The cave systems of this new world were a confusing mess to Ridley. It was not the darkness of the area, nor the strange beetles and centipedes and other strange menaces that lurked down there. Even the rock-beasts known as thwomps they frequently dodged hadn’t bothered the dragon king very much at all. The labyrinthine tunnels of Zebes looked much like this, and all the more dangerous and violent for the denizens and passageways within. No, the true issue lay within the pipes they travelled through. The nonsensical passageways across the worlds that Nothing There and Ridley travelled through were marked by green, metallic piping - but the places they took them to were not the places such small tunnels should have lead to. It took him a few trips through the pipes to pin down the uncomfortable feeling, but it hit him eventually - they weren’t simply travelling through a tunnel, but some sort of unknown, warping technology.
“
Not technology.” Phantoon spoke up, the creature focusing on pushing forward, the beast clawing through a pair of turtle-shaped beasts before it.
“No? Then what, you old prune?” Ridley snapped.
“
Still so feisty, and when I’ve been nothing but helpful…” Phantoon cut back. “
Your irritation is curious, but wearing thin, reptile.”
The silence between them was palpable. Nothing There had, for the moment, been left behind them as Phantoon’s unique ability to phase through things had made most of the levels they’d handled relatively simple to pass.
“...why?” Ridley finally snapped.
Phantoon’s pixellated arms wiggled.
“
Why am I helpful, Ridley? You are a fellow pirate general.”
“And you’ve
never cared about that. Not under mother brain. Not before Mother brain. You were a bloated tick on a crashed ship. Now, you’ve haunted me.
Why.”
Phantoon’s pause rankled Ridley enough to snap, but the old squid spoke up a heartbeat too soon for Ridley’s irritation to truly catch fire.
“
Mother Brain is gone. Another dark pretender seeks to take this system I am trapped in for its own. And you ask why?” Phantoon asked.
The creature’s eyes rolled around, three hundred sixty. “
There are more threats to your way of life than you know, Ridley. Beasts of Dream and thought and magic. Creatures that threaten your way of life. Things that fight in the way that the hunter would never conceive of. You are blind to these threats, these battles.”
“So you turn to me for protection?”
“
And guide you to a place where all your muscle and posture and fire is useless. Look around you, you arrogant godly pretender. What would you do with all of this, free of me? Try and bathe it in fire? Wait for it to burn away? Find a larger laser?” Phantoon snapped, and his psychic shriek was more than hot enough to start producing an earache in Ridley’s ears.
“So you seek to humble me?” The Dragon snapped. His eyes remained fixated.
“
Useless even for my abilities.” Phantoon snapped, and Ridley caught a hint of amusement, before it continued.
“
...Zebes is gone. You were meant to die with it, old bird. Mother brain is a memory. The space pirates are lost.”
Ridley growled, but an exhaustion entered his tone, as his headache only seemed to increase as time went on. “I tire of your riddles. Tell me of the here and now.”
Phantoon stopped for a moment, and replied with a voice as calm as a graveyard.
“
Some strange power, much like my own, suffuses these pipes. No technology will avail you with these. They operate under their own rules. Which means you will have to learn them as we go, Dragon.”
Ridley’s response would have been an eye roll if he wasn’t currently situated within Phantoon’s own innards. “Then
continue, Phantoon.”
As the pair floated forwards finally, Nothing There finally appeared from within the distance, deftly avoiding platform after platform as it and its pilot appeared from the morass in the distance.
“Waiting for me, Lord Ridley?”
Ridley’s response was one of annoyance, one that seemed to give Phantoon no small sense of satisfaction, as they headed forward.
“Let’s go. The next pipe is here.” Ridley commanded, as Phantoon neared a pipe seemingly leading up. As far as he’d navigated this cave system, these lead towards the next land in a linear fashion - as Lilith had found out when unsuccessfully trying to go back down.
The two headed in, and the quartet found themselves walking into… a cave system, again. A familiar one, in fact, as the pipe brought them into a familiar looking cavern, and Ridley’s hackles raised.
“Oh god, what is this sh1t?” Lilith swore, as she looked around, figuring it out a second after Ridley did. This was the
same level again, somehow.
“These places have
alternate paths. We’ve seen that already, Lilith. Keep your wits about you and find them!” Ridley replied with a snarl, his anger already growing at this ridiculous place.
“Sure thing, boss, I’ll spread the secret to this fu¢ker open like a centaur at a brothel.”
Phantoon’s confusion was immediately legible as it stared through Nothing There with one eye.
“
Your newest companion of the void is a disgusting creature.”
“Yet I prefer her company over yours.” Ridley spat back, low enough so that Lilith couldn’t hear him.
Or, at least he thought so, before pixellated smiles appeared all across Nothing There’s fleshy body.
It was, all things considered, a very bad day.
It only took moments of turtle kicking and pipe smashing to find their way to a new entrance, as Lilith and her monster of many eyes found a secret pipe, hidden behind a brick wall.
“Master, I found it! Let’s get ready to open ‘er up!”
Brutally smashing her literally meaty fists into the nearby wall, Lilith opened up the room to the next cave, allowing them to continue on into the pipe, and the pair dove down, ready to say goodbye to this cursed world for good.
Coming out of the pipe, Ridley looked around, ready to see something that wasn’t an obnoxiously familiar cave, only to find themselves… in the middle of the area they’d been in before. The resurrected minions that now barred their path anew almost would’ve fooled him otherwise, but the familiar symbols and hieroglyphs in the background gave it away.
