The Inter-Dimensional Courtship of Bowser Koopa

Chapter 8
A Beast Loose in the World


Sami took a long hard look at her last, whole MD tank unit. In one day her two-week defense of Orange Star’s front door came to a crushing end. Through the brisk morning’s first lights the APC had supplied the regular tanks with ammo. Immediately after, two neo tank units of the enemy rushed from the eastern forest. One destroyed the refreshed tank unit, the other attacked the MD tanks. What was left of the MD’s countered, their last salvo did little harm. They were dry, and when the Black Hole MD unit rushed out, it finished them off with no fear of reprisal. Regular tanks moved in and hit her rocket placements in the east city, reducing their firepower. The last to die was a mechanized unit at the hands of still more tanks. From the forest, a rocket unit along with mechanized infantry appeared and took their places behind the new enemy line of tanks. Any way Sami looked at it, Black Hole had enough firepower to eliminate every last deployed unit of hers in twenty-four hours.

The dispatch arrived before the smog of battle cleared from the horizon: --Black Hole has breached the western naval defense perimeter. Large enemy force spearheading the capital. Commander Andy’s forces moving to intercept. Will you assist?—

Sami finished staring at the last Md tanks through her standard issue binoculars. She might be able to hold the pass for another five days if she pulled her units back. What of that, if the capital fell? Her forces were in tatters, and Andy knew how to piece together banged up units.

Though many men had died to protect the pass, Sami gave the order to retreat. She ordered one infantry unit to remain behind and fire the missile in the silo at the clustered enemy for certain damage. Then they would fall back to the HQ and hold it against all on comers. They would be dead in day, she knew, but could see no other intelligent solution.

The retreat went according to plan with few casualties. Sami’s ride jostled and bucked as it rode over the littered rocks of the pass. Looking into the evening sky, she thought of Bowser, and his faraway world, imagining what it must be like. Her heart crumpled and bled within her, for she knew that the Koopa and the new home he offered were beyond her now. It was only a dream that would evaporate in the heat of what would surely be her—everyone’s—last battle. Already it grew difficult to believe he had ever existed, that their meeting had been real. Sami held her face firm against the coming sobs and hugged her machine gun to her chest.

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The first sign Samus and the others had that something was wrong came when the metal hatch of the aft containment cell was torn loose and thrown into the cockpit door with a resounding CLANG. In the time it takes to feel your heart leap, the clone had sprung from containment and into the center cabin of the small spacecraft. Bowser, who had been napping soundly enough to drool on himself, awoke with a start, both hands shooting into the air as a matter of reflex. Samus opened the cockpit door, looked out, and ducked back inside, sealing the door behind her. One glimpse was enough to tell her all she needed to know. Her Chozo armor was in its locker in the central cabin, which was now occupied by the bony reptile. Felicia remained to the side of the entrance. There was a harsh sound of metal ringing as the door suddenly grew into a small mountain of metal in the rough triangular shape of the Ridley clone’s muzzle.

Samus figured they had less than a minute before the door was knocked in. A creature such as Ridley was powerful enough to rip all three of them apart. Even in the Chozo armor, Samus had had to be careful of its jaws and whipping tail. There was only one tactic the situation allowed for. Strike quickly to stagger it, maybe even blind it. Then get to the suit. From there it would be a simple matter of punching a hole in it’s skin and opening the exit hatch. The vacuum of space would do the rest.

The bounty hunter looked to Felicia, unsure of what, if any, cooperation she could expect from the alien. The catwoman looked bewildered, but ready to pounce. Samus hated to put her in this situation, and almost said aloud that she didn’t expect her to fight. But she remained tightlipped. Anything she could say now would only cloud future actions.

Bowser was grateful to be ignored, for once. The red beast had gone straight for the cockpit entrance the second Samus had opened it. The retreat into his shell had been somewhat undignified, but afforded a low profile and a decent view of the thing’s activities from the floor. Before the beast could ram it’s long face into the door for a fifth time, the portal opened. Felicia appeared as an arrow, blurring blue and white. She attached herself to the thing’s face. With her arms wrapped around the dragon’s muzzle, she dug her claws in and attempted to hold the jaws together. She kicked at the beast’s throat with her hind claws, leg muscles flexing beautifully in the rush.

The clone’s head swung side-to-side vigorously, jaw muscles pushing Felicia’s arms aside. Double rows of teeth descended onto the cat woman’s torso. Bowser spat a ball of flaming saliva into the beast’s side, hoping to distract it. Fiery goo sloshed onto the thing’s side, causing it to take Felicia out of its mouth and blink at Bowser. The koopa king adopted a hunching stance he hoped the alien would find menacing, and stepped forward. There was a swish and cracking of air as the spiked tail of the space dragon clone whipped Bowser and sent him into the wall.

While the clone had been facing Bowser, its back was turned towards the weapon’s locker. Samus sprinted from the door while Felicia was still able to claw at the clone’s eyes. She was there when the beast tilted its head to the side, listening intently. As the armor of the Chozo enclosed on Samus it made a series of soft clicking noises. Samus gritted her teeth and shouted a war cry, knowing that she had made too much noise already.

