Hunter Ridley, ch. 2

“Graaaaahhh,” Ridley groaned, waking up to general pain across his body. It took him a moment to remember why he hurt. When he did, he started looking around, seeing if it had worked. Looking at the machine, he knew that it had. As he stood and began to move, the soreness began to fade, kinks from his size reduction working themselves out.  

He stood before his new Power Suit. Now, the size ratio was right. The shrink had worked to perfection, leaving him exactly the size he’d wanted. Smiling, he pressed a button on the console next to the RPS, the Ridley Power Suit, as he’d decided to call it. With the help of robot arms, he donned the armor.

“Time for the first test,” he thought aloud. Stretching his wings, he tried to fly. After a moment, once the suit had adapted to his wings, his feet left the ground. Aided by power from the suit, he began flying around the room. It was a bit harder than usual, his muscles weren’t as powerful, but with aid from the suit he could do it. “If nothing else, I can install a jetpack later,” he mused as he landed. Now, not only could he go through the smaller passageways, he could still fly to gain an advantage over Aran.

If he survived the next test. He knew the danger he was putting himself in with this, but he needed a way to exploit the slender tunnels that Aran used to evade them so often. He hoped that he had enough Chozo technology to make this work. “Open the container.”

MORPH BALL CONTAINMENT UNIT OPENING

The mechanical voice echoed in the room, and then the containment system around the Morph Ball began to de-activate. As soon as the last shield was clear of the unit, Ridley reached in and grabbed the power-up. Everything turned white.



“Sir! General Ridley!”

“Look, over there! Is that Aran?!?”

“No, that’s probably the general. He was planning to test his new system as soon as it was operable.”

The voices of the two guards brought Ridley around. His vision was blurry, his body numb, and he was dizzy. But by the sound of what they were saying, he was now in the Morph Ball.

“General, are you alright in there?” the first guard asked, bending over the Morph Ball.

“Does he even have a way to answer?” called the second.

As his vision cleared, Ridley looked around. He was now very low to the ground, and staring his bodyguard in the face. He had regained feeling in his wings, but nothing else, which only made him a little concerned. Now how does this thing work? he asked himself. As he thought about rolling, suddenly, he did. The Morph Ball tapped directly into his mind, responding as if part of his own body. He realized that his wings had become the shell of the ball.

“Waah! It’s moving!” Ridley wondered if that second guard ought to be replaced. He couldn’t take surprises well.

“Of course it’s moving,” the other scolded. “Now let’s get out of the way so he has room to work with it.”

What about the bombs? He tried what he thought would lay a bomb, but nothing happened. He tried something else, and a message appeared before his eyes. BOMBS NONFUNCTIONAL, UPGRADE REQUIRED. He wasn’t too surprised that the bombs were a different upgrade than the Morph Ball, once he thought about it, but that didn’t make it less annoying. And how do I…

His thought was cut off as he suddenly found himself standing again. It had only taken thinking about it for it to work, he realized. His experiment was a success! Now, to track down Samus Aran.

“Sir! Good to see that it’s working, sir!” the first guard said as Ridley walked out of the chamber.

“Wha? That’s general Ridley?” The first guard cuffed the second on the head.

“I told you that he was minimizing himself, and you should’ve known anyways,” he scolded.

“You two!” Ridley snapped.

Both guards snapped to attention. “Yes sir!”

He first turned to the second one. “You are relieved of duty on my guard. I can’t rely on someone this skittish or scatterbrained. Go report to patrol.”

“Y-yes sir…” he stammered. He saluted and started walking away.

“Run!” his former partner shouted. The guard sprinted until he was out of sight. “Knowing him, sir, you may want to check the tape to see if he kept running.”

“Indeed. What is your name, soldier?”

“Kraid, sir, named after…your former partner.”

Ridley thought about his fallen friend. A fellow hero of the Space Pirates, he had fallen at the hands of Samus on the planet Zebes. “It is a good name.” He thought for a moment. “Come with me.”

“Sir!” Kraid replied, and began following Ridley through the frigate. Unused to actually walking, Ridley was somewhat unstable at first, though he soon got the feel of it. Even though previously many portions of it had been inaccessible to him, Ridley knew the layout of the ship well, and easily found his way to his destination. Punching in a passcode that opened the door, Ridley led Kraid into the room.

“Kraid, welcome to my personal training room.” Ridley motioned to the large room. He could easily move around in it when he was large, so now it was truly enormous. It was the perfect place to get used to using his new weaponry. But first… “Soldier, show me what you can do!” Ridley activated a control panel, and started a training routine.

“Yes sir!” Kraid replied, and he sprang into action. Drones appeared out of the floor, and he methodically attacked each. Most, he sliced with his short blades, only occasionally falling back on his blaster.

“Very good, captain. Your commando training is obvious.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, I’m well aware that you are only an enlisted soldier. But you are now the captain of my body guard, filling the vacancy left open by my former captain’s recent death.” Ridley had pulled up the file of Kraid’s military history while he had been training, and liked what he saw. Kraid was old, for a Space Pirate soldier, even for a commando. (The first Kraid was of a species with exceptionally long lifespans, and had been a hero well before this soldier was born.) He had several years of experience under his belt, including from the wars with the Federation before the alliance had been forged. “And a pilot?” Ridley looked at Kraid, curious.

“In an emergency, yes. I helped cover a wounded frigate as it prepared for a hyperjump. Half of our fighter pilots were on shore leave, so we had many ships with no one to fly them.”

“And you led a wing of Fliers, untrained as pilots, in a strike that not only protected the wounded ship, but took out several enemies in the process.”

“The fighter controls aren’t so different from a jetpack, sir.” Ridley smiled. He’d not embarrass the soldier more by pointing out that he had taken down more enemy ships than any other pilot in that fight. “After that, I was promoted to Commando training.”

“And you’ve survived an encounter with Aran?”

“Barely, sir. I was wounded, but she didn’t deliver a death blow, though had I been found much later than I was, it wouldn’t have mattered.” That was an understatement as well. The salvage team had been very surprised to find Kraid still alive with the wounds he had, and strong enough to be transported to a med bay for treatment.

“I must say, I’m very impressed with this record. I dare say it rivals my own. I would frankly be honored to have a soldier with your experience commanding my guard.”

“Yes sir!” Kraid replied.

“I’d like you to begin thinking about the rest of the guard. Any others who should go, and any who you think are fit for the job. Your formal promotion will be handled soon. For now, though, I’d like you to stay and train with me.”

“Yes sir!” Kraid replied again, this time smiling. Ridley again activated the training sequence, and began learning how to fight in this new situation. This time, it would be Aran who would lay at his feet, not him at hers…