned away, looking like she was about to leave. "Good luck in there, I guess."
She started to walk away, so Roshi and the others turned back to the doorway.
"Well, here goes nothing," Samus said as she pushed against one of the big red doors. It barely budged until Luigi and finally Roshi came over to help her.
Once they'd finally opened the door enough, though walked out onto the heavily polished tile floor of a large room full of evenly spaced golden pillars that branched out into intricate archways which held up the ceiling above them. While some light filtered into the room from windows set into the side walls, most of the room's lighting seemed to come from the giant, ornate chandelier hanging overhead, which had to have had at least several hundred candles burning on it.
As Roshi and the others took in the room, he suddenly heard a muffled scream from behind him and turned around only for the door to slam shut on its own before he could head back.
"We're trapped!" Roshi shouted, banging on the door.
"Yeah, that tends to happen," Samus shrugged. "They usually unluck when you kill the monster you're trapped with. Or rather, the monster that's trapped with you."
"We're-a not killing anyone," Luigi told her, sounding concerned.
"Yeah, I know," she said. "I'm just saying that that's how it usually goes for me. Anyway, let's get this over with."
With no other options, Roshi followed the others across the large room, which almost seemed to get bigger the further they went into it. Roshi thought that he saw a shadow flittering around them but told himself that it was just a trick of the candlelight. Eventually, they made it across, looking up at a large golden throne lined with velvety red cushions. There was no sign of the giant toad man, however.
"He's-a not here," Luigi stated as they looked around the seemingly empty room.
"Something feels off," Samus said, cautiously taking a few steps forward. "It almost feels like… no, that's impossible."
Roshi could see the bounty hunter shudder and made his way over to see what he could do to help her. Before he could make it over to her, however, a loud screeching noise like nails on a chalkboard filled the room.
"What was that?" Luigi wondered aloud, the noise fading away as quickly as it had come.
"I don't know." Samus looked up at the ceiling, pointing the cannon on her arm everywhere she looked. "I'm not picking up anything."
Then the chandelier fell, shattering apart once it hit the brightly tiled floor and sending metal shards and melted wax flying everywhere. Roshi barely managed to duck out of the way before a large chunk of broken gold flew right through the air where his head had just been.
"Is everyone alright?" Samus asked, running over to Roshi and Luigi.
"I'm… I'm-a fine," Luigi said hesitantly. "Just a little shaken up. Roshi?"
"I'm fine," he muttered, though he felt like his heart had just tried jumping out of his chest. "But how did that happen?"
The room had grown darker now that most of the candles lighting up the place had gone out in the fall, making it harder for Roshi to see much of anything. But he didn't need to see to hear the raspy breaths that echoed around the room, accompanied by a series of loud scratching noises that seemed to be coming from near the ceiling.
"There's-a definitely something up there," Luigi said worriedly.
Roshi turned to Samus, whom he expected to be the most prepared for whatever it was they were facing. To his surprise and shock, however, she was visibly shaking and he could hear her panicked breaths.
"N-no," she whispered, her suit starting to flicker out of existence. "No… no, no, no…"
A flash of red caught Roshi's eye, and he looked up just in time to see a pair of glowing yellow eyes in the dark. Cold, merciless eyes. Then, the owner of those eyes dropped down to the floor between the trio, knocking them all away with a gust of wind. Roshi picked himself up just as a flap of massive leather brown wings threatened to knock him over again.
"R-Ridley?" Roshi stammered, looking up at what looked like his friend but… wasn't.
The monster before him was massive, to the point of making even Bowser seem small by comparison. And yet those wings, that distinct head, the bony frame. Those were all Ridley. But he'd never seen Ridley look so menacing before. So cold. The beast was something out of a nightmare, like a demon risen from the Underwhere. And that wasn't even accounting for the fact that his usual vibrant purple skin had dulled to a dusty brown.
n had faded to a dull brown. He looked like a monster. Like…
Well, like the horrific space pirate that he and Samus kept saying that he was.
"Ridley?" Luigi said, sounding cautious and notably keeping a firm grip on the old leather whip in his hand. "What's-a going on?"
The question was met with a horrible, blood-curdling screech and Roshi could feel himself getting pushed back by the sheer force of Ridley's breath. It was a primal noise unlike anything Roshi had ever heard and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Samus drop to her knees, shaking harder than ever right before her armor fully dematerialized.
Ridley flapped his wings again, taking to the air. Rather than flying off, however, the space dragon hovered several feet overhead while slowly circling them.
"Ridley?" Luigi readied his whip and not a moment too soon. Ridley opened his mouth and a torrent of fireballs spilled out from his throat, pelting the ground at their feet.
