Thank you to all those for submitting ideas for the description. I sort of blended them together to create the final one.
And thank you to all my readers. I am sorry again for the hiatus.
Here we go.
I was walking through a dream
The world around me was unfamiliar. Alien. Everything was shown through a lens of haunting violet. The air itself was hazy, as if I was underwater in a sea of purple. The spores themselves were trying to drown me, make me lose myself so I would never wake up.
Night had fallen and the primary source of colours came from the beautiful cataracts of light that cascaded through the vast sky above me. They blazed across the inky backdrop in constant flashes of dance, dipping, soaring and rushing past the thousands of gems.
Around me various plants glowed purple as they hung limply in defeat. Almost all of them had mushrooms tearing through their skin, entwining others with their long stems.
Normally the forest at night would be plunged into darkness, but instead it was dimly lit by neon patches of indigo that sparkled like beacons through the hazy air.
The air itself was almost impossible to breath. I found myself moving from pool to pool of melted snow, immersing my body into the cool liquid, letting my gills breathe via the fresh untainted water. It slowed my progress, but I was in no rush...
I knew exactly where to go.
The pressure in my head slowly expanded with each step towards the puffstool. A sure sign of inevitable doom. But my plan would work. It would have to work.
This could not all be for nothing.
Many times the pressure would suddenly explode into a piercing headache. Many times I found myself clutching my stem in agony, rolling on the ground, screaming for my life. Many times I thought I would die right there.
But after many terrifying moments it would go away, and I would continue on my journey.
Alone.
Never more in my life had I wished for a friend to be beside me than right now. Thoughts of the white pikmin, the yellow budded pikmin, the fellow mushroom pikmin, even the cyan pikmin flashed through my head. I saw my best moments with each of them, and the puffstool echoed each thought with something worse...
The white pikmin and I using the sling together...
The white pikmin's body tumbling off the cliff beside me
The yellow pikmin and I successfully warding off cyan after cyan...
The look of shock on the yellow's face as a spear burst through his chest
The mushroom pikmin and I rescuing our friends from the cyan camp
The mushroom pikmin crying in agony as he ended his own life
Your friends are dead...
And now you foolishly come to me
Towards your own doom
"Towards your death," I replied back. "And only yours..."
I even remembered the blue budded pikmin. Back when I was with the leader, how he had tried to befriend me on that fateful day.
In my mind I saw the last image that had happened before I was spored. Before my life had been changed forever.
Clear as a water droplet.
The blue budded pikmin trying to reach for me...
And what if he had? How different my life would have turned out. How much less suffering I would have had to endure. How I would not be walking through this very forest right now. To confront the antagonist of my life.
I don't want to be alone anymore. Never again. I need a friend, someone to experience life with me. Someone who can help me escape from the suffering that has occurred.
Not just even one friend. A community. A whole group of us. Together pikmin are stronger, together we can create a little patch of paradise in this cold, heartless world.
Until then, it was time to test the powers of a single pikmin. What only one could do. Alone. To try and grasp victory when more powerful creatures had failed, when even a whole army of cyans was futile.
Alone...
I saw a massive version of one of the red and white creatures that had attacked me in the desert. Its eyes were glazed, its hide tinted violet and mushrooms had begun to spring from its back. The ground shook from its footfalls as it walked around in confusion, the infection had not fully assimilated it yet. Repeatedly it shook its massive head, as if hoping something would fall out.
I was forced to hide behind a fallen log as another creature of the same species thundered by, this time much closer to me. This one had been far more heavily spored. Its hide was completely bruised purple, its white eyes had no traces of pupils in them at all and its back had been completely encrusted with large mushrooms.
The absence of mushroom pikmin was surprising. The forest was completely devoid of them, blanketing the area not only with spores but also with an empty void of silence.
If the puffstool had wanted to attack me. To capture me. It could've done so easily by now.
But there was nothing.
