--Some of you might have read this before, some of you are reading it for the very first time. But to address the first group, I have gone through and done many revisions and took off the story in it's singular form to make it part of this collection. So please, hopefully, you'll find it a good read again.
-Super Metroid
--The Space Pirate Log Book
---Entry 1: The Norfair Dragon, Ridley
Space is an abyss for every life form that has ever been bound to a planet. It is cold, lifeless, and mimics the face of death quite frequently. I hated space. My body felt much more at home in the fiery depths of Planet Zebes. More at home in the bows of Norfair where the extreme core temperatures would rejuvenate my body. After my flight through space, I craved that sensation once more... But it had to wait for now. If you are given an order by Mother Brain, you do not fail to carry it out. Or you would live to regret it.
Humans call us pirates. Ha, do you hear that? Pirates. As if that one word did any justice to describe us at all. They may call us what they want, but if they only knew the true form of our leader Mother Brain, they would do much to pick a better word. After all, she had been critically wounded and left for dead. How very wrong it was for that human to leave so quickly after destroying most of our old base, and eradicating the organism known as the "Metroid".
This organism is the life form that has brought me out here, into the depths of space, without a ship or any sort of force of mine. I was instructed by Mother Brain that without the use of a ship, it would be easy to infiltrate the Space Colony that kept the very last Metroid. It was the very last because the human I had mentioned before had moved on to their home planet to wipe them out. For some reason, she had not done the same to the last Metroid and here I was, to continue our work begun so long ago.
It was a relief to spot the round station in the shadow of an asteroid. The faster I reached the colony, the faster I could escape the coldness of space which was opposite of Norfair in every way possible. I loathed it so much that I began to beat my wings faster, around the lazy asteroids and towards the center docking bay. Anyone would find it fitting, that the whole station looked like a bull's-eye. It was a target. When I located the Metroid, I could do what I wished with the round tin can.
The doors to the station were hardly enough to keep me out. I didn't even have to make use of my fiery breath to pry them open, and the slip through to the docking bays. What made me angry, is that the station was almost as cold as space. I was irritated now, and I would spare no mercy for any humans I would come across. They would all soon die for resisting us like they did. Such stubborn creatures... who needed to be put in their place.
I could already feel the artificial gravity taking hold of my body and landed with a thud on the metal floor. In this moment, I took note of my surroundings. A wide empty room with two areas to park ships of many sizes. There were none there at the moment which told me that some of the humans were out on a supply run, or simply kept themselves secluded and free of distractions. Now it would be their undoing, now none of them could escape me. What could they do? But simply trigger a pathetic alarm that would do nothing but call federation forces light-years away? By the time they arrived, this station would be floating debris.
Then again, what did they care? As far as they were concerned, Mother Brain is dead.
Footsteps caused me to dart into the many shadows and watch as a human mechanic entered. It seems this trip is full of disappointments. I wanted a human soldier, or some pathetic wretch who wanted to be a hero. Those were always the best humans to kill. I could scrape the incompetence off their bodies with my claw, even after I've killed them. This human was simply clueless, and I realized that he was checking the sudden opening of the door I had caused. Well, I couldn't let him spoil my element of surprise...
The human mechanic then started toward the docking bay door. I think when he was mere feet from me, he realized that there was something else in the room. My breathing quickened as I outstretched my tail and gave a low screech to confirm his fears. The expression on his face almost justified the entire trip through space. It was the last emotion he ever had as I speared him with my tail and tossed him across the room. Yet another quality I hate about humans, so fragile, they hardly ever put up a fight worth remembering. Even the armed humans are nothing to look at.
I gazed at the dead mechanic a bit more before moving on to an elevator shaft that would lead downwards to the laboratories. Mother Brain seemingly knew every move the Federation made, she knew the Metroid would be down there somewhere. It was only a matter of time before I stumbled upon it. Surely, the humans would be swarming around it, trying to take what information they could. They would not live long enough to make any use of their newfound knowledge. The Metroid was ours, and ours alone.
When I reached the bottom, I must have shown up on the stations sensors, because the whole place began to flash with a red light. I found it calming, it reminded me of Norfair, and it is my personal experience that humans are not themselves when alarms of this kind go off. They let the panic consume them, until they are stark raving mad and wouldn't know top from bottom if their lives depended upon it. It never failed to make me wonder what they wanted to accomplish with such alarms. But what did it matter?
