Chapter 4
Orangemin
With decoding the memory shard out of the way, Olimar and Mia proceeded to activate the Onions. Despite the fact that Mia's best efforts had failed, Olimar merely had to walk up to the Onion to bring it popping out of the ground. It's color popped, showing it to be an Orange Onion, a kind Olimar had never seen before. Despite the Onion's lack of cooperation with Mia, the R&D chick was able to pluck the released seed with relative ease. Olimar gave the creature a quick run-through. Consistent with the Onion, the pikmin had a solid orange color. It had two hair-like protrusions coming from between it's eyes, extending above the eyes and passed the head. It's pupils were larger than that of other pikmin he had seen. The eyebrow-like protrusions pointed towards Mia, and then Olimar, as the pikmin looked at both of them. Did this pikmin share Olimar's analytical mind? Olimar quickly dismissed the idea: The pikmin were amazing, but none of them had been exactly geniuses. The pikmin pointing possibly sensory organs at him might be able to take in massive amounts of sensory data, but it probably would not be able to piece it together.
The orange pikmin raised its eyebrows, and closed its eyes. It ran to Mia's ship, and retrieved a piece of plastic. The first memory shard. The pikmin grabbed the recently found shard from the scanner. It held both to eye level, spun both around a little bit, and fit the two together. The eyebrowed pikmin ran to Mia, and placed the union neatly in her hand.
"So, the orange pikmin have the ability to find memory shards, and connect them. That would imply... that the shards, and the pikmin, have some kind of relationship," Olimar stated. Mia was amused at the captains over-analysis. She didn't really care whether or not the pikmin was designed for finding memory shards, she was just grateful for the tool. Besides, she was holding the shard, maybe it tried to find a related objects. It could be like one of the Artificial Noses on Holicate; you let it 'sniff' a sock some fugitive wore, and it found your baddie.
Mia took the fused shards back to the scanner, and the computer was able to extract more information. The diagram seemed to display some kind of protein resequencer, a technology in development on Holicate(In point of fact, Mia was once part of the project), but too much data was missing yet for it to be any good. But, it was still more data. Maybe there was something to Olimar's theory...
The orange pikmin's eyebrows once again perked, and it ran into some of the surrounding plant cover. As Olimar and Mia walked over, the pikmin emerged, carrying an orange pellet. The Onion's beam of light robotically absorbed the nutrient-filled pellet, and sprouted two seeds, which the duo plucked. Olimar set the pikmin loose to find more pellets, who found two more each. Fifteen pikmin weren't going to defeat any Bulblaxes, though. Olimar activated the communications node on his suit.
"Anna, these pellets aren't going to cut it. I need you to scan around for some beasts," Olimar ordered. Mia's pupils dialated. Anna, that was the acronym for... it's not possibe, Mia thought, it never worked. No one else pulled it off. It's just a name, Mia.
"There is a small group of cephalopods 50 feet 48.9 degrees off your current position. They have the highest concentration of the nutrients you identified as being pikmin-productive," The sentient computer responded.
--
In contrast to the Pikmin games, where players had to walk around impassible walls, Olimar and Mia were able to simply climb over the somewhat bumpy terrain to reach the targets Anna had selected for them. Three cuddlefish-like creatures sat in the air, hovering in a state of blissful ignorance of the fact that their lives were about to end. They instinctually went into attack mode upon seeing the pikmin, but had not been prepaired for the skillful use Olimar doled out. With impressive stregnth for a creature Olimar's size, he was able to chuck his pikmin onto the frontmost cuddlefloat. It shook off the first three thrown onto it, but couldn't keep up. As ten pikmin landed on it, the cuddlefloat couldn't retain boyancy, and it descended onto the ground. It attempted once again to buck the pikmin off, but the brutal attacks the pikmin gave had harmed it too much. It's ever-changing skin muted to a dull grey, and it released its hydrogen gas.
Olimar was able to finish off the second cuddlefloat in a similar manner, although it managed to eat one of the pikmin first. The last cuddlefloat's defeat was far from similar. Before Olimar could chuck one of the pikmin at it, a bolt of lightning struck the creature. The hydrogen bouyancy bladder withing the cephalopod ruptured and exploded. Pieces splattered on Mia's helmet, who was looking up.
"There are no clouds in the sky," Mia stated, "This planet's weird."
