"Aww!" Fluttershy squealed happily as she and everyone else stared at the picture Samus provided of the 'Little Birdie'. "Ridley was so cute as an infant!"
All faces around the table spun to her, most in confusion but four completely stunned. "How'd you know that was Ridley?" Samus demanded.
Fluttershy blinked in surprise. "You mean I was right?" she asked, shocked. "It's just, I used to play video games with Rainbow Dash when we were younger up in Cloudsdale, and thinking of it in terms of video games with what you said about how Ridley somehow got cloned from cells on your suit at the Bottleship and all that, I just thought about what Rainbow would call the worst, most obvious, most irritating twist that couldn't even be called that that could come out of bad writing..." She blushed. "Not that it's your fault this would qualify as that, you just lived through it after all...I'm sorry..." Meeping quietly, Fluttershy hid behind her mane.
"Wait..." Rainbow spoke up. "You mean that's really Ridley?" she demanded, pointing at the picture. When she got a confirming nod, she rolled her eyes. "Great. He seemed like a big bad before now, but now I've lost all respect for him."
"How can anything so evil be so...tiny?" Rarity demanded, stunned.
"Parasprites," Twilight reminded her.
Rarity thought about that, then shrugged. "Fair enough."
"How does he survive like that, anyway?" Scootaloo demanded. "Act super cute around anything bigger than him so they'll baby him until he's eaten enough to become a monster?"
"Basically, yeah," Spike agreed. "Not that uncommon a survival trait, actually."
Pinkie Pie suddenly burst out laughing. "You're telling me Ridley's a Gremlin?" she gasped out.
As everyone burst out laughing at that, revealing that some things show up no matter how the culture develops, Samus could only shrug, gasping out, "Basically!"
As laughter surrounded the table, Shining Armor spoke up through his gasps. "Don't get your Ridley wet!"
"And don't feed him after midnight!" Anthony agreed, extending his clenched fist to bump with Shining's hoof.
Even Adam managed a chuckle or two. "The Mogwai called, they want their schtick back."
"At that size, Ridley doesn't have one!" Spike gasped out, startling even more laughter.
Amidst the amusement, Luna - the only one not laughing - leaned towards her sister. "...I don't get it," she whispered.
Celestia stifled her own giggles. "I'll show you the film another time," she promised.
Once the laughter died down, Samus got back to the business at hand. "Yes, that was Ridley, though we didn't realize it at the time," she confirmed. "Even Spike didn't recognize him...though somehow, I think he recognized us. As soon as he caught sight of us watching him, he raced away into the bushes."
"Before we could go investigate, Adam managed to unlock another door for us and ordered us through to continue our investigation of the Biodome," Spike added. "But when we went to continue...he was watching us."
"It was...unsettling, to say the least," Samus admitted, "but Adam locked the hatch behind us, so we weren't too worried at the time." More relaxed, she continued the tale. "The next few areas seemed to be much more expansive, but we quickly discovered that much of it was holographic backdrops. That frustrated Spike more than me, I'll admit."
"You try flying into an expansive sky, only to bang your beak against a wall you couldn't see!" Spike snapped back, causing more stifled giggles, save from Rainbow, Celestia, and Luna, who all wrinkled their muzzles sympathetically.
"Despite those hurdles," Samus continued, "things were more or less smooth sailing for us until we reached the subterranean control room. At first, it seemed like we'd just have to fight some more cloaking lizards, but once we got past the navigation room..."
As the pair of Hunters entered the next chamber, two floating mechanical drones descended from the ceiling to confront them. At first it seemed they would be easy enough to deal with, but they were rather more heavily armored than they first appeared. Samus' beam weapons and missiles bounced right off the drones, as did Spike's beam focused breath weapons, and they moved too fast for Spike to get a good grip on. After a time, however, the drones pulled some of their armor back, revealing energy projection points. On an impulse, Samus tried firing there, and found that part could be damaged. With that discovery, the fight was quick and brutal, as they each took one drone.
When Spike dealt with his first one, a third one dropped down, which he dealt with in much the same way. When all three were destroyed, a strange device remained. Samus went to collect it...and found it absorbed into her suit, her Arm Cannon registering a new function.
Diffusion Beam acquired.
Charged Beam blast will scatter after impact.
"And here I was beginning to think you wouldn't get anything new this time around," Rainbow chuckled, rubbing her hooves together. "What with you coming in with a full arsenal."
Samus smirked at that. "Well, it was one of the few," she admitted. "Still quite useful against large groups. Nearly as effective as Spike spraying his different breath weapons." She frowned. "Of course, on our way out..."
As the pair moved to leave the Subterranean Control Room, a large worm with a mouth full of sharp teeth, which they'd encountered once in some underground tunnels, burst through the metal walls, roaring. Another worm head - whether another worm or its other end was difficult to determine - burst through nearby.
Samus and Spike both prepared for battle as the worm ends began firing electrical energy at them in concentrated spheres. While Spike drew their fire, Samus locked on and fired a missile after the energy was released, forcing each worm out of the walls. Spike then followed up by slamming into the worms to down them, allowing Samus to finish them off with a diffusion blast straight down their throats.
With both worms taken down the same way, the path was cleared for the pair to continue onward, returning to where the controls inside had opened a path at another Navigation Room.