“Grahh!” Ridley snapped, and a mental snap against Phantoon urged the Squid forward, as Lilith followed along.
“Master?” Lilith called out, but the dragon had no time, no interest in listening to his assistant’s drivel as he pushed Phantoon forward, determined to push himself up the first pipe. Surely, that was the solution!
With a speed that could have set a record, the Dragon re-entered the first exit pipe, returned to the entrance, smashed his way through a second set of hidden blocks, found a hidden staircase of vines, Broke his way into heaven amidst a set of easily dispatched hammer bros, and threw himself down a third pipe with a speed only wrath could create.
Only to be sent to a pipe directly next to the entrance pipe.
The dragon was ready to
scream, as he re-appeared, only for Phantoon to pipe up, a clear level of anger from his tone.
“
Perhaps, before you indulge us your pompous singing voice, we could try going back down the pipe, Ridley?”
Ridley’s response was almost to snap, before realizing he’d strained his own psychic link to the point he was practically dragging Phantoon by the leash.
“...
Proceed.” a livid Ridley hissed.
Phantoon pushed himself back down the pipe, and a fuming Ridley came upwards to find the same familiar caverns…
Only, up through a different pipe than the one they’d entered. One further in the cavern. A feat that finally forced through Ridley’s patience and left him squawking at the top of his considerable lungs and shaking the caverns at this newest irritation for a full half a minute, leaving the area considerably quieter afterwards.
“...
Have you snapped, or is this simply more of what I’ve come to expect from you.” Phantoon taunted.
“Spend more time moving and less time questioning my decisions. Remember who’s in control, Phantoon.”
“
Yet you continue to take the reins, General Ridley. Do you not see it?” Phantoon cut back.
Ridley snarled… and yet the snarl died in his throat. The madness of the situation, the ridiculousness of the pipes, and his own irritated reaction finally came together for a realization.
What the hell was he doing?
Phantoon, for all his faults, was most certainly capable of doing the grunt work of clearing these caves and moving to pipes without Ridley’s direction. Nothing There was more than capable of scouting where he couldn’t. And here the head of WYVERN was wasting his time by spending so much mental effort in direct involvement.
The realization did the unthinkable, and Ridley found himself, perhaps for one of the first times in his life, in a moment of self-reflection.
The irritation from before wasn’t meaningless. It wasn’t frustration at his defeat. Nor was it some strange irritation at his victory.
As the space pirate’s head of security, Darkseid’s general, or even as he worked to establish Wyvern, Ridley was always at the front. Before he became a space pirate, even as a hatchling, Ridley was at the head of his life and goals, and accomplished them personally, with two bloody claws.
Now, though, there was no mother brain. No space pirate council. No Darkseid. Just Ridley, at the top of the food chain, where he belonged. And as he’d taken that position, he no longer lead from the front in every event. He had people to take charge for him, as he had taken charge of armies for others. WYVERN was ruled by Lord Ridley with an iron fist, but that iron fist did not require him to leave his throne for every little incident.
And now, in command of a beast greater than any of Darkseid’s little toys, he focused far too much on his muscles, his martial prowess, when Phantoon’s was more than enough.
He was acting as Ridley, the space pirate general, when what was needed to solve this maze was Ridley, the supreme commander of WYVERN.
A satisfied feeling came through the mental link, but Ridley was too mentally fatigued to be irritated at the moment. Nothing There appeared shortly after, as Phantoon looked around.
“Err, boss, you okay?”
Ridley didn’t answer, merely observing. The symbols on the wall were in different positions, on each go-around, meaning that something was shifting with each return visit. “Lilith. I want you to go through every pipe on the left. Ten times. Then tell me where you were deposited.”
To most, this would have been menial work. To Lilith, this was a buzz-kill. But she was WYVERN’s head enforcer, and she wouldn’t dream of ignoring a direct order like this.
“...if that’s what gets us out of here.”
And so, Ridley watched, as Nothing There entered the pipe, and Reality, briefly, blinked. His hawklike eyes noticed as the smell changed and the symbols moved. Previously, he had ignored their shapes, but now…
Now he understood. Various pictures on the wall corresponded to various areas of the cave. Where they’d go was outlined hundreds of feet out on the wall to every pipe, and as Lilith moved through, the locations would shift a few feet - to the left or up, depending on the pipe.
With one location in particular being of interest. An area that looked nothing like the cave, and more like a castle’s garrison.
And Ridley gave a crook’s smile as he saw it. “Lilith, through the far pipe one more time.” He commanded, not even waiting for her or her beast to speak up, though Nothing There did call out ‘
I have a PhD for god’s sakes’ in response. Lilith clearly had more faith in his plan as she pushed the kaiju forward and - with an exaggerated sigh, went pipe moving again.
Finally, as she did so, the jackpot was struck, as the pipe Ridley sat on matched perfectly with the plan they were given, and Lilith came back to him.
“Okay, Lord Ridley, I did it. Geez, I've gone through so many pipes… Hey, after we're out of here, how about you go down mine?””
Ridley’s response was to go down the pipe with phantoon in tow.
“Come, Lilith.”
An annoyed huff echoed through the pipe as he went down the tube, and mercifully, castle walls surrounded them.
“I’ve figured it out.” Ridley finally stated, as he stepped into the castle.
“...was that a
joke?” Lilith asked aloud, as Phantoon already began moving through the area.
“Do
not dawdle, Lilith.”
“Of course not, Master!” Lilith called, a certain satisfaction entering her voice. Ridley was back to being crass, arrogant, always on the move, and filled with venom - just the way she liked him.
1980 words/post
2,956 words/total