Roshi scrambled to get out of the way while Luigi flicked his whip through the air to strike the fireballs, which vanished at its touch. That seemed to draw Ridley's attention, as he suddenly flew forward and stabbed his tail down like a spear, cracking the tile beneath Luigi's feet barely a second before he managed to jump out of the way. He didn't stop with the one strike, however, smashing his sharp tail up and down while slowly making his way toward Luigi.
The green-clad plumber hesitated but finally lashed out with his whip, lashing it across Ridley's tail. The dragon let out a harsh shriek before pulling his tail back and diving straight for Luigi, grabbing him in one of his large clawed hands before slamming him into a pillar hard enough to crack it. Roshi wanted to help but he knew there was nothing he could do, so he just had to stand back as Ridley dragged Luigi up the full length of the pillar before finally letting go and letting Luigi fall.
Luigi, however, flicked his wrist and managed to wrap the Vampire Killer around Ridley's neck, taking the alien down with him. Both of Roshi's coworkers slammed hard into the floor, getting up with pained groans.
"Ridley, what are you-a doing?" Luigi asked, sounding winded as he slowly rose to his feet.
Ridley answered with another shriek before stabbing Luigi in the shoulder with his tail. Fortunately, Luigi managed to react just in time to avoid more than a deep graving but the edge of Ridley's spear-tipped appendage managed to get caught on the strap of his overalls, allowing Ridley to send him flying with a flick of his tail.
With Luigi out of the way for the moment, Ridley then turned his sights onto the next closest victim, which happened to be Samus. Roshi watched in horror as his former friend marched slowly but deliberately towards her, and the usually confident and battle-ready bounty hunter barely responded, muttering incoherently to herself while looking like she was hyperventilating.
Ridley's eyes were filled with nothing but primal, predatory fury as he approached, hunching over to crawl on all fours towards her. Roshi felt glued to the spot as he watched his closest friend open his jaws wide to bite his other friend. Possibly even try to eat her, with how he was acting and what Roshi had heard of his past exploits.
"No!"
Roshi's feet felt like they were moving on their own as he suddenly dashed forward to get between Samus and Ridley. He faced his former friend with arms outstretched. If he were like the other yoshis, he probably could have managed to swallow Ridley and trap him in an egg or something until they could figure out what was wrong with him. But he wasn't. There was no way that he could fit something as big as Ridley now was down his throat, even if he knew how to do it on command. But he knew that he had to do something, and this was the only thing he could.
He closed his eyes, unable to face the inevitable. He had regrets, but if this was what it took to protect someone he cared about, even from someone he respected more than anyone else, then he would throw his pathetic excuse for a life away. At least now he knew that he'd die having done something useful, right?
But his end never came. Hesitantly, Roshi opened an eye back up, expecting to see the inside of Ridley's mouth seconds before those toothy jaws clamped shut around his head in an unbreakable vice grip. Instead, Ridley just seemed to stand there, fidgeting and shaking. It was like he was struggling to hold himself back.
"Don't do this!" Roshi cried out, realizing that he was somehow breaking through to him. "We're your friends, aren't we?"
Ridley dropped back to all fours and Roshi thought he saw a flash of purple ripple across Ridley's dull brown skin.
"Whatever's going on, we can help you!" he continued.
There was another ripple of purple as Ridley's claws dug into the tile, his head twitching before Ridley suddenly shot forward. Roshi flinched, expecting the worst, but Ridley managed to stop himself again mere seconds before tearing Roshi's head clean off with those dagger-like teeth of his.
"Ridley!" Roshi cried out, not sure what else to say. He'd never been good at this sort of thing. Not that he'd ever really had to do whatever he was doing right then before.
The dragon smashed his head into the floor a few times, fighting whatever was controlling him, and splotches of his normal bright purple color returned, From behind him, Roshi could also see Luigi approaching them.
"Ridley!" Luigi shouted as he drew closer. "Ridley, stop this!"
"No." Roshi heard Samus mutter and turned around to see her on her knees, ruffling her hands through her hair wildly. "This wasn't supposed tah happen. He wasn't supposed tah come back! ah've killed him so many times, why can ah never get away from him!?"
Roshi had never seen someone have a panic attack before. In fact, even he'd never had a full-on attack like that before, despite how often he'd felt like he would. But he still recognized that that's what was happening, and while he didn't know for sure how you were supposed to help someone going through that, he did what felt right and wrapped his arms gently around her quivering shoulders. He could feel her labored breaths and she kept shaking but eventually, her breaths started to slow and he could feel her calming down.
