The painted wheel wobbled slightly as it span, a little damaged by the impact. The brightly-coloured segments seemed almost to blur together, and the flapper was almost knocked loose by the force of the fast-moving pegs. Still, the wheel held together; It had too much psychic potential to be destroyed by a single stray shot.
Ridley saw it, and was already enacting his contingency plan. He did not dare stay long. It would take him time to adjust to the new genre of the universe - time during which he would be vulnerable to the protagonist's power. He would stay long enough to see where the wheel stopped, then make his escape. There would be plenty of time to return and spin the wheel again once the wheel had recharged.
For now, he had only to draw the hunter's fire away from the wheel, and survive. He had strength left enough for that, at least; the Hunter had exhausted the last of her missiles, and her power beam did little to damage his thick hide. He launched himself towards the force field wall that separated the chamber he was in from the black void of space, knowing that the end was nigh...
The wheel stopped. Ridley's eye paused, just for a moment, marking the position it had stopped in - and then he turned and unleashed a full-strength blast of burning breath upon the force field.
Samus Aran, famed galactic bounty hunter, last of three races, decorated hero of the Galactic Federation, realized what Ridley was doing the moment he opened his maw. She took aim at a protruding spar and fired her grapple beam just in time to avoid being sucked out as the room explosively depressurized. As if taunting her, the space dragon Ridley flapped effortlessly away through the void, its wings pushing lazily against vacuum as it soared away from the derelict space ship.
Samus had no way to follow him, not with her current upgrade suite. Instead, she focused her vision, trusting her suit's sensors to track the retreating dragon. Hopefully it would be enough to predict his destination...
She had no attention to spare for the strangely-decorated wheel at the back of the room. Even if she had glanced at it, it was unlikely that she'd have guessed what it was, or what its current position meant...
The wheel had stopped with the flapper pointing unambiguously to a section labeled "Real-Time Strategy." Time would soon tell what it meant...
Sat May 13 06:05:22 2017
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