The figure turned out to just be Sonic, who dropped out of a fighting stance and joined them when Samus announced no one was possessed or otherwise going to attack and holstered her gun- To Alph's great relief- Spinning it between her fingers expertly like a character from a film.
The trophy was none other than Wario.
Back turned, under the electric lights his washed-out colours were unusually grey, even for a trophy.
He could be mistaken for a statue.
Looking around at the trashed room, the inert Wario, and the enormous quantities of goo thrown about, Kirby asked the obvious question-"What happened?"
"We could ask you the same thing." Samus responded "Everything cut out when he-" She jabbed a finger at Wario "-grabbed that assist trophy. Soon enough, these little one-eyed blobs poured in and started driving people crazy, it's been chaos ever since." A far-off explosion punctuated her sentence, giving Sonic a chance to cut in.
"We followed those blobby things back here and the next thing we know, Wario's tearing up the place! We beat him, then he spat out more of those blobs and went… Well, like that." The hedgehog gestured at the doorway "Then you guys turned up."
Peering around Samus at the trophy, Alph found himself seized with the kind of excitement you can only feel when you're about to copy something from a movie. "But, that's okay, right?" He asked as he stepped right past Sonic, towards Wario.
He'd heard about the Subspace incident from Olimar, (Although the moral of the story always seemed to be 'stay away from Captain Falcon' rather than covering actual events) and ROB had been kind enough to show him a couple of clips from his databanks- Monsters they'd fought, places they'd been, a huge group of fighters reactivating each other's trophies amidst a swirling void, ready to face an unknown foe.
Captivating stuff.
But despite how much he'd heard about it, and how common it seemed to have been, Alph had never turned into a trophy himself, nor had he ever seen it happen to anyone else.
He bent, and reached for the stand. "We can just-"
"NO!"
Alph bolted upright like he'd been electrocuted "Aaah! Why, what's wrong?"
"Don't touch that!" Samus snapped, crossing the space between them in just a few steps.
"Why not?" Alph stared up at her incredulously "If- If we bring him back, he can help us, right?"
"It… It doesn't work like that any more."
"...What do you mean?"
"I'm afraid Mater Hand changed the rules." Olimar had finally managed to detach himself from the telepad, suit covered up to the knees in a thick layer of black gunk- Some larger chunks clinging to various seams, and wide smears marring his gloves.
For some reason, the pikmin followed much further behind than usual.
"With the way the trophy system was abused during the last tournament, we had to find a new way to mark defeat..." Olimar slipped quickly into what some people called 'lecture mode'- Going into such unnecessary detail and using enough unnecessarily large words for so much longer than necessary he could very well be reciting an essay on the subject.
"-Now the system simply exists as an emergency measure, if an individual is injured beyond the point of simple defeat, almost to death, they will become a trophy to avoid further damage and to heal- A process that could very well take weeks- Meaning, if we reactivate someone in such a state, such as Wario here... It could… Well... kill them."
Alph nodded politely through the entire lecture, and continued to nod for a good minute after the captain had finished talking. "Oh, right. But… Why didn't anyone mention this before? It seems kind of im…portant…?" A repeating, grating, snore dragged Alph's attention away before he could even finish his sentence.
Sonic and Kirby had fallen asleep in a pile against the wall.
And they were both snoring.
Loudly.
"Honestly! That's just rude." Olimar huffed, hands on hips.
Samus, who'd been staring fixedly at a blob of dried goop on the opposite wall for the last five minutes, ever-so-gently nudged Kirby off of Sonic's chest, before firing her gun three times into the floor next to the hedgehog's ear.
Alph flinched, and Sonic very almost lodged himself into the ceiling "Yow!"
With everyone up, willingly or unwillingly, Samus holstered her weapon and headed for the door. Edging around Wario's trophy, which took up almost the entire doorway, she called back over her shoulder "Now everyone's up to speed, we need to get moving before we're attacked again."