When he let go, a disheveled Samus was still shaking but she was stable enough to start coming back to her senses and look up again. He helped her onto her feet before he turned around and realized that he'd completely tuned out Ridley while he was doing that, surprised to see him lying on his back on the ground, struggling against Luigi, who was standing on his chest with the Vampire Killer wrapped around his throat again. It seemed that Ridley hadn't been as close to breaking free of whatever was controlling him as Roshi had thought. He silently chastised himself for basically abandoning his own survival instincts in the middle of a fight, even if he didn't regret it.
Samus walked right past Roshi, slowly shuffling towards Ridley. She didn't call her suit back, though, instead bending over and placing her hand firmly against his snout. Ridley shivered at the contact but didn't fight it.
"Stupid lizard," she said shakily. "Y'all are better than this. Y'all've shown me that, now show yerself."
Ridley seemed to stop resisting and Luigi was able to loosen the whip from around his neck without fear of another attack. His breathing remained heavy and labored, though. But seeing that whatever Samus was doing was working, Roshi decided to help, too.
"Come on, Roshi," he said, stepping closer. "This isn't you. I know you've said that it is, but even if you used to be like this, it's not who you are now. Remember who you are!"
Ridley's muscles seemed to relax slightly and his eyes closed. Roshi could see that more and more of his skin was returning to its usual purple. They were breaking through to him.
"If you-a don't snap back right-a now, I'm-a docking your pay," Luigi added, hopping back down to the floor.
"Woah, now, there's no need to be hasty," Ridley muttered, letting out a groan before sitting up and rubbing his head. As far as Roshi could tell, he was now fully purple again.
"Are you okay?" Roshi asked him.
"I've been deader." Ridley shrugged
"Don't you-a mean better?" Luigi asked.
"That too," Ridley said, standing up.
"What was that?" Samus demanded angrily. "You just tried to kill us!"
"Ah, yes," Ridley glanced to the side and rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "I let my guard down, got drugged, lost all sense of self. Or something like that. Sorry you all had to see the old me for a bit, there."
"Well, at least you're-a back now" Luigi let out a sigh of relief but paused when Ridley held up a finger.
"Hold on a moment." Ridley turned around and took a few steps away from the before doubling over with his mouth wide open. After a few sickening gagging noises, he suddenly hurled up a shy guy, followed by another. By the time he was done, Ridley walked back to them from a pile of hundreds of shy guys, sniffing and other various creatures, shrunken back down to the size that Roshi was used to seeing him. "Okay, I should be good now."
"That was disturbing," Roshi said, trying not to throw up at the sight of what he'd just seen.
"Wait, you can spit up the people you eat?" Samus took a step back, clearly alarmed.
"Not normally, no," Ridley admitted before he started choking.
A lump rose up in his throat that grew larger and larger until he finally managed to open his jaw up wider than Roshi would have thought possible and the biggest shy guy that Roshi had ever seen tumbled out before sliding along the shattered tile floor, slick with what Roshi hoped was just saliva.
"Where'd you learn to eat? Truck driving school?" the morbidly obese Shy Guy shouted angrily at him.
"Alright, now I should be good," Ridley said, rubbing his throat. "Ugh, I don't even remember eating that one."
"Okay…" Samus gave him a funny look. "So, we're here to be at Wart and rescue those funky mushroom people you guys hang out with. Want to help?"
"Of course. I don't know where Wart is but he did show me where he's keeping his prisoners before, well, that happened." Ridley gestured to the pile of disoriented Shy Guys.
"We were-a planning to stop Wart first but I-a guess we can-a save the toads first," Luigi said. "Let's-a go!"
"Okay, so the dungeons are this way-"
"-I swear, they were right here!" Ridley flailed his arms around at the empty dungeon. All of the jail cells and cages that the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom had been trapped in when he'd last been down there were all still exactly where he remembered, still locked up and seemingly untouched. But there wasn't a soul in sight.
"You didn't eat them, did you?" Samus asked sarcastically.
"No?" Ridley said, though was starting to doubt himself.
"Wart must have-a done something with them," Luigi suggested. "We'll-a just have to find him after all."
"I guess," Ridley replied, sniffing the air. "Something feels off here, but I can't place my finger on why."
Author's Notes: It's hard to take Meta Knight seriously when I'm trying to write characters as being their canon height instead of scaling them relative to each other like Smash Bros does. Kirby's official height is 8 inches tall, which means that Meta Knight can't be more than a foot. This will only get weirder as more Kirby characters start showing up in the later chapters.
Are there any characters who you always pictured as being a certain size only to find out that they're actually much shorter or taller than you thought? I'm sure that Pokémon fans have plenty of examples considering how weird the sizes can get in that series. For example, Charizard is supposed to be 5'7" (Hey, wait, that's my height!) but Ash's Charizard in the anime looks taller than that and is shown to be unusually small for his species.