"Did you encounter any new creatures in Maridia?" Fluttershy asked eagerly as the group once more took their seats around the table in the Crystal Castle.
"A few," Samus admitted. Since Spike had decided to make everyone some snacks, she'd taken over telling the story until he returned to the kitchen. "Unfortunately, we didn't get much more than a few glimpses here and there. Even though he couldn't use his breath attacks underwater, with rare exception anything smaller than Spike ran and hid as soon as they felt his approach. The more concerning enemies were the Space Pirates we encountered. Their new underwater armor was resistant to all the weapons I had at my disposal at that time, and Spike's melee strikes were only able to inflict so much damage."
"How were they that big a threat?" Rainbow demanded angrily. "I mean, you'd been kicking their flanks from here to Manehatten until now. What changed?"
"They successfully reverse engineered my Gravity Suit," Samus explained. "Not only did it give them unmatched maneuverability in an aquatic environment, the pressurized suit made them immune to beams and missiles, and the high heat explosions of my Power Bombs just weren't effective underwater."
"Wow..." Rainbow murmured, stunned. "That...that sucks."
"If it was that tough, how come all the troops weren't wearing it?" Scootaloo demanded.
"Probably too expensive to produce for all of them," Twilight offered. "Whether time, scarcity of the required materials, or simple cost of programming all the circuitry."
"That, and it wasn't that unstoppable," Spike added as he brought in some snacks for everyone. "There was a weapon Mom got later that let her deal with them more easily. But in the meantime, we mostly just avoided them."
"The one enemy we encountered frequently in Maridia that was a real concern were the Mochtroids," Samus continued, shivering slightly. "They were less complex, failed clones of little Squishy. They could drain energy like Metroids...but couldn't maintain a grip, and were much less sturdy."
"We think the Pirates were trying to find multiple ways to mass produce Metroids," Spike offered, "but gave up that method because they deemed the result useless. I can understand why, I guess. I mean, they died from a shot of Mom's grapple beam... or one punch from me."
"Those poor creatures," Fluttershy murmured sadly.
Samus waited until Fluttershy seemed a bit more at peace with that before continuing. "Not long after first encountering the Mochtroids, we came across a large, brown sea serpent that hid in tunnels inside the walls before swimming out to try and attack us. Looking it up later, I learned it was called a Botwoon."
"How'd that fight go?" Gandrayda asked curiously.
Samus snorted in amusement. "Fight?" she replied jokingly, turning to give Spike a playful glare. Spike merely smiled innocently, licking his lips, much to the amusement of those around them.
"So what was next in your quest for equipment to take Ridley down?" Shining Armor asked curiously. "That new weapon you mentioned?"
"Nope," Samus countered. "My Space Jump. As this was the original Chozo construction, it was much more effective, letting me jump continuously in the air, getting an immense amount of height if I timed the jumps right."
"Of course to get that, we needed to fight the Draygon," Spike explained. "It was a massive green creature that swam in the depths of Maridia..."
As Samus and Spike entered the massive underwater chamber, a massive creature swooped down on them. It had a dark green carapace over its back with a greenish-yellow underbelly, a large sting for a tail, and numerous pincer-like arms. Its eyes locked on the pair with baleful fire as it rocketed at them, trying to pierce them with its stinger.
Spike quickly swam to the top of the chamber, trying to both get a strike at its head and divide its attention. Samus stayed low to the ground, trying to find a weak point. After a few dives, the creature came in slower, spitting globs of gunk from its mouth. As Samus came in to try and get a good shot, she wound up stuck in the gray goop, and grabbed by the creature.
Snarling in rage, Spike dove in, trying to make the creature let her go, but only succeeded in driving the creature closer to the walls and breaking the covers off several power couplings, revealing their sparking circuitry. Seeing this, Samus got an idea. Switching to her grapple beam, she locked onto the circuitry.
She clenched her teeth as the electricity raced through her suit and body, but could hear the screams of pain from the creature. With its claws stuck in the goo, it couldn't release her to escape the damage. Before long, the goo burst apart, and the creature fell to the sandy bottom, barely alive.
As Spike swam over to Samus, much smaller versions of the creature - smaller than Samus herself - swam up to it, gently pulling it into the sand while hissing at Samus, trying to stay between her and the large creature.
"The only reason it attacked us," Samus began sadly, "was because the Space Jump power up we were after was in its nest. It saw us as a threat to its young..."
"It was...sobering..." Spike murmured softly, trying not to see the shocked faces of those listening.
Everyone remained silent for a time, not sure what to say. Eventually, Spike spoke up again. "The rest of Maridia wasn't as fun after that," he admitted. "The only things of note were when we collected Mom's Spring Ball upgrade - which let her jump in Morph Ball mode - and the other weapon we mentioned, the Plasma Beam."
"Unlike on Tallon IV," Samus explained, "this Plasma Beam was a different mode for my normal beam, which could be alternated with the Spazer function. Instead of three equidistant beams, it launched two beams that swirled around each other...and penetrated through creatures as easily as the Wave beam function did walls."
