Chapter Text
The Meta-Knights were, understandably, suspicious upon Susie’s arrival.
It’s not as if she didn’t deserve it. She’d taken their fearless leader; a warrior who challenged impossible odds head on for the sake of chivalry and a desire to protect one’s friends. He held off the innumerable waves of Haltmann Works Enterprises ™ security long enough to allow his crew’s escape. She stunned him with a well-aimed shot and took him to the production room. She picked him out of the wreckage of his mangled battleship, recognized the sheer amount of noble dedication within, and immediately set about mass producing such admirable traits.
Now she stood at the entry dock of that same battleship, looking for a job. Apparently it was normal for one’s multi-million-dollar spacecraft to go up in flames. When she asked for directions to the Halberd, the natives rolled their eyes and jeered it was the fourth, fifth, sixth time it had been demolished. Once by the oh-so-great leader himself. He wanted to test his strength, so they said, and for a brief moment Susie wondered if that’s why the Mecha Knight prototype was so violent. It would explain the collateral damage.
The Halberd was truly a marvel of engineering. Nothing compared to the planetoid factory of Haltmann Works Enterprises ™ , but as she craned her head and squinted her eyes against the obnoxiously bright Popstar sun (Mr. Shine, that was its name, right?) she took note of the meticulously polished sidings, the compact yet efficient boarding dock, and- was that platinum?! She should’ve made him apart of the design team, not used him for the production line. The company was always in need for more bright and brilliant minds-
“A-hem. Miss Susie, why are you here?”
Susie blinked as she was jostled from her mechanical musings. Ah, right. Employment.
The figure in front of her stood with their arms crossed, their voice irritated, and a near imperceptible hint of fear. One of the Meta-Knights. A massive ball and chain sat next to their feet, purposefully close enough to be grabbed and used within a moment’s notice. Their armor was a deep purple hue. Three prongs stuck out the helmet and an electrical visor sat where the faceguard should be. Fascinating. Infrared, perhaps? Or maybe this one was visually impaired? The design was similar to glasses worn by drones whose eyes had been damaged in the assembly line, though it was clunkier than what she was used to.
“Well, sir,” (Were they a sir? No matter.) She put on her best secretary voice. A practiced tone of jovial energy and a go-getter attitude. “I was hoping to see if I could make myself of use here!” Her head tilted to the right and her hands clasped together in the perfect pose of maiden-like politeness. The angle of the sun would surely make her bright advertiser-worthy eyes sparkle, and the light sea breeze of Orange Ocean blew her bubblegum-pink hair in stylish angle to her left. Deeps breath now. It’s showtime.
Tilt head to the left, keeping eye contact with the customer.
“Battleship Halberd is, without a doubt, the most technically advanced structure in all of Planet Popstar!”
Gesture widely to the ship, gazing up at it to display interest in the subject at hand.
”With my decades of experience managing and designing complex machinery, my talents would be best utilized in furthering the advancement of this marvelous machine!”
Hold one finger up and wink, showing an air of a shared secret.
“With enough time and dedication, my skill set would allow for the Halberd’s status of ‘best space-faring vessel on Popstar’ to rise to that of the best in the Galaxy!”
Clasp hands again, eyes shut in a friendly manner. Go in for the kill.
“I hope to propose an alliance of our goals and wish to help your organization thrive with the help of our own!”
“…”
“…”
“…”
The silence was palpable.
Susie warily cracked one eye. Ah. The knight in front of her was… not amused as far as she could tell. Damnit, the electronic vizor made it difficult to read their expression! She took a breath, about to launch into another business proposal, when her customer(?) shifted.
“Let me get this straight,” they started, testing each word with an unseen tongue. “You want to work for us?”
“That is c-“
The knight cut her off. “You want to work for our Sir? Our Sir , who you kidnapped, took to your, to your mad science facility and did, unspeakable THINGS to ?” Their voice rose, trembling, as they took a step forward. “After everything you’ve done to him, you think you can just- just waltz up to our ship and demand us to take you in?”
“Popstar is in ruins because of you!” They pointed at Susie, purple armor clinking as they shook from a barely controlled white hot rage. “Entire cities were destroyed! Orange Ocean is polluted beyond belief! Castle Dedede is in shambles! Ten percent of the population was mechanized! Kirby didn’t know it was him and he poisoned him and we had to rip out the-“ The knight cut themselves off in an aborted scream of frustration. “What in the stars is wrong with you?”
Well! That wasn’t the reaction she was hoping for, but it was the one she was expecting. Best to attempt damage control.
“I see that we might have gotten off on the wrong foot, as they say,” Susie started, keeping the same saccharine tone of agreeableness. “Well, I can assure you that the past is in the past and you have my one hundred percent assurance that nothing of that sort will ever happen again, especially with my assistance as your organization’s sec-“
“Would you be quiet?” the knight snapped. “The answer is no, why would the answer ever not be no? You’d backstab us and make away with our ship the first moment you could get. We heard from Kirby, how you betrayed your precious company for your own gain.”
Susie flinched. “That was an exception, the situation was very chaotic and-“
“The situation was chaotic ? You nearly caused the destruction of Planet Popstar from what I heard.”
She bristled. “I did no such thing. In fact, it was me who supplied Kirby with the necessary means to combat the comet.”
“And we provided the Halberd after your company destroyed it and mechanized our leader!”
The air had a tension so dense it could be cut with a blade. Neither moved, doing their best to kill the other with glares alone.
“Listen. I don’t care if Kirby likes you,” they turned to the side and reached down, “because none of us Meta-Knights will ever let you within one meter of our Sir again.”
They grabbed the ball and chain and heaved it above their shoulder, wielding it like a mace.
“Now leave,” they snarled. “And never set foot near the Halberd again.”