A second before the suit was secure, and the weapon system activated, the beast was upon her. As if on instinct, it threw its clawed fingers into the narrowing seal of the suit. A gasp of surprise and horror escaped her lips as she realized she had been caught too early, and would be torn apart before she could even raise the gun arm.

Felicia pounced once more onto the space dragon, taking hold of the arm that clung to Samus’s suit. With all four paws digging their claws in, Felicia set her teeth to work on the sinewy limb. But like her claws, the catwoman’s teeth found little purchase in the clone’s hide. The clone brought its other claw around and swiped at Felicia, hitting her and nearly knocking her off. Felicia clung for dear life, but knew she could not hold fast through another blow. All the while, the clone refused to release the power suit and the harried woman inside.

The space dragon raised its free claw, ready to whip it at the struggling catwoman again when Bowser charged back into the fray. He caught the clone’s arm as it stretched back, holding it perpendicular to the beast’s side. Straining till his muscles bunched against his scaled hide, the koopa king yanked the arm to the clone’s back, as if trying to capture it in a twisting arm lock. The clone’s head thrashed and battered the starship’s ceiling, denting the metal as it fought to regain control over its body. Its legs were pinned beneath its bulk, too large for the small cabin to move freely. The clone’s impossibly long snout opened time after time, arching plasma hot fire at the koopa. But each time, Bowser sidestepped the cloud of flame or hid behind a part of the thing’s own body. Twice the dragon’s tale cracked against the koopa’s shell to no effect. Bowser held firm.

With a roar of impatience the clone removed its claws from Samus’s power suit to grab Bowser and kill him without further difficulty. Felicia moved with the arms, scrambling up to find a weak spot at the elbow joint. It was all the opening Samus would ever need.

The Chozo battle armor sealed, and its myriad of systems came to life. In the span of five seconds, Samus was in complete control. As the space dragon wrestled with the others in the confined cabin, the bounty hunter took careful aim of the creatures exposed collarbone. Locked on, she fired five super missiles, one right after the other. Her spaceship shuddered with the force of the explosions. The space dragon was still, everyone was frozen in the wake of the exploding Chozo ordinance. Time had stopped, as if fate hesitated over the course it would take

Then everything moved at once.

The bounty hunter had achieved her goal. A small hole was punched in the upper chest of the clone, close to where its stick neck joined the torso. Samus surged forward to strike the final blow. The clone moved too, bringing its face and tail forward to protect against the charging bounty hunter. Flame, teeth, and barbed tail struck in a fevered orgy of violence. As the blows hailed down upon her, Samus shifted to the maru-mari, her ball form, and rolled beneath, out of reach. Before the clone could adjust to this new attack, the armored ball had jumped into the chest wound, as a marble fitting into the pit of a highway’s surface. It remained there for a second and then fell away, leaving a small, twisting orb glued to the raw flesh.

Samus came back up to her normal form the instant she struck the ground, and saw that luck was, at last, with her. Felicia had been flung to the far wall, shaken loose during the fray. She stood now, somewhat dazed, but crouched defensively, ready to continue the fight. The bounty hunter was counting. She had seven seconds left on the bomb’s ten-second fuse. If the bomb were to go off in such a confined, pressurized space it would be the end of them all, save perhaps the dragon.

“Puuullll it!” she screamed through the suit’s speakers, pointing her armored index finger at a switch near the catwoman’s head.

Five seconds left.

The space dragon’s fire breath washed over Samus like a solar flare, draining her battle armor of its energy and pushing her off her feet, away to her end of the ship.

Three seconds left.

Felicia saw the bright yellow and red stripes painted over the large lever Samus had pointed out, and got the picture right away. Leaping forward, she pulled it down using her body’s full weight.

At first the lever hinged out slowly, resisting the pulling. Another second ticked by before it came out the rest of the way in one fluid motion. There was a clunch sound as something released and the ceiling hatch above the combatant’s head opened on the endless cold of space with a hydraulic purr. Felicia retained her grip on the lever to prevent being sucked away. Samus found her own grip and braced. The clone held on to nothing.

With one and a half seconds left on the fuse, the space dragon clone was shunted into the vacuum, with Bowser still clinging on to one arm. “No!” Samus shouted, and then they were gone.

The Koopa King felt an instant of truest cold. The vacuum of space tore at him, ready to turn him inside out as he hurtled though the cabin airlock. Then, it was dark, and he knew that he had once again crossed the threshold of one of Pit’s doorways.

For the clone, there was no escape, however. The super bomb detonated in a circle of destructive energy. The explosion itself was not enough to kill the great beast, for its frame was mighty and hard. It was the exposed wound that killed it, as its fluids and internal organs were torn through the unnatural opening in its chest, suddenly much deeper and wider thanks to the bomb. Skin and scale once strong enough to withstand even the rigors of naked space travel had been bypassed. The Ridley clone died with a silent gurgling scream.

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Author's update: Just two more chapters after this one. I honestly don't know what people think of my writing, but someone must like it from the # of hits I'm seeing, so that's nice. I was happy to use Bowser as a main character, and may do so again, along with another popular (and horribly overlooked) Mario antagonist. Who knows what the future may bring.