The truth was the puffstool was curious. It was maliciously wondering why I was so easily turning myself over to its grasp. Allowing myself to be assimilated and to help expand its vast infection.
Hopeless
Alone
Futile
The puffstool's voice dripped with hunger. The thought of turning the whole forest into a fungi drenched, violet hazed world fueled its anticipation.
Ahead of me was a soft bubbling noise. As I approached I saw the source was a thin stream that curved its way around the trees. It gradually grew bigger as it collected snow and was deep enough for me to swim underneath the surface.
I gratefully immersed myself into the pure water, the coolness was a welcome relief. My arms and legs relaxed as I let the current take me deeper into the forest. My gills expanded in delight at the fresh contrast of this water to the intoxicating air.
Eventually I would have to surface.
I could feel the pressure in my head expanding exponentially now. The puffstool's voice wormed into my head, threading through my thoughts, corrupting my emotions.
And then I knew it.
I rose up from the stream and clambered onto the banks, shuddering as my gills dealt with the change of air. It was even worse here.
I looked ahead of me to see a large circular structure. It didn't belong to the forest due to its metallic design, but the structure itself was ancient. Over time though the forest had taken its rightful area back. Plants and vines crept over a surface corroded by rust. But even the plants themselves were being attacked by the puffstool's spores now. Now they were all an ugly violet and covered with fungi.
It was inside it.
It was waiting.
This was it.
As I walked towards the structure, towards the puffstool, I could sense the presence of many mushroom pikmin looking at me over the rim of the structure.
All of them silent.
Yet there was noise.
A buzzing of anticipation.
Not only in my head, but around me. Surrounding me. Enveloping me. Drowning me as it grew in climax.
Grew as I approached the only entrance the structure had; a single rusted archway. Grew as I stepped through it.
Where there had been a roof, there now only remained a few shards of transparent material. They stuck to edges of the roof, glistening against the ripples of light that ignited in the night sky far above.
The side of the structure curved around to form a complete circle and was broken into multiple tiers. On all of these tiers were vast numbers of mushroom pikmin. All of them completely still.
All eyes on me.
And right in the middle of this makeshift kingdom. This rusted arena. This final stadium to decide all things...was it...
The Puffstool.
If it could be called that anymore.
It had grown immensely in size. Swelled up into something far more terrifying. What had once been one simple mushroom now had mutated into something indescribable. From its primary cap several other stacks of fungi boiled out, churning and growing over each other into some immeasurably complex shape. From there sprouted out even more mushrooms and among these long, twisting chimneys that constantly sent out spores into the air. No traces of its initial yellow colour remained. Now it had taken on a demented reddish-violet tinge.
This is it
This is happening
Now
The Puffstool speaks. Its words reverberate with energy, building like a wave, as they are echoed again and again by the mushroom pikmin.
"There is no need to prolong any longer. Alleviate suffering, end your pain...submit and join usssssssssssssssssssssss..."
The pressure in my head explodes again and again with each syllable uttered. It's nearly impossibly to keep upright.
The overlapping echoes of the mushroom pikmin causes the words to chaotically jumble into each other. Soon the Puffstool's phrase is indistinguishable.
"Prolong...suffer...join...need"
I can't do this.
But I'll try. I try and speak but all that comes out is. "...lies..."
"There are no lies. There is no truth. There is only the inevitable..."
The connection between the Puffstool and myself grows immeasurably. I can feel the tendrils of its mind pushing into my head, reaching for the spore. I try to fight back, I try to push its hold away.
It's too powerful.
But its spores are different than mine.
It may be able to influence me, reach into my mind, but it can never fully control me.
And I will be too futile, too weak.
Unless...
Unless we're the same.
Two mushroom pikmin grab my weakened form, pulling me up roughly from the ground. I don't struggle as they drag me closer to the demented form of the puffstool. I don't attempt to hit them with my stem as I am thrown onto the ground again...
This has to happen.
There is no time to think about the possibility of being wrong...
The puffstool's massive body seizes up, contorting. A grotesque form of inhale.
I seize up myself. This is the moment. The leap of faith. Whatever happens...
I have to stay in control.
The puffstool exhales, spores erupt from its bloated hide, an all engulfing cloud of purple sweeps towards my frail body.
I have to fight it!
The cloud engulfs me, and my body begins to spasm uncontrollably. I watch through my hazed vision as every inch of my blue body, every inch that I have fought for rips away to reveal a demented purple. My stem droops at the extra weight as my flower wilts away into a mushroom.
But even as my blue form decays, my mind suddenly erupts with energy.
As my vision goes dark, something even more powerful blooms inside my head.
I can feel them
Every single mushroom pikmin that surrounds me. And every single infected creature and plant that lies in the forest beyond.
I am in the middle of a web, a web glistening with potential. Every single entity that has been infected, every last one, are now strung together like numerous threads inside my mind...
Ignited by the revamped spore inside my head.
The power is immense. I can immerse myself into it...
I can CONTROL
But the Puffstool...
The Puffstool is an event horizon. Every thing in this mental web is drawn to it. The sheer gravity of the Puffstool's power draws everything into it.
In this dimension, the Puffstool dominates
And I am nothing
And now it sends its full force onto me. Pulse after pulse of mental energy rips through my own head. With each one, there is a command that follows.
Obey
Submit
Crumble into dust
With each one, I convince myself to fight back.
I have the element of surprise. The Puffstool believes I'll succumb instantly. It expects full control. What it gets instead is flame of mental energy from my own mind.
The Puffstool recoils from the blow, and for once I dig into its mind. Tunnel through that monster's thoughts corroded with corruption and greed...
I escape my body. Just my mind, just for a moment, and fly into the Mushroom's...
Before the Puffstool's mind blasts me out again, and suddenly there is no sense of self...
No sense of I...
I just am...
Fighting something else in this new disturbing dimension.
Fighting for power, control...
It is impossible to say how long I was in this state. Time doesn't exist here...
It may have been seconds
Or an infinite number of days
Simply forever
The brief advantage I had over the Puffstool is gone, and now we constantly blast at each other.
Again and again.
But it's far from an equal fight.
With each blast, I lose more sense of self. With each blast, a fragment of my mind rips away. With each blast, I fall deeper into something beyond the realm of sanity.
With each blast, I realize that the Puffstool is winning...
And I am shattering into nothingness.
Into just another mindless drone
And that I just don't have it
As I desperately try to rip through the Puffstool's defenses with all I have, the Puffstool is gathering its own energy, brewing it together like a massive storm. It is immeasurably powerful.
And when it releases it, the power crushes me like a surge of fire, and slams me back into my own conscience. I am back into my own body now. Everything feels fuzzy, slow and incredibly heavy.
I try to fight back, but the Puffstool's willpower now smothers me under layers and layers of force. I'm drowning in my own subconscious.
Obey
I try to resist...
Submit
I try to breathe...
Inevitable
I...
The Puffstool...is right...
I've been...wrong...
I
...
Need
...
To
...
Submit
...
And find solace
...
And join..
...
...the cause
...
Lies
...
No more lies, no more truth, just the inevitable
...
...
I was a fool
...
...
...
...
...
No...
...
Remember...
...
The White pikmin...
...
Your friends
...
Are dead
...
NO
...
I can't
...
I won't
...
I need
I must
I have
To win
To kill
Kill it
...
KILL IT
...
KILL IT!
With more force than I thought possible, I destroy the Puffstool's willpower over me. I snap the tendrils of its own twisted mind and send it back into its own deformed body.
Rising from the depths to surface into my own free conscience, into my own body, I return to the physical surface for a moment...
I am alive.
I am free.
Still in the arena, my new mushroom pikmin body rugged with fatigue. And the Puffstool remains...
And I will win.
I give the Puffstool a look of disgust and then I am plunged back below the depths as the Mushroom locks its mind with mine yet again.
And again, I am simply not a pikmin anymore. I am a force. Fighting for power, domination, control.
This time though, I divert my attention away from the Puffstool. Instead I drive my focus along the other various strands of the web, into the mushroom pikmin watching from the side.
The sheer quantity of minds in one space is overwhelming. Unlike the Puffstool's conscience, they don't resist. They are empty voids, waiting to be filled.
Where there used to be self-consciousness in these pikmin there are now simply just spores.
A nothingness...
But...
But this sense of self. It wasn't destroyed. It was just pushed back deep enough. If I can access it...
With a surge of alarm the Puffstool takes notice of what I am doing. In a wave of relief for myself, it takes its pressure off of me and instead starts to spread its willpower into its vast network of pikmin...
Just as I unlock several of the pikmin's self consciousnesses.
I am suddenly flooded with several new pulses of information. This web is not composed of mushroom pikmin anymore, I can see past the purple cloud. Instead I see a full spectrum of pikmin spark up. Pikmin that used to be red, yellow, or blue like me!
With a rush of power, the Puffstool sweeps his infection throughout the web yet again. Its voice booms like thunder in this mental realm.
"You are nothing..."
"NO!" My voice shatters the gravity of the Puffstool's power again. The tendrils, the mental links that connect us all, shiver as if in anticipation.
"But together...join me..."
"Resist it!"
"Alone you are worthless...but together we can be..."
"You are NOT worthless! You are NOT drones! You are Pikmin!"
In the real world, there is a stir among the mushroom pikmin...
"Turn to me..."
"Turn to each other! Your friends! Your allies! Help me!"
"He is a traitor to our cause...he will only lead you to death."
"No!"
One of the mushroom pikmin who had succumbed to the Puffstool's will comes charging towards me. With a swift uppercut from my mushroom, I send it flying backwards. I see it flinch in pain.
It can feel..
"NO!"
What was once merely a stir, now becomes a whisper among the ranks. A whisper of mutiny. My connection with the Puffstool picks up an alien presence starting to emanate from the Mushroom.
It is the presence of fear...
Instead of letting the pikmin's memories flood into me I change the current and let my memories flow into them. All my experiences. All the horrors I have witnessed. With each experience there comes a single emotion.
Just one.
Hate.
My hatred for the Puffstool seethes through my body. And now I let it openly channel into the other pikmin. I can feel the Mushroom desperately try to sever the web from me, stop this new rage from arising.
It's futile.
Emotion is simply one more promise that the Puffstool cannot give. Emotion is something far more multi-faceted than what the Puffstool can conjure up.
Against emotion, the Puffstool is powerless.
A shade of grey against a spectrum of colour. Something beyond description, something beautiful.
And I continue to inject hatred into the minds of the pikmin.
Their pupil-less eyes snap from my body, to the disgusting, bloated mass that is the Puffstool.
"Do not turn turn down immortality..."
The Puffstool tries to speak, but its words are futile ripples in the churning sea of anger that is rising.
The Puffstool tries to regain control over its army, but the pikmin are with me now. The Puffstool is merely full of empty promises.
And now it finally feels what I have been feeling almost my entire life.
Isolation
To be cut off from the world.
I've done it.
With his army turned against him, without anyone to do his bidding, the Puffstool is merely another creature to kill. And like any cornered beast, the Puffstool tries to attack.
With a massive dip of its head, the multiple tendrils of fungi that lay atop its capped top whip out towards me...
Just as I give the order.
Just as all the pikmin in the arena swarm the Puffstool, collapsing upon its deformed body like an avalanche. They cover its body like blisters.
I can hear the Puffstool screaming inside my head.
I ignore its futile cries and send out a single pulse to the other mushroom pikmin. In reply to the signal all the mushroom pikