OMG

Yeah kill me for the long delay, but if you do it will be even longer (wink)

Disclaimer: Pikmin do not own me. Period.

Night came brutally fast upon us. The sun had vaporized in an instant, leaving the mushroom pikmin and me in a darker frigid world.

Yet we wouldn't stop now, we were close to the cyans, very close. Footprints littered the snow, tiny holes that zig-zagged here and there. Obviously pikmin. Somewhere around here, were the cyans. They probably would have made camp for the night, sleeping, possibly some on guard. That was the hard part, getting the white pikmin, up until now it had been a pushover.

And it could still be all for nothing

Yet hardly. Either way, the white dead or alive, cyan blood would still drench the snow.

And I honestly wouldn't care if my purple blood joined it.

The idea was raw revenge.

The sky was the deepest shade of blue I had ever seen, the radiant glow from the dazzle of stars kept it from being pitch black. It was the second time I had looked up into the sky again, the last time I had seen the sad sight of a familiar ship roar by, followed by three onions.

The mushroom pikmin was slightly ahead of me, trying to trace some pattern in the maze of footprints on the snow. He had seemed hesitant at first about rescuing the white pikmin, possibly because he would react like the others or just the fact that it was too dangerous. But I had told him though of the care the white pikmin had put into him when he had been unconscious and he seemed to take that into appreciation.

Would I risk my life for someone I didn't know?

Yes…

Yet that seemed like a lie.

I questioned myself no further though because the mushroom pikmin was gesturing towards me. I began to run towards him, but he quickly drew his hand towards his mouth, be quiet. Feeling foolish I lessened my pace and crept to the rock he was at.

"What is it?" I whispered.

The mushroom pikmin looked from behind the rock and pointed to my left. I squinted through the darkness and saw a lone figure standing in the snow. The world was colourless, yet, the clawed hands and feet, the whip like stem and the flinger in his hand, a cyan.

"We can go around…" The mushroom pikmin started.

"We take him out." I said coolly. I was already taking the flinger off of my shoulders; a pebble I had found a few hours earlier was cradled in the center of it. I glanced at the other mushroom pikmin, he simply shrugged.

I had very little experience with the flinger, but I knew the basics. It would be harder to just simply walk from behind and take him out, every time I stepped in the snow it crunched lightly.

The cyan pikmin remained motionless, almost a statue. He thought he was unseen…

I let the flinger swing loosely in my hand for a moment, and then came the rapid motion of my arm, the counter weight of the stone causing the flinger to fly upward, and then the release of the upper strap.

There was a faint whistle as the stone whirled towards the cyan. I couldn't see the stone, but there was a loud crack of bark as the stone hit a tree…

…behind the cyan.

The cyan spun around, towards the source of the noise, away from us. In a blur the other mushroom pikmin rushed out from the rock and sped towards the unaware cyan. I was quick to follow.

The cyan was still focused towards the tree but suddenly his body tensed and he started to turn around, aware of us.

Far too slowly, the mushroom pikmin already had his hands on his long budded stem, and with his right foot kicked the cyan in the back sending him sprawling to the ground. It wasn't the kick that finished him though; it was the tension of the bud being pulled away from the body. The stem between the two became taut…

…and ripped in half, erupting a spray of fluid that soaked the ground. Disturbingly the long stem in the mushroom pikmin's hand was thrashing a much as the cyan was in the snow. In a moment both though, both became still. The stem had almost seemed to try and strangle the mushroom pikmin, with a grunt he pulled it off and flung it to the ground. I eyed it for a moment; it seemed to twitch there, before turning back to the mushroom pikmin.

"One down"

"And how many more?"

"Quantity is superficial."

"Don't make stupid remarks," the mushroom pikmin let out a sigh. "We can't do this for every single cyan out there."

That was obvious, we had no idea how many cyans there would be. There were only two of us, a mere speck in the forest. How the hell would we be able to pull this off?

The mushroom pikmin looked down at the cyan again. "There are his tracks; they're fresher than the others if we follow them I guarantee we can find the cyans."

I looked at the footprints; they seemed to follow a direct route, not like the odd swirls of tracks we had seen earlier. This was our best chance and so we began to follow them.

The cyan camp was closer than either of us could have imagined. The guard should have been the obvious sign, but this made me feel stupid. One tree after the first guard the ground sloped steeply down to a vast circular valley, down in there was a single tree, not an ever green, but a single leafless tree that looked very young. Tied to that tree were several pikmin, not cyans, but of various colours. They were prisoners, and one of the prisoners seemed to glow brighter than the rest, its colour was white.

"I can see him, along with many others," I said.

"Have you seen the cyans though," the mushroom pikmin said flatly.

