#pikfic

Turning Over a New Leaf

The day had been a long one for the Koppaiates. Not an especially challenging one, at least not so far as this planet could get; it had mostly just been bulborbs and sheargrubs and various beetles- the smaller of the planet’s predators. All still giant and terrifying, to be sure, but nothing like the battles with the bigger beasts that could take upwards of half the day to beat, and truly threatened the leaders’ survival in a way the more familiar animals did not.

No, the day had simply been a long one purely for the amount of activity in it. Everyone running to and fro, gathering item, a near constant stream of pikmin returning either to the onion or to the Drake, and at least one of the Koppaiates always somewhere along the route back to the landing site to retrieve the pikmin who had finished their carrying tasks and waited around the onion for new orders.

In short, a very busy- and productive- day, and even with all the running about, none of the expeditioners would have minded if every day on the alien planet could have been like that.

Every day had to come to an end, though. As the sun sank beneath the treetops, turning the sky a brilliant orange, each Koppaiate made their way back to the landing site. Charlie arrived first, following his squad of pikmin as they carried one final bulborb to the onion. Brittany arrived soon after, urging her pikmin on to deliver their sunseed berry back to the Drake safely.

And then, pikmin dismissed to the onion, the two Koppaiates waited.

“Where’s Alph?” Brittany asked, turning from the darkening forest to look at Charlie.

“I… Don’t know,” Charlie admitted, brow furrowing. “A little while ago, he said he thought he saw some dusk pustules nearby, and was going to check it out.”

“And… You haven’t heard from him since?”

“No. But if he were in danger, we would know. His suit’s SOS beacon would go off.”

Brittany just turned to look back at the woods. “Hm.” 

And then, as if summoned, both Koppaiates’ koppads chimed with a notification, and kept chiming, urgently, calling for action, calling for help.

Brittany and Charlie both scrambled for their koppads, pulling them out at the same time and opening a new channel to Alph. For half of a split second, they each saw on their screen a blur of motion, like the camera was tumbling across the ground, and heard Alph shouting something. But before they could get any information, before they could ask Alph what was wrong, or check their map for his location, the screen flickered out, the camera image replaced with the words “CONNECTION LOST.” The distress signal chime stopped, too. 

Brittany looked up at Charlie, eyes wide, almost scared. “We need to find him!”

Charlie didn’t waste time in agreeing, already lunging for the onion to call out the pikmin.

Moments later, they were charging into the forest, an army behind them, headed for Alph’s last known location. It was getting dark even quicker, now, and very, very soon, the only light they had would be that from their own antennas. Neither of them stopped to consider this.

They didn’t have to go far to find Alph. As they made their way into the night, eyes peering out hungrily at them from the foliage, a familiar sound reached their ears. The chant of pikmin, the song they sang when carrying something back to the landing site. Soon, the mere seven pikmin remaining of Alph’s squad came into view, and both Charlie and Brittany suddenly could only stare, hearts plummeting, as the little group passed them on their way. Lying limp in their grip was Alph, unconscious or worse. His suit was torn and his helmet was broken, its antenna entirely missing. Dark blood was trailing down the side of his face and oozing out of the rips in his suit. He wasn’t moving. They couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

The pikmin carrying him were moving as fast as they could back to the landing site, and the two standing Koppaiates were becoming ever more aware of the sensation of being watched, of something dangerous looming over them. They turned, following Alph’s little convoy back to the landing site.

Perhaps it was the shock that delayed Brittany and Charlie’s reactions. They were still processing that something had happened to Alph, that Alph wasn’t… well. Wasn’t there anymore. Lost in thought, they might not have noticed the pikmin’s actions. Or maybe it was that it was so unexpected. That the pikmin would do such a thing had never even occurred to them, and still didn’t quite occur to them as the pikmin turned just a little away from the Drake, not quite heading to deliver Alph’s body to the ship.

At any rate, neither Koppaiate thought to whistle the pikmin away until they were standing almost immediately beneath the onion, lifting Alph’s body for its consumption. And by the time either of them could get out a breath, it was already too late. 

Alph’s body gone, their cargo delivered, the pikmin turned to look at Charlie and Brittany. Neither Koppaiate could do anything other than stare. How could the pikmin do that? Was that really all they were to the pikmin? Another resource to be consumed, then recycled when they were no longer useful? Did the pikmin really care for them? Did they really think of them as nothing more? Did they not recognize all that the Koppaiates had done for them? And with all the emotion they always seemed to display, were they really not capable of respect, or mourning the fallen?

The pikmin blinked, waiting for a command from the two Koppaiates. Their gaze seemed almost terrifyingly empty, now. Almost predatory.

Were they just waiting for the other two to die, to feed them to the onion?

Then the onion whirred, and spat out a single seed, which sank into the ground. And it was offensive, almost. That all Alph was, all that bright personality and quick cleverness, all he had done, all the repairs to the Drake and all the fruit recovered, all of it had been reduced in a matter of moments to just a single seed. In a matter of moments, Alph’s worth had been reduced to that of a pellet posy. 

Then the seed sprouted, and there was something undeniably different about it. The stem that rose from the ground was longer than any Brittany or Charlie had seen before, it looked like it was almost sprouting from a little tuft of hair, and even in the dying light, they could see it was the same color as Alph’s hair.

Biting his lip, Charlie slowly stepped forward and wrapped his hands around the stem. For a long moment, he just stood there, hesitating, terrified. Then he started to pull.

The thing that came out of the ground was very much alive and confused and very, very much not an ordinary pikmin. At Alph’s surprised shout, Charlie let go of the stem, and Alph fell backwards onto his rump, almost tumbling back into the hole he had just been pulled from. 

For a long moment, everyone just stared. Alph looked at his hands, still caked with dirt, then hesitantly reached up to touch his face, eyes widening as it dawned on him that he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

“A- Alph?” Brittany asked.

Alph’s mouth opened and closed a couple times as he tried to figure it out. “I-... er-... yeah?”

“Is that… you?”

“I-” Alph looked up, almost panicking- “I don’t- what- what happened?”