Ok, I've really been away for much too long. First of all, I really shouldn't have decided to write out everything in a notebook (and change it all several times)and second of all I should have been quicker to post this. Now I'm not going to write out everything I said in my review thing I wrote, but if you want to look at that you can. Again I appologise and hope some people actually are still bothering to read this. If not well... thats okay too, I'll just write anyway.

Chapter 1: 5 years later

The sound of glass shattering rang throughout the forest. The horror struck face of Louie suddenly swirled into darkness. Maria, Olimar's daughter, sprang up in bed in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. She looked around the room. She was in bed, in a small cabin of a space bus. The walls were plain bare metal, as was the floor, but what could you expect on a bus?

"Maria!" the voice of her brother echoed through the halls. "Maria, are you okay? You were screaming."

Maria nodded, still a bit shocked. "I had a nightmare" she said, trying to hide the fact that she'd been scared stiff. "It's really nothing, I just got a little spooked."

"You're as white as a sheet Maria." Her brother said "And you must be more than just a little spooked"

She was more than just a little scared, and was sure she didn't have just any old nightmare. She could have sworn that the dream had been real, that she'd really been there. She felt dizzy and lightheaded, the real world felt more dreamlike than the dream itself.

"I don't know" she said, breaking contact with her older brother's eyes. "I dreamt I was on that planet, the one papa discovered, and he was there, papa I mean." She sighed "There are bits and pieces I don't remember now, but from what I can remember..." She trailed off.

"What happened?" Her brother questioned, still not understanding the significance of a signal dream.

"I watched him die!" Maria cried, now breaking into tears. "I couldn't tell how it happened or why, but I know I watched him die." She buried her head in her hands, shaking in sobs.

"Maria I'm sure it was just a bad dream" her brother reasoned. "We just haven't heard from Papa in a while, but that doesn't mean he's dead."

"5 years!" Maria cried "We haven't heard from him in 5 years! Get it through your thick skull! He's not just going to show up out of the blue now!"

"Tank! Maria! Whats going on?" A voice called in from the other room. "What are you doing in there?"

"It's nothing Alex!" Tank, Maria's older brother, called back "Maria had a nightmare and she's shaken about it, nothing big!" He turned his attention back to his little sister. "I should probably leave you to cool for a sec, shouldn't I?" He asked. Maria nodded in reply, afraid that if she said anything she'd begin to cry again. With that Tank got up and left, and Maria was left alone in the plain, old room.

Five years ago, her father had mysteriously disappeared while exploring a planet he'd discovered. It had no intelligent life currently, up to their knowledge, and was inhabited by bug like and plant like creatures, many of which were at least 5 times the size of a full grown man. Their father had discovered the planet a year prior to his disappearance, and it'd caused them grief ever since. A poisonous gas called oxygen, was present in the atmosphere in large amounts, this posed as a huge threat to their father when he first crash landed on the planet. At this time his ship was mangled and only he only had 30 days until his life support systems failed. By a stroke of sheer luck he on his first day encountered a friendly, plantlike creature, which he called pikmin and with their help was able to escape back to Hocotate. This lead to quite a few more trips back to the planet, and as this happened Tank and Maria heard from their father less and less, untill about 3 years ago he and Louie disappeared completely, and left no trace of anything or anyone. The ship was still there, but no longer worked and the onions had scattered. After three years it'd become harder and harder to live and their mother took up two jobs. She was crushed by the disappearance of her husband, but still had to keep the family going. Since school was out now, she'd planned to send them away to summer camp on another planet, as she had that past three years, on an old space bus and accompanied by a friend of theirs, Alex. At the present moment they were half way through the overnight trip and were to get to camp in about 6 hours.

"I guess I should write this down." She thought "Maybe that will help me clear my mind"

She got up and walked to her suitcase and dug through the assorted books, clothes, and keepsakes, looking for her diary. Suddenly her hand bumped up against something. A small red journal, bound in regular paper yet a bit worn and weathered. The words "Captain's Log" were written on the front in large bold letters. Her heart began to pound as she realized that the journal she was holding was her father's. She didn't dare open it, but just sat there on her haunches, staring at the book as if it was the eighth world wonder.

Suddenly a jolt shook the ship, Maria was flung from her spot and the book was ripped from her hands. She landed on the cold metal floor.

"What's happening?" She called out "Why did we stop? We aren't supposed to reach camp for another 4 hours!"

"I don't know." Alex called back " Apparently the ship went off course a bit and flew right into the orbit of a huge planet and now we can't seem to get out."

Maria pulled herself up from the floor and ran through the corridor up to the cockpit. Tank and Alex were standing in the small, cramped room looking out the window. They were right, the planet was incredibly huge. It was blue and surrounded by swirly white clouds. There were a few spots of land, but for the most part it was totally blue, probably most of it was underwater.

" I think the navigation system is blown" Alex said "We've gone completely off coarse and apparently are in the middle of nowhere."

"Is there anyway to get out?" Maria asked

"There might be." Alex replied. "I'm just not sure how to do it."

"Why not just push random buttons?" Tank asked, trying to be optimistic "It usually works for me"

"Not funny Tank" Maria said dryly

"No really!" Tank insisted "eventually it'd work"

"Or get us killed." Said Maria, roaling her eyes. "Look Tank, Stop trying to help, 'cause you aren't and there's no way you can."

Tank gave her a hurt look, but ignored him and continued to evaluate the matter at hand.

"There has to be something we can do." She said looking at the control panel.

An assortment of buttons, levers and gauges were strewn across the control panel, each of them looking as complex as the next, and recognizing none of them as something that would help them. "How did papa do it?" Maria thought looking at the wide array of buttons. "He made it all look so simple..."

Back about 5 years ago, although now it seemed to be 50 years ago, Tank, Maria and their parents would all go on trips together. Each of them would pile onto The Dolphin and go to a completely new planet. Often times Papa would let Maria and Tank go up into the cockpit when they weren't in hyperspace. Once, he'd even let Tank be co-pilot and take over the flying a bit. Everything had seemed so simple then, but the world was so much more complex now than it was then. Then it was all fun and games, but now there were new things to worry about. Death, and hardship, and toil. But didn't those also exist 5 years ago, and even 50 years ago. Maybe things really were as simple as they had once conceived, just like flying, but more information had made it seem more complex than it really was.

But before Maria could make another move, the ship was shaken by another sharp jolt. Maria was again flung off of her feet and her hand hit a small button on the control panel. The Emergency landing button, and they were sent into a nose dive towards the huge, water clad planet's surface.

Everything happens for a reason, sometimes it's a good reason and sometimes it's a bad reason. But other times it isn't as simple as right and wrong. Sometimes something that seems like a great thing will go bad. Sometimes something that seems like a horrible thing will turn out to be a blessing. So far the prior had all ready occurred in Tank and Maria's lives, and now the latter was about to.

Well that was much shorter than I wanted it to be. I'll try to get Chapter 2 up as fast as I can.