The red lights stopped when I began to move through the labs. A pity, I had begun to enjoy the red light. Maybe they thought it was a false alarm? Humph, whatever they thought, it would not save them.
I was getting closer as I found several empty containment tubes. There were many devices along the wall that kept the humans in this station alive. In another time and another place, I would not hesitate to destroy anything that would sustain their pathetic lives. But I had to keep it in one piece, at least until I found the Metroid. When I found that, I had the authorization to do what I pleased with the rest of the colony. That would be something worth remembering.
I began to become enraged. What was this place? A maze? How did they make any use of a place so expansive? Just when I was about to lose my temper, I found it. The observation room. With the Metroid in the middle, and the panicking humans dancing around it, doing who knows what, where else could I be? I didn't know what they were doing, probably rushing to save their precious work. Work they somehow placed above their very lives. What fools...
When the white clothed humans caught sight of me, the color drained from their face as if a Metroid had sucked them dry of their energy. Several began to cry out in fear and ran, while the slightly braver ones yelled out to each other.
"There's no more time! Get the files and get out of here!"
"Oh my god! Oh my god!" One chanted in disbelief.
"Someone save the Metroid!" Another cried.
The mere mention of it snapped my focus onto the glass cylinder in the center of the room, with wires and consoles hooked up to it. The little thing screeched once or twice before bobbing up and down eagerly. It could sense the panic running through the room. What a perceptive little organism. I wonder if it knew I came to recover it? Two of the humans ran to open it up, to try and remove it and runaway. With a leap and a swipe of a claw, I ripped through their bodies as if they were made of paper.
"No! Hal!" One human cried from somewhere behind me.
My tail made quick work of him as he didn't even move to save himself. If only so many humans were like him, to just accept their fate instead of struggling to futilely against it. But what am I saying? Where would my entertainment come from? Like one of the scientists who grabbed some sort of fire extinguisher and tried to use it as a weapon. The extinguisher exploded as I tore through it, and the human who wielded it. I roared at the top of my lungs as the floor of the room became covered with cold white mist. It was an unpleasant feeling.
Now that that was over, I grabbed the Metroid with my back right talon and began to move toward the doorway where so many humans had ran through. Oh yes, a chase now. None of them would be alive too much longer, but every once and awhile I felt cruel enough to give them a tiny bit of hope. This was one of those moments. I gave them a little head start by checking over the Metroid container to see if it kept the little creature fully contained.
Then I started after them. To my surprise, the path they took lead to a dead end, a cargo room. But what else should I expect from the likes of humans?
They began to hide among the crates, hoping there would come a moment when they could sneak by me and escape for good. What an interesting fantasy that was. Any human that tried to make a break for the room's only entrance and exit was torched beyond recognition. I spread by fiery breath across the room, melting crates and any human that hid behind it. With all the smoke I created, I expected the automatic sprinklers to go off. Whenever I would roar, they would whimper in response, smothered by their fear of me.
I would not give them the curtsey of talking in their filthy dialect. They would not have the pleasure of knowing what I planned to do with them. Besides, to talk in their language would be like tainting my own body with their foulness. If I did that, I would have to let Crocomire use my tongue as his toothpick. No, I merely slashed, impaled, and torched every human I came across. It's quite addictive, I don't know when I stopped. I only remember that every one of them was dead and it was time to leave the station.
But when turning to leave, the door opened to reveal yet another human. This one was very different from the others I had killed. This human I simply knew as Samus Aran, the cancer of our very existence. She was a bounty hunter, and her actions had demonstrated a long time ago, that she would not stop until we were wiped from the face of the universe. I must admit, I admired her persistence and the challenge she presented. This was the only human that ever put up a fight worth remembering.
Through that green visor, she began to scan the area. The visor that belonged to a suit humans were incapable of creating. That suit provided her with incredible agility and flexibility. It also provided her with many weapons I was all too familiar with. This time, I would not give her the chance of using them. But my mind could not help but wonder, what brought her here? Ah, the alarms. They shut off because she was responding to the emergency beacon. She came back to save whoever she could.
As usual, the bounty hunter was too late.
