Chapter 24: The Final Puzzle

Day 16…

We descended in silence, mentally preparing ourselves for the trials ahead. I glanced out the window to see an incredibly different Final Trial than the game, which already worried me. The puzzle in the game was hard enough but this… this was huge and complex! I was speechless.

The starting arena was the same, with a bunch of flowers surrounding the rocket and the three candypop buds on the rocket's right. But there was no pool, at least on the ground level. Instead, there was a pair of large ramps ascending in opposite directions, then doing a 180 and ascending toward each other, meeting on a second floor. However, the endings were separated by a large metal wall, and where the ramps turned there were two pairs of weight blocks. Encasing everything were the rocks and moss that made up the boundaries of the area, so there was no way to lose pikmin to the endless abyss.

"This isn't the same," I muttered, looking to the sky to see the final arena suspended in the air, connected by a short path and nothing else. "And I don't trust that."

"This is an interesting area," Olimar said. "It seems it has been made strictly as a series of mazes and puzzles."

"I have no idea how to solve this," I said. "Should we split up or stay together. Should we bring reds, yellows, and blues?"

"How can we bring reds?" Olimar asked, to which I pointed at the red candypop bud. "What will become of them by the end of the day?"

I shrugged. "We'll turn them back into their respective colors, I guess."

"Good plan." He looked up. "If we can solve this quickly enough, we'll fight your Emperor Bulblax, and we'll have one last ship part before we can escape."

"Have you learned nothing?" I chuckled. "Nothing goes our way."

We got out fifty yellows and fifty blues, and turned fifteen of each into reds. Exploring the area, Olimar found a honeywisp and knocked it out of the sky, letting our reds flower. We then split up, taking half of each pikmin. He took the left.

"Olimar," I whispered, pressing a green button on my suit, opening up communications. "Why have we never done this before?"

"Admittedly: it's because I didn't trust you when we were separated."

"I'll take that as a compliment," I said. "Now, the rocks you see to your right-"

"Left."

"Left should move when you have more pikmin on the taller than the shorter. So do that."

Silence as we concentrated. I suggested twenty six. As we reached twenty six, the blocks shifted, so that the taller was now the shorter. "Now drop onto the bottom one. And then throw a couple onto the taller one, then move onto the ramp."

We did so. "Now drop down and bring up another half."

It took a few trips, and we couldn't bring up all of them, but we brought up ninety six in total. We walked up the ramp and reached the second level.

Honestly, I couldn't see the entirety of the level on our descent, and I had no idea where Olimar's path went, so just try to envision the path as I describe it. Remember: paths are wide enough for a certain creature's body and are covered in dirt and grass.

My path rose to a higher level, and then turned left to cross Olimar's path, essentially creating a bridge. As I passed over Olimar, we wove, and I followed the path as it turned right and sloped to Olimar's level. As I turned right, I saw a line of fire geysers emitting a constant stream of flames. I tried pushing myself against the wall, but there were small piles of dirt that were too steep for pikmin to climb. Even though I was tall enough to step over them, the pikmin weren't, and they were pushed into the fire.

We escaped the geysers and I spoke to Olimar. "Olimar, can you come back to the bridge? We're going to trade."

We met back at the bridge. "There's a line of fire geysers," I explained. "I can't take blues or yellows."

"Well there's a pool of water in my way. I can't take reds or yellows."

I bit my lip in thought. "Is there an indention in the wall," Olimar suggested. "One low enough for yellows to pass?"

We checked, and Olimar confirmed. On Olimar's left was a hole just large enough for pikmin to pass, and at the right height for reds to be thrown up. So we traded pikmin. I threw all of my yellows and blues off the bridge and grabbed the reds Olimar threw through the hole. The pikmin had to climb up a small path to reach me, but we successfully traded. I walked through the geysers, careful to avoid scorching myself, while Olimar threw the yellows over a wall and took blues through the pool.

Passing the geysers, I came across my own pool of water. To my right was a thin rectangle chuck ripped out of the wall. "Olimar," I said. "I need blues."

"Coincidentally, I need reds." Was the reply. So I threw a red pikmin through the rectangle.

"Did you get that?" I asked. Olimar confirmed positively, so we traded pikmin. Half way through the pool, I realized that there was a certain pikmin color missing. "Olimar, what did you do to the yellows?"

"The path I'm on turns to the right, which curves around a tree stump. The yellow pikmin are resting there for now, and I'll retrieve them once I pass the obstacle."

"Oh. Good planning." And we carried on.

The final puzzle of this level involved us on wooden ledges dug into the rock, sloping upward connecting the second and third stories. We saw each other and waved. On Olimar's ledge sat three 10-pikmin boxes, so I assumed the same for me. We walked up to the boxes and swarmed them. Unfortunately, due to their ascension, it required 25 pikmin to push. When the pikmin reached the second box, the number increased to fifty, a number which I didn't have. Olimar, meanwhile, had more than fifty pikmin and was able to push up until the third box. That one required seventy-five.