Alph didn't need telling twice and jogged out after her "Where are we going?"
"To get my suit. It's in my ship."
"Oh!" Olimar popped up on Samus' other side, gesturing at the fast-drying gunk attached to his clothes, "That's lucky, I need to visit my own ship to clean this- What did Kirby call it? Dark Matter?- Off my suit, I feel it's not very healthy to keep around."
–
Like most things, getting to the ship turned out to be easier said than done.
Tiny, one-eyed blobs of Dark Matter congregated in every patch of shadow. Forming rustling masses in corners, underneath things, anywhere they could escape the glare of the lights. Not attacking, just clustering, leaning out as far as they could whenever someone walked by, waving thin tendrils.
A bit creepy, but ultimately harmless.
"There sure are a lot of them."
It wasn't a long walk, by any means. Down a corridor, turn a corner, go past the waiting room where the whole mess had started, down some stairs, head outside, and it should be right in front of you.
Except, in the waiting room, somebody had turned out the lights.
No one else gave the empty room any thought, but Alph paused.
In the flickering half-light cast by the little TV in the corner, now showing nothing but static, something had shifted.
"Oh, no. Um, excuse me, guys-?" Alph didn't get to finish as a ball of Dark Matter the size of his head came catapulting out of the darkness like some demonic football, it's enormous eye flashing like a cat's in the glare of the lights.
Thankfully, months of being attacked randomly by wildlife gave Alph very good reactions. Reaching back on instinct alone, he grasped a pikmin- Blue, judging from the cold, wet feel of it's skin through his gloves, and swung the little thing with a strangled squeak of alarm like a baseball bat.
Unfortunately, a pikmin is not a baseball bat.
Instead of being hit away like any sensible ball, the blob simply expanded on contact, wrapping around and totally enveloping the pikmin.
Finding it suddenly, tremendously heavy, Alph couldn't help but drop it, staring in horror as the pikmin writhed on the floor for a few seconds, the remains of his squad squeaking and chirping in terror, both of them clinging to his arms as all of a sudden the pikmin fell still, stood up on shaking feet, and screeched.
It's little face was dominated by a singular eye, it's speckled, apple-like skin split and warped where it had been forced out of it's small, mouth-like gill. It didn't stop screaming as it started to advance, the sound boring into Alph's ears through the glass of his helmet, through the communication speakers installed in his suit, which warped the sound so badly it was almost worse- A cacophony overlain with metallic white-noise. A terrible feedback loop.
The pikmin sped up, forcing Alph to stumble backwards- It was shaking, so hard and violent it almost looked like it was going to-
The possessed pikmin popped like a pustule.
A spray of black goo covered the front of Alph's helmet. Noise still rang in his ears as he stared at the dark splatter it had left on the ground, breath hitching in his throat, the pikmin behind him, protected from the spray by the shadow of their leader, desperately tugged at his arms but Alph found himself rooted- Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no-
Alph snapped back to reality as Samus shot the second blob out of the air just inches in font of his face as somebody else, probably Sonic, picked him up under the armpits like a toddler and deposited him a little further down the corridor, out of reach.
"Okay, just stand there for a second."
Sonic zipped back just in time to kick another one out of the air, sending it sailing into a window with the kind of sound you'd expect something with the consistency of jelly to make when kicked into a window.
The splat almost disguised the heavy thunk of a black-stained hand reaching from inside the dark room, and grabbing the wooden doorframe with a white knuckle grip.
Donkey Kong stepped into the light. His fur matted with black, one hand held another large glob of Dark Matter- It's eye swiveling madly between opponents- The other released the doorframe, marks left in the wood from his grip alone, and beat a quick tattoo against his chest with a bellow of anger, making the eyeball that had sprouted there wobble grossly in it's socket.
DK threw the ball of matter directly at Samus' face, forcing the bounty hunter to duck and roll, peppering his legs with shots and letting the ball impact the wall harmlessly behind her, where it oozed slowly to the floor.