I retreated into the shadows and perched on the Metroid container. I was fairly surprised it supported me, but quickly focused on Samus who was checking the room. It was merely about patience now. Then she spotted the container as the Metroid screeched out repeatedly. Her fixation made it impossible for her to recognize my yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. Instead she moved closer to the Metroid container. Closer, and closer, and closer...
Then I had my moment. I burst from the shadows with claws outstretched. I was going to tear her into two. But whatever instincts she had caused her to roll away at the last second. Anyone who was still alive could hear my claw scrape against her metal suit. When looking down at my claw, I could see a fleck of red paint. I was so close... The bounty hunter wasted no more time and fired back. The first blast to hit me only shot my confidence to immeasurable heights. Her arm cannon had become weak since last time we met. Either that, or I had become that much stronger.
"Ridley? You bastard!"
Her surprise was understandable. What she failed to realize, that if you cannot kill Mother Brain, then you cannot kill me. No matter what damage or wound you think you accomplish, it is nothing as long as Mother Brain lives.
"What the hell are you doing here?" She continued to yell in anger.
I shot my tail forward and knocked her across the room. She hit the wall with a loud clatter, but landed on her feet and continued to fire those weak shots at me. They made their mark, but were too pathetic to stop me. I roared to make it known her cause was a losing one. My wings took me into the air and I quickly dove, ready to tear her suit to pieces. But I had temporarily forgotten the Metroid in my talons. I froze and hovered over her, hesitating.
"The Metroid? But why..." She paused, piecing thing together. "Mother brain can't be..."
It was slightly reassuring to find she hadn't fallen so far as to be incompetent in-between our meetings. But it was then I regained my senses and breathed a firestorm on her position. She stumbled back covering her visor due to the immense light created from the flames and fell down. This move was not completely without grace, as she quickly fired more weak blaster shots at me. I tore at her with my claws, sending her rolling into another wall.
Her suit was losing it's durability, and she was beginning to tire. Sparks shot from the joints around her elbows and her movement became sluggish. It was time to say goodbye to my rival, a bittersweet victory. I drew back both of my arms to crush her in one swoop. Even with her blaster pointed directly at my head, I knew it wouldn't be enough to save her. But then everything was ruined. The red flashing lights returned with a computerized voice that made both of us look into the air.
"Warning! Self-destruct sequence initiated. Evacuate Colony immediately."
I roared out in pure anger. Again and again. No! This can't be happening! My chances of revenge ruined! I began to think, how could this have happened? Who was left alive to trigger such an action? Perhaps a scientist was not as dead as I made them out to be, and activated it seeing Samus was too late. I stared at her as she stared at me. I couldn't be caught in this station when it exploded, no matter how badly I wanted her dead.
As far as Mother Brain was concerned, the Metroid was more important than my very life.
Samus made a weak attempt to stop me as I spread my wings and darted through the doorway, back the way I came. In the observation room, I could see a blood trail snake across the room to a computer panel, where bloody fingertips and handprints were easily visible. Damn humans! I should have eaten them all! But now was no time to be blinded by rage. The station was coming apart at the seams, and there was no telling when it would explode and take everything inside with it. The little Metroid began to squeak repeatedly as if missing the company of the bounty hunter.
Once I had gone back through the labs, I scrambled up the elevator shaft as hot steam burst from pipes. The burning sensation was relaxing, I couldn't wait to return to Planet Zebes and Norfair. When I reached the docking bay, I darted past Samus's ship and spat flames over the docking bay door to open it. Explosions ran along the edges of the station, it wouldn't be long now. If I wanted to make it out with my tail in one piece, I had to get as far away as possible. As for Samus... hopefully, her suit was damaged enough to make it impossible for her to escape.
Then it came.
The light was tremendous even after I cleared the asteroid field. The blast sent countless debris and whatever asteroid was not strong enough to resist it, flying away from the colony. I did not see the bounty hunters ship and for what I could do, I spread my face into a smile. The flight back was longer than the one to the station, maybe Samus's blaster had done more to me than I felt. But soon I could see the welcoming Planet Zebes surface and made more of an effort to arrive there quickly. The re-entry felt good to my body as the heat flared up, and the Metroid container I found could withstand that as well. This would be a cylinder not easily cracked, but Mother Brain would think of something and I could finally return to Norfair to recover and await my next orders...