"Not too difficult of a puzzle," said Olimar. "Just give me your pikmin, I'll push my boxes off, and then give you the rest."

"Okay," I agreed. "How?"

We looked around. "There are some branches hanging off the ledge," he said. "Meet there."

We walked back to the branch at the bottom of the slope. "It's awfully thin," I said. I took a step forward, and my foot was too large to make solid contact. "And it's curved."

"Keep your balance and don't look down," said Olimar.

I turned to the pikmin. "You heard him," I motioned to Olimar. "Don't look down."

I wasn't afraid of the height, even though I knew the fall would kill me. I was afraid the less coordinated pikmin wouldn't be able to stay on. Yes, I know that in the games the pikmin automatically bunched up to fit even the thinnest path, but this wasn't the game, and this was the thinnest ramp I had ever seen.

The pikmin lined up and lifted their arms out, imitating me as I walked forward. Olimar on the other side followed. We met as close to the middle as we could, as there was a gap that separated us. I slowly reached around and grabbed a pikmin, and I threw it directly at Olimar. He caught it and set it down, instructing it to get to safety.

From there, it was a slow process of getting all of my pikmin onto his side. He then joined with his remaining pikmin at the boxes and pushing them away, while I sat on the branch and tried keeping still. His boxes were pushed out of the way and he returned, and we began an even longer process of throwing pikmin to me.

This took up a large chunk of the day, and I feared there wouldn't be enough time to attempt the bosses. Not that I could afford to think about anything but keeping my balance and catching the pikmin at the time, that is. The strain of the former was far too much for me to attempt to think about anything else.

Olimar had few pikmin left, and I was letting my mind wander; I was praying to get off the branch as soon as I could. The heat was getting to me, and my legs were tiring. I lost my balance as Olimar threw a pikmin. I dropped down and grabbed the branch with all my strength, managing to fall on my stomach, but I heard a faint scream and looked down to see the pikmin falling to its death.

"Are you okay, Jason?" Olimar screamed, forgetting the communicator.

I rapidly nodded. "I'm sorry. I screwed up."

"So long as you're safe," Olimar replied. "Can you get back to safety?"

I nodded, getting to my feet, and walked to the ledge, practically jumping the final centimeters. Olimar counted his pikmin and concluded that I had enough. I pushed my boxes out of the way, and we entered the third and final level.

Thankfully, our paths were connected, so we embraced and combined our pikmin. No more of those precarious branches.

Unfortunately, we didn't have much time left. The sky was darkening and we could tell there was one last puzzle before we could enter the arena. We wouldn't be able to fight the Bulblax today.

"And that just leaves two days left," I said. "One for the Bulblax; one for the Snake."

The most important thing to note was that the wall blocking off the arena was far too large to be broken by bomb rocks. It was a deep black as well, meaning that there had to be something powerful. And that powerful thing was a giant boulder on a tree stump. The stump then formed a ramp.

"That doesn't look right," Olimar muttered. I barely listened. I was already climbing up the ramp. "Jason, stop."

I complied. "Why? All we have to do is push it down."

"If we push, it'll fall off the edge. The ramp isn't at the right angle. It's going that way." He pointed about ninety degrees from the wall.

"We could have the pikmin catch the boulder as it rolls? Slow it down?"

"It's too large. They couldn't catch the Armored Cannon Beetle's, so they wouldn't catch this."

"Is there a way to move the ramp then?"

"It's a tree stump, Jason. Plants can't push wood."

"Yeah they can," I whispered. "Just not like that." I looked around from my vantage point and saw a large rock beneath me. "See if you can push that!"

Olimar swarmed the rock and, believe it or not, it took 50 pikmin to carry it. The rock had a curved surface that, if angled correctly, would send the boulder crashing into the wall.

"Is it good?" I asked. The timer was going to begin soon. This was the last thing we'd do that day.

"The pikmin set it down," Olimar replied. "Go for it!"

I pushed the boulder with all my might. As soon as I touched it, it began to fizzle and crack. It began its descent, picking up speed as it rolled, spinning around the ramp, through the rock, and into the wall. The bomb rock – its true name I now knew – exploded on impact, creating a large hole in the wall. We could hear grumbling inside the arena, and we whistled our pikmin and sprinted down the paths. Our way was clear, but the countdown had begun. We would come back tomorrow for the beast.

This is the bad part: the constant switching of pikmin to pass the obstacles took so much of our time that we didn't have enough time to change the reds. We barely made it to the rocket before the giant 2, so we could only change ten of them. The other twenty? Don't know. We jumped into the rocket and watched as the reds walked away. Don't know where they went. Don't know if they survived. They might've gone to the red onion, wherever it was, but the planet's a dangerous place at night.

Good luck to them, wherever they went.