Though there were many pikmin tied to the tree, many more of the cyan colour surrounded it. Even more depressing was the cyan coloured onion next to the tree, ready to deliver inevitable reinforcements.

"What do we do?" The mushroom pikmin asked.

"We wait," I replied, not even glancing at him.

"For what?"

"I have no idea…"

The next ten minutes we waited, they turned out to be the most disturbing yet luckiest minutes of my life. We couldn't hear the cyans, but we could see them in the dim light of the gems. The mushroom pikmin and I didn't speak to each other, we just watched.

Here is what happened.

The cyans took two captive pikmin from the tree, ripping off their bounds. I couldn't make out their colours, but it seemed like a red and a blue.

They took these two away from the tree and forced them to stand still as all the cyans circled around. One cyan stepped out from the rest, apparently the leader and approached one of the pikmin.

I shivered, but it wasn't because of the cold.

The circle of cyans, judging by their gestures, seemed impatient; they pressed the lead cyan on, encouraging him to get some deed done.

The one cyan nodded in response and raised his clawed hand. A moment passed before he brought the claw down, tearing through the flesh on the pikmin's face. Rip. The scream was the only sound I heard.

All the other cyan's rushed in engulfing the two pikmin in the centre. I saw the second pikmin fall to the ground next to the first, but my view was soon blocked by a squirming mass of cyans. The knelt down, as if reaching to help the two pikmin up, yet they seemed to look like animals. I then realized there was a far more sick explanation for this.

They were eating them, dead or alive. These pikmin were cannibals.

"Sick bastards…" The mushroom pikmin said, his voice wavering.

Of all the ways I had seen my fellow pikmin die, this had to be the worst. It was unnatural, creatures that ate us was just instinct, this was simply wrong.

I tried to keep my eyes off of the horrendous scene carving itself into my eyes by observing the other things in the cyan's camp, I was now certainly grateful I couldn't hear anything.

Apart from the cyan onion and the small tree, the only things that attracted my attention were four huge metallic objects that were placed in the four corners of the camp. They were alien in appearance and the closest thing I could relate them to were the metallic treasures that the leader had collected on his first visit. This could be the reason why the leader had returned, to collect more. Maybe he would come here to claim these objects and wipe out the cyans for us.

But from the scene below it was obvious that we couldn't wait at all. It would be luck if the white survived until morning.

"They've finished," the mushroom pikmin's voice drifted through my thoughts.

I looked back towards the knot of cyans, they had left nothing behind, the red and blue pikmin had never even been there for all they cared. We weren't even pikmin in their eyes, we were all food. They didn't even look like pikmin to me anymore. Even though their animal like actions had evaporated and they looked "normal" again.

Appearances can be deceiving.

"What if they're not finished yet?" The mushroom pikmin asked.

I glanced in fear towards the white pikmin as a burst of frustration erupted inside of me like a bomb rock. Everything that had failed to truly come to me before came crashing down, everything was against us; time, numbers…

That is when the sky blazed with an aura of colour.

Everyone in the valley looked up in wonder as an amazing spectacle formed above us. It stretched across the sky, its immensity made it look as big as the world itself. Glowing veils of light swooped and arched across the sky. Scorched vermillion dove and trembled under a dazzle of azure. This wonder was unnamable, it outshined everything, all the gems in the sky seemed to dim under this burst of colour.

The cyans seemed to be attracted to the sky now; they reached their arms up excitedly and jumped up and down. It was apparent they had seen this before; it was if they were expecting it all along. The sky seemed to be calling to them.

And fortunately for us, they would answer.

In a trance like movement they all moved towards their onion, and one by one they began to climb up one of the three stems, until they all disappeared into the main body of it. Shortly after the petals topping the onion began to rotate and it began to rise into the air. A warm wave of hope washed over me as I watched the onion rise into the blooming explosions of gold, violet and green. It was a mere speck against a brilliant backdrop, powerless, just as I had felt a few moments before.

"Let's get those pikmin," I said through the first smile I had had in a while.

"Wait," The mushroom pikmin interrupted. "You think the cyans were stupid enough to not post guards?" He pointed towards the tree.

The spectrum of light above us made the entire area much brighter, and I could clearly see six cyan pikmin surrounding the tree. Each of them had a sharpened stick in their hand.

"It's just six now." I said.

"We're two," The mushroom pikmin replied coolly.

"Yes, but the two of us have a lot more options…" I began with a grin.

And then the two of us began to devise a plan. One that would rescue all the pikmin down in the valley. My hopes were as high as they could be, and my confidence reigned as the sky continued to dance above us.

I crouched as low as I could as I made my way down the slope of the valley, alone. The flinger was in my hand again, and in there was another stone. The ground leveled out beneath me, I was now on even ground with the six cyans, who were still unaware of my presence.