-End of Line
--Closing Ridley Log
---Next Entry: Kraid
-Super Metroid
--The Space Pirate Log Book
---Entry 1: The Norfair Dragon, Ridley
Space is an abyss for every life form that has ever been bound to a planet. It is cold, lifeless, and mimics the face of death quite frequently. I hated space. My body felt much more at home in the fiery depths of Planet Zebes. More at home in the bows of Norfair where the extreme core temperatures would rejuvenate my body. After my flight through space, I craved that sensation once more... But it had to wait for now. If you are given an order by Mother Brain, you do not fail to carry it out. Or you would live to regret it.
Humans call us pirates. Ha, do you hear that? Pirates. As if that one word did any justice to describe us at all. They may call us what they want, but if they only knew the true form of our leader Mother Brain, they would do much to pick a better word. After all, she had been critically wounded and left for dead. How very wrong it was for that human to leave so quickly after destroying most of our old base, and eradicating the organism known as the "Metroid".
This organism is the life form that has brought me out here, into the depths of space, without a ship or any sort of force of mine. I was instructed by Mother Brain that without the use of a ship, it would be easy to infiltrate the Space Colony that kept the very last Metroid. It was the very last because the human I had mentioned before had moved on to their home planet to wipe them out. For some reason, she had not done the same to the last Metroid and here I was, to continue our work begun so long ago.
It was a relief to spot the round station in the shadow of an asteroid. The faster I reached the colony, the faster I could escape the coldness of space which was opposite of Norfair in every way possible. I loathed it so much that I began to beat my wings faster, around the lazy asteroids and towards the center docking bay. Anyone would find it fitting, that the whole station looked like a bull's-eye. It was a target. When I located the Metroid, I could do what I wished with the round tin can.
The doors to the station were hardly enough to keep me out. I didn't even have to make use of my fiery breath to pry them open, and the slip through to the docking bays. What made me angry, is that the station was almost as cold as space. I was irritated now, and I would spare no mercy for any humans I would come across. They would all soon die for resisting us like they did. Such stubborn creatures... who needed to be put in their place.
I could already feel the artificial gravity taking hold of my body and landed with a thud on the metal floor. In this moment, I took note of my surroundings. A wide empty room with two areas to park ships of many sizes. There were none there at the moment which told me that some of the humans were out on a supply run, or simply kept themselves secluded and free of distractions. Now it would be their undoing, now none of them could escape me. What could they do? But simply trigger a pathetic alarm that would do nothing but call federation forces light-years away? By the time they arrived, this station would be floating debris.
Then again, what did they care? As far as they were concerned, Mother Brain is dead.
Footsteps caused me to dart into the many shadows and watch as a human mechanic entered. It seems this trip is full of disappointments. I wanted a human soldier, or some pathetic wretch who wanted to be a hero. Those were always the best humans to kill. I could scrape the incompetence off their bodies with my claw, even after I've killed them. This human was simply clueless, and I realized that he was checking the sudden opening of the door I had caused. Well, I couldn't let him spoil my element of surprise...
The human mechanic then started toward the docking bay door. I think when he was mere feet from me, he realized that there was something else in the room. My breathing quickened as I outstretched my tail and gave a low screech to confirm his fears. The expression on his face almost justified the entire trip through space. It was the last emotion he ever had as I speared him with my tail and tossed him across the room. Yet another quality I hate about humans, so fragile, they hardly ever put up a fight worth remembering. Even the armed humans are nothing to look at.
I gazed at the dead mechanic a bit more before moving on to an elevator shaft that would lead downwards to the laboratories. Mother Brain seemingly knew every move the Federation made, she knew the Metroid would be down there somewhere. It was only a matter of time before I stumbled upon it. Surely, the humans would be swarming around it, trying to take what information they could. They would not live long enough to make any use of their newfound knowledge. The Metroid was ours, and ours alone.
When I reached the bottom, I must have shown up on the stations sensors, because the whole place began to flash with a red light. I found it calming, it reminded me of Norfair, and it is my personal experience that humans are not themselves when alarms of this kind go off. They let the panic consume them, until they are stark raving mad and wouldn't know top from bottom if their lives depended upon it. It never failed to make me wonder what they wanted to accomplish with such alarms. But what did it matter?