"After that..." Spike paused to take a deep breath before continuing, his eyes flinty with rage at what he was remembering. "After that, we went after Ridley..."
Time to kick Ridley's sorry ass yet again! At least the Bottle Ship is the last time she fights the original Ridley.
6880628 for now at least, we have YET to see the new metroid prime game for the wii-u
6880734 good point.
Kick Ridley's ass and make him admit who the better dragon is!!!
6880734 i think they said they were thinking about it, but with how Other M was i don't know if they will fuck it up or not.
It's eyes locked on the pair
1. Its.
You really are going through this at lightning speed.
They had a sense of self preservation.
They managed to create armor that not only allows them to move freely in water, but it makes them immune to all but the Plasma Beam.
You have no idea.
Maybe.
Oh jeez, THOSE. Annoying, but easily dispatched.
KInda pathetic, the grapple beam is really not meant for combat, more for puzzles so when THAT can kill them, yeah.
Oh jeez, hitting that thing was a pain.
Did it taste any good?
Oh VERY useful. I mean later versions allowed you to jump again whenever you wanted but, this was an older version, so you had to be careful with your timing, often using the Grapple Beam and Wall jumping instead of Space Jumping made things a lot easier.
Ah yes, that. Not much of a fight, mostly just a matter of getting the timing to grab onto one of the electrical grapple beam nodes right, not as easy as you'd think. Plus, guy hits like a truck.
Of course. Then again, I don't think I've seen anyone do that fight any other way, yes you take a lot of damage, but hey, the programmers obviously knew you'd try it since there's a recharge station almost immediately after.
Yet despite that, it was part of the 4 statues that guarded the entrance to New Tourian, so it was Space Pirate affiliated.
Ah yes, the Spring Ball. LOVE that.
Ah yes. THAT fight. I swear, he killed me at least a dozen times before I finally beat him.
so....what happened to the young?
6880920 using grapple beam on the electricity pods is clearly very intended.
Shinesparking him, on the other hand, is very not intended (Google blue suit). An alternative way to kill him that doesn't need grapple.
6880628 Err, no. Super Metroid is the last time Samus fights the original Ridley. The Ridley fought in Other M is a clone, hence why we see it go through different stages before becoming the iconic dragon.
6880934 I think they let them go. As well as not kill the boss.
6881338
As is the one on the BSL Research station. Though as to that, it's never really been clear how Ridley's corpse got there.
Personally, I think they did that because of the history between Ridley and Samus. She has an understandable hatred for Space Pirates, but it was Ridley who destroyed her home, killing her parents in the process.
6881574 Yeah, not really sure how there even was a Ridley corpse for the X to infect. Samus kills Ridley on Zebes, then destroys the planet. Does Samus destroy the Bottle Ship at the end of Other M? If she didn't, then maybe the Galactic Federation recovered the corpse and preserved it on BSL?
6880765 I am talking after corruption, Other M was a prequel not a sequel
6881577 probably cause the only part of the bottle ship that was destroyed was the metroid sector when Adam made the section disengage and blow up with him inside
6881591 yea it would be nice if the sequel they planned to prime 3 came out, but i was talking about the terrible control scheme and story from Other M influencing the next game that comes out.
6881643 it wasn't THAT bad, agreed VERY annoying but not that bad when i first played it it was a twist i kinda enjoyed but the surveying for shit like the GREEN BLOOD on the GREEN GRASS ugh THAT was highly aggrivating, or finding the "little" person in the glass ACROSS the area
6881687 i could not get past the control scheme.
Another enjoyable chapter. Good job.
6881599 Guessing that the part of the Bottle Ship that you fight Ridley in was not part of the section that Adam ejected, then? Though I wonder why the hell the GF even cloned Ridley to begin with, and then preserved his corpse.
6882121 cloned to tame it but it turned out to be a cute fuzzy furball at first so they thought it was harmless then evolution happenned and became what we know as ridley and as for preserving it, to study for faster kills NOT bring it back to life cause they found out that was a BAD idea after the bottle ship
6882326 Study to kill it faster? But he's dead, like 3 times over. Also, I feel like they could have easily just made a Ridley simulation based off of combat data recorded by Samus' suit if that was their reasoning. And there was no way they would have not known what Ridley would turn into. If GF researchers would be surprised by anything, it'd be Ridley's infant and adolescent stages.
Side note: Evolution did not happen. Metamorphsis did. Ridley is not a Pokemon, and evolution in real life takes place gradually over decades and millenia.
6882342
While everything but the reason to clone it could be true...
Ridley's cells were on Samus' suit - along with the Metroid cells - when she came back from Zebes. When they got that chick thing, they didn't know it was Ridley.
6882342 and in come the gramar nazi's i'm out peace
6882344 I wasn't correcting your grammar (which was fine, btw), just correcting your terminology.
A year or so after i last re-read this fic and i just noticed.
Should be