Swiftly I ran to my first goal, one of the four metallic treasures surrounding the camp. This one seemed to have a part that was made out of a unique transparent material, it looked fragile. I could easily be seen from it, so I went to the side of the treasure that was un-transparent. Prismatic rainbows glazed off the metallic substance from the sky above, almost hurting my eyes.

Checkpoint.

I looked out from behind my hiding place towards the first cyan guard, my target. For some reason I felt much more confident with the flinger than before and I had a much stronger feeling that I would hit.

The feeling proved correct.

A sharp swing of my arm sent the stone hurtling towards the cyan. My intake of breath was released when I realized my "fling" was successful. With a faint crack it hit the cyan square in the chest and sent him collapsing to the ground.

The other cyans responses were instantaneous; they all moved towards their fallen comrade, their long stems were curved with alert. As they assisted him, one of the cyans looked in my direction.

My intake of breath was back as I crouched back into the shadows of my hiding place…

…Only to meet the blunt end of a stick aimed at my face.

The blow sent me sprawling to the ground. A salty taste began to pollute my mouth as I coughed out a glob of fluid. Standing triumphant above me was a flowered cyan, the sharpened stick cradled in his clawed hands.

"I thought you were supposed to use the other end," I said bitterly as I stood up.

The cyan simply smiled. The spectacle in the sky above us reflected off of his skin. He wasn't cyan anymore; he was a blend of powerful orange tinted with a pale pink. The pikmin let me get up before a crack of his stem sent me to the ground again.

I winced in pain as I felt the long gash that stretched diagonal from my shoulder to my thigh. I was on my back so I had a direct view of looping veils of blue; I looked to my side and saw that my arms were blue as well. I gazed to my other side and saw that the flinger was half buried in the snow a few feet away from me, but it seemed like a mile.

Three other pikmin appeared above me as well. Same in appearance as the first, yet one was indigo, another fuchsia, and the final was a vivid green. Each of them also had a rather sharp stick in their hand.

"Shall we bring him to the rest?" One of the pikmin said.

"No," said the first one who had attacked me. He was the only one with a flower, and was apparently in charge.

"You know the rules…"

"Rules," the pikmin snorted with displeasure. He waved a red hand over me. "As far as they know, this guy doesn't exist."

The other pikmin was a shade of blue as he simply shrugged, still disagreeing with the lead pikmin. Said pikmin flared orange as he raised his stick up in the air, this time the sharp end was certainly aimed at me.

A pause, a brief beat of hesitation, as the pikmin glanced up his eyes flinching with disbelief.

Another beat.

And then the dull thump as another sharp stick came out of nowhere and embedded itself into the pikmin's left shoulder. Saffron fluid sloshed out as the pikmin tried to pull out the stick from his shoulder. It was my turn to act though, and with a kicked of my legs the pikmin fell forward. Such motion caused the stick to thrust out his back in another spray of rainbow fluid. A spasm of movement came from his arms before he went limp.

By the time I looked up I could see a burst of colourful pikmin fighting one another. The long stems trademark to the cyans whipped out from the middle of the fray and they were most certainly not cyan. Squinting harder I could make out the mushroom pikmin, than a red, than a…

White.

I could see him in the mix of combat, dodging a well aimed stick that seemed to not be held by anyone in particular.

And as soon as it had begun it was all over. A wave of success was all that was on my mind. We had done the impossible, against impossible odds. Five pikmin stood in front of me and none of them had the appearance of a cyan.

The mushroom pikmin walked up to me and smiled. "It worked better than any of us could ever expect."

"The other two guards?" I asked.

The mushroom pikmin held up a stick, the other one was buried in the shoulder of the cyan at my feet.

"That's the last time I let those bastards beat me up," I sighed.

Another pikmin spoke up from behind us. "We'd like to thank you and all, but can we leave this area now?"

"The cyan's will come back by morning, it is best we get as far away as we can," Another said.

"Nothing we can salvage?" I asked my fellow mushroom pikmin.

"Just the sticks, nothing else."

"Okay, grab a stick and let's get out of here." The other pikmin nodded in agreement.

I ripped the one that was sticking out of the cyan's shoulder and wiped the fluid off onto the snow.

The mushroom pikmin took the lead and began the ascent up the curved slopes of the valley. I stepped behind and waited for the one pikmin I wanted to see most…

…the white pikmin brought up the rear. He certainly looked like a mess, his stem was crooked and his eyes seemed dull. The dullness went away though when he noticed me.

I smiled at him and then looked up into the sky. The vibrant arcs of colours continued to swoop up and down, dipping and almost reaching us, almost…

"It looks beautiful doesn't it," the white pikmin said.

"Yes, it most certainly does."

Looking forward to some "smashing" feedback.