The red lights stopped when I began to move through the labs. A pity, I had begun to enjoy the red light. Maybe they thought it was a false alarm? Humph, whatever they thought, it would not save them.
I was getting closer as I found several empty containment tubes. There were many devices along the wall that kept the humans in this station alive. In another time and another place, I would not hesitate to destroy anything that would sustain their pathetic lives. But I had to keep it in one piece, at least until I found the Metroid. When I found that, I had the authorization to do what I pleased with the rest of the colony. That would be something worth remembering.
I began to become enraged. What was this place? A maze? How did they make any use of a place so expansive? Just when I was about to lose my temper, I found it. The observation room. With the Metroid in the middle, and the panicking humans dancing around it, doing who knows what, where else could I be? I didn't know what they were doing, probably rushing to save their precious work. Work they somehow placed above their very lives. What fools...
When the white clothed humans caught sight of me, the color drained from their face as if a Metroid had sucked them dry of their energy. Several began to cry out in fear and ran, while the slightly braver ones yelled out to each other.
"There's no more time! Get the files and get out of here!"
"Oh my god! Oh my god!" One chanted in disbelief.
"Someone save the Metroid!" Another cried.
The mere mention of it snapped my focus onto the glass cylinder in the center of the room, with wires and consoles hooked up to it. The little thing screeched once or twice before bobbing up and down eagerly. It could sense the panic running through the room. What a perceptive little organism. I wonder if it knew I came to recover it? Two of the humans ran to open it up, to try and remove it and runaway. With a leap and a swipe of a claw, I ripped through their bodies as if they were made of paper.
"No! Hal!" One human cried from somewhere behind me.
My tail made quick work of him as he didn't even move to save himself. If only so many humans were like him, to just accept their fate instead of struggling to futilely against it. But what am I saying? Where would my entertainment come from? Like one of the scientists who grabbed some sort of fire extinguisher and tried to use it as a weapon. The extinguisher exploded as I tore through it, and the human who wielded it. I roared at the top of my lungs as the floor of the room became covered with cold white mist. It was an unpleasant feeling.
Now that that was over, I grabbed the Metroid with my back right talon and began to move toward the doorway where so many humans had ran through. Oh yes, a chase now. None of them would be alive too much longer, but every once and awhile I felt cruel enough to give them a tiny bit of hope. This was one of those moments. I gave them a little head start by checking over the Metroid container to see if it kept the little creature fully contained.
Then I started after them. To my surprise, the path they took lead to a dead end, a cargo room. But what else should I expect from the likes of humans?
They began to hide among the crates, hoping there would come a moment when they could sneak by me and escape for good. What an interesting fantasy that was. Any human that tried to make a break for the room's only entrance and exit was torched beyond recognition. I spread by fiery breath across the room, melting crates and any human that hid behind it. With all the smoke I created, I expected the automatic sprinklers to go off. Whenever I would roar, they would whimper in response, smothered by their fear of me.
I would not give them the curtsey of talking in their filthy dialect. They would not have the pleasure of knowing what I planned to do with them. Besides, to talk in their language would be like tainting my own body with their foulness. If I did that, I would have to let Crocomire use my tongue as his toothpick. No, I merely slashed, impaled, and torched every human I came across. It's quite addictive, I don't know when I stopped. I only remember that every one of them was dead and it was time to leave the station.
But when turning to leave, the door opened to reveal yet another human. This one was very different from the others I had killed. This human I simply knew as Samus Aran, the cancer of our very existence. She was a bounty hunter, and her actions had demonstrated a long time ago, that she would not stop until we were wiped from the face of the universe. I must admit, I admired her persistence and the challenge she presented. This was the only human that ever put up a fight worth remembering.
Through that green visor, she began to scan the area. The visor that belonged to a suit humans were incapable of creating. That suit provided her with incredible agility and flexibility. It also provided her with many weapons I was all too familiar with. This time, I would not give her the chance of using them. But my mind could not help but wonder, what brought her here? Ah, the alarms. They shut off because she was responding to the emergency beacon. She came back to save whoever she could.
As usual, the bounty hunter was too late.