Susie balked. The knight stood their ground. Susie straightened her spine, looking head on. The knight jingled the mace, winding back to throw the spiked ball in her direction. Susie recoiled, backing away slightly from the potential threat. She weighed her options, paused for a moment, then turned, running, running, running as fast as she could. A heavy thud sounded from behind her. She didn’t look back.
“And stay out!”
-
It was sunset by the time she reached her mech.
She parked it at the bottom of a secluded hillside, a fair walk away from the nearest town and next to a large forest. Whispy Woods, the natives called it. Susie vaguely remembered one of the technicians pratting about something called “Clanky Woods”, and promptly decided it would be a terrible idea to venture inside the tree line. Her spot was sheltered at least, and she could scrounge for apples on the outer edges of the woods. There was even a stream nearby, though the thought of drinking, ugh, native , untreated stream water made her gag.
She sighed and looked up at the mech. Corkscrew in shape, it allowed the user both flight and enhanced combat abilities. Hers was fairly plain, decorated with only pink and white paint alongside the Haltmann Works Company ™ logo. It made sense; her, being the president’s secretary, had a more average looking mech compared to the president's. His was encrusted with jewels and gold, an exorbitant and frankly obnoxious display of equally obnoxious wealth. He took over planet after planet, absorbing each and every one into the Haltmann Works Company ™ superconglomerate. The man was obsessed with both money and progress to seemingly no end. The mere thought of him made Susie’s expression sour.
She pushed that thought away and climbed on top of the machine. Pressing a button on her headset unlocked the mech, opening the hatch covering the cockpit with a small shwip . Inside was a seat, and below the seat was a small compartment. Susie reached in and unlocked the compartment, protruding a plastic water bottle stored inside. She cracked the bottle open and drank half the contents within a minute, all the while doing calculations in her mind.
I had 5 bottles when I first left. I bought 10 more when I reached the first town, but now they’re not accepting Haltmann dollars anymore. If I only have one a day, then that means-
A large purple bird flew out of the trees directly over Susie’s head, its loud Hoot! shocking her out of her thoughts. She choked, sputtering water out of her mouth. Susie coughed for a few minutes before finally composing herself. She grit her teeth and squeezed the plastic. The remaining liquid gushed onto the dirt, furthering her anger.
“DAMNIT!” she yelled, throwing the crumpled plastic past the tree line.
“Those stupid natives and this stupid planet! They think they can just reject me? I’m the most qualified person for space travel on this hunk of organic matter! They’re still stuck in the rocket age when we were already using antimatter engines! It’s like they want to stay inferior!” She put her head in her hands and screamed. This was a disaster. A star forsaken disaster.
“I don’t have enough supplies either,” she mumbled to herself. “I have, what, 5 days of water left? My money isn’t worth anything, and the only edible things in this place are stupid apples !” Upon saying the word “apple”, Susie grabbed one from the storage compartment, clenched it in her hand, and lobbed it away with all her might.
She glowered and leaned over the mech’s front console to examine the fuel gage. 10% left. Great. Just peachy. She was stuck here, and her last-ditch effort of begging the person she turned into a cyborg for a job blew up in her face. Or rather, a spiked ball was thrown at her face. Not to mention how hot this planet was. She knew this part of Planet Popstar was tropical, but it was one thing to see a weather forecast from the comfort of her air-conditioned desk and another to experience cloying humidity frizzing her hair and clinging to her skin. It was a sensory nightmare.
Susie pulled herself into a ball on top of her mech and sniffled, too caught up in her pent-up feelings to notice night fall. The chirp of cicadas and buzz of mosquitos filled the air, equally grating and unnerving. Some creature snapped a twig. The warped shadows of Whispy Woods stretched ever further, twisting and turning and trapping anything that made sense. And it was still muggy, even after the sun finished marching across the horizon. She couldn't even use her machine’s air conditioning with such little fuel left.
She hated heat. It reminded her of those years stuck in another dimension, surrounded by fire and lava and barely surviving by the skin of her teeth. Of the terrifying bird-like things that would swoop down and clip her hair as they tried to bite her. Of the loneliness, of the fear, of the overwhelming homesickness of just wanting to go home . Tears pricked at the edges of her vision.
It was stupid. It was so, star maddeningly stupid that all of this happened. Of course he didn’t recognize her when she got back home. Of course he cared more about money than her. Of course she had to become her own father’s secretary. Of course they had to find a planet with some pink black hole who sent everything they threw right back at them, and of course her dad was dead and he died and she had to watch as that damn machine erased his soul and that stupid pink ball wound up saving her life and she was stuck on a primitive planet with nowhere to go and the only person with the technology she needed to leave hated her and and and-
Susie wheezed, trying and failing to stop herself from hyperventilating as warm tears dripped down her cheeks and ugly noises bubbled from her throat. Her eyes went wide as she heard herself. An old, old memory, of watching some poor soul whimper and then be snatched by a shrieking sphere doomer flashed before her. She slammed her hands on her face, physically forcing the noises down. It was dark. She couldn't see them. They could be out there. She could be found. She’d never get back home if they got her.
In her panic-addled mind, Susie remembered the mech’s hatch. She jumped into the seat and slammed the button on her headset. A protective shell snapped over the cockpit, locking her inside. Her breathing slowed slightly. The tears didn’t stop, but at least she’d be safe here. They wouldn’t get her now. She hoped. She hoped they wouldn’t be able to hear her.
She took a shuddering breath and curled up in the cockpit. It was uncomfortable; the seat twinged her back and the console dug into her sides. Susie did her best to make herself secure, relegated to the fact she’d yet again cry herself to sleep.
It was ok. She knew how to do it quietly. She had years of practice.