Donkey Kong raised one arm to block a kick from Sonic, knocking the hedgehog to the floor, and outstretched his other arm, palm out. Matter ran through his fur like blood through veins, coalescing into another black orb in his hand- Which he immediately tried to slam dunk directly into Sonic's face.
His famed speed came to his rescue as he rolled sideways, just narrowly missing the resulting splash.
Samus took the chance to shoot rapid-fire at the eyeball, forcing Donkey Kong to call off the attack and protect his chest with his hands. Exploiting this vulnerability, Kirby only got in a few punches before DK ducked back into the dark room and out of sight.
From inside, Donkey Kong threw out another blob, which Kirby inhaled harmlessly- Pulling a face like he'd just been forced to swallow garbage.
"This isn't really working!"
The pink puffball cast around the corridor for something as another ball of gunk flew out of the darkness and bounced off the already filthy window, forcing Samus and Sonic to scramble out of the way as it ricocheted like a deadly bouncy ball.
Kirby's eyes eventually fell on Olimar and his squad. Keen to keep his pikmin safe from a horrifying, scream-y death, the captain had fallen back defensively between DK and Alph.
Kirby wasted no time running over with such incredible urgency Olimar actually took a step back in surprise, "Kirby, do you need somet-"
Kirby grabbed and swallowed a pikmin in a single motion- So fast it didn't even get a chance to squeak.
Before Olimar could even open his mouth to voice a protest- Something the tiny astronaut had an abundance of- The corridor filled with a rush of leaves.
Kirby spun in place, a delicate headdress of greenery growing out of his head- Short branches growing buds and sticks and leaves in the shape of a circlet at such speed it was like watching an artful time-lapse.
With the surge of green came the sweet scent of pine, washing away the heavy, acrid smell of goo- So strong it even found its way through suit filters and air scrubbers.
He turned on his toe, directing the stream with a paw. Flying past faces and just short of noses, everyone froze as they noticed the leaves were not only sharp as razors, but knife shaped and brutally serrated.
With a gesture, they sailed into the darkened room with a series of brutal thuds.
...
A wheeze, followed immediately by the sound of somebody violently vomiting gallons of gunk let anyone listening know the leaves were perfectly on target.
A muted flash from inside the room, and Donkey Kong's trophy toppled forwards out of the doorway, a black puddle pooling underneath him.
"Whoa." Sonic breathed, leaning forwards to inspect the trophy.
It was riddled with little dents, scratches and nicks from the barrage of weaponized greenery, but apart from that, undamaged. Not even a smear of black remained, as if all the goo had simply abandoned ship.
Something shaped like a poor description of a hand thrust abruptly out of the puddle, groping wildly as a twisting, boneless arm and shoulder emerged after it. It didn't get far before Kirby liberally applied more leaves, splattering it across the floor in lots and lots of little clumps.
The puddle went inert, and stayed that way.
Samus wrinkled her nose and shook a splatter off her foot "Disgusting."
"Yes, very." Olimar crossed his arms, frowning. "Kirby, my pikmin, please."
"Huh?" Kirby tilted his head, and, in consequence, his whole body- Before going cross-eyed trying to look at the leafy crown on his head "Oh! Yeah, sure!"
The crown glowed, popped off Kirby's head and plopped onto the ground in front of him, eventually reforming back into a very confused pikmin.
It held it's hands in front of it's eyes, felt it's face from it's stalk to the tip of it's red, pointed nose- It jumped up, span in a circle, spotted Kirby then screamed and ran behind Olimar, grabbing his arm and clinging to it like a lifeline.
"Thank you." Olimar sighed, patting the poor pikmin kindly.
Stepping away, he turned his attention to Alph, "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm alright. I'm just… A little bit shaken, I've seen pikmin die, but not like..." Alph let the end of the sentence hang in the air.
"No, neither have I." Olimar shook his head, glancing over at their pikmin as they chattered together like nothing was wrong "We'll have to be much more careful with them."