I retreated into the shadows and perched on the Metroid container. I was fairly surprised it supported me, but quickly focused on Samus who was checking the room. It was merely about patience now. Then she spotted the container as the Metroid screeched out repeatedly. Her fixation made it impossible for her to recognize my yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. Instead she moved closer to the Metroid container. Closer, and closer, and closer...
Then I had my moment. I burst from the shadows with claws outstretched. I was going to tear her into two. But whatever instincts she had caused her to roll away at the last second. Anyone who was still alive could hear my claw scrape against her metal suit. When looking down at my claw, I could see a fleck of red paint. I was so close... The bounty hunter wasted no more time and fired back. The first blast to hit me only shot my confidence to immeasurable heights. Her arm cannon had become weak since last time we met. Either that, or I had become that much stronger.
"Ridley? You bastard!"
Her surprise was understandable. What she failed to realize, that if you cannot kill Mother Brain, then you cannot kill me. No matter what damage or wound you think you accomplish, it is nothing as long as Mother Brain lives.
"What the hell are you doing here?" She continued to yell in anger.
I shot my tail forward and knocked her across the room. She hit the wall with a loud clatter, but landed on her feet and continued to fire those weak shots at me. They made their mark, but were too pathetic to stop me. I roared to make it known her cause was a losing one. My wings took me into the air and I quickly dove, ready to tear her suit to pieces. But I had temporarily forgotten the Metroid in my talons. I froze and hovered over her, hesitating.
"The Metroid? But why..." She paused, piecing thing together. "Mother brain can't be..."
It was slightly reassuring to find she hadn't fallen so far as to be incompetent in-between our meetings. But it was then I regained my senses and breathed a firestorm on her position. She stumbled back covering her visor due to the immense light created from the flames and fell down. This move was not completely without grace, as she quickly fired more weak blaster shots at me. I tore at her with my claws, sending her rolling into another wall.
Her suit was losing it's durability, and she was beginning to tire. Sparks shot from the joints around her elbows and her movement became sluggish. It was time to say goodbye to my rival, a bittersweet victory. I drew back both of my arms to crush her in one swoop. Even with her blaster pointed directly at my head, I knew it wouldn't be enough to save her. But then everything was ruined. The red flashing lights returned with a computerized voice that made both of us look into the air.
"Warning! Self-destruct sequence initiated. Evacuate Colony immediately."
I roared out in pure anger. Again and again. No! This can't be happening! My chances of revenge ruined! I began to think, how could this have happened? Who was left alive to trigger such an action? Perhaps a scientist was not as dead as I made them out to be, and activated it seeing Samus was too late. I stared at her as she stared at me. I couldn't be caught in this station when it exploded, no matter how badly I wanted her dead.
As far as Mother Brain was concerned, the Metroid was more important than my very life.
Samus made a weak attempt to stop me as I spread my wings and darted through the doorway, back the way I came. In the observation room, I could see a blood trail snake across the room to a computer panel, where bloody fingertips and handprints were easily visible. Damn humans! I should have eaten them all! But now was no time to be blinded by rage. The station was coming apart at the seams, and there was no telling when it would explode and take everything inside with it. The little Metroid began to squeak repeatedly as if missing the company of the bounty hunter.
Once I had gone back through the labs, I scrambled up the elevator shaft as hot steam burst from pipes. The burning sensation was relaxing, I couldn't wait to return to Planet Zebes and Norfair. When I reached the docking bay, I darted past Samus's ship and spat flames over the docking bay door to open it. Explosions ran along the edges of the station, it wouldn't be long now. If I wanted to make it out with my tail in one piece, I had to get as far away as possible. As for Samus... hopefully, her suit was damaged enough to make it impossible for her to escape.
Then it came.
The light was tremendous even after I cleared the asteroid field. The blast sent countless debris and whatever asteroid was not strong enough to resist it, flying away from the colony. I did not see the bounty hunters ship and for what I could do, I spread my face into a smile. The flight back was longer than the one to the station, maybe Samus's blaster had done more to me than I felt. But soon I could see the welcoming Planet Zebes surface and made more of an effort to arrive there quickly. The re-entry felt good to my body as the heat flared up, and the Metroid container I found could withstand that as well. This would be a cylinder not easily cracked, but Mother Brain would think of something and I could finally return to Norfair to recover and await my next orders...
-End of Line
--Closing Ridley Log
---Next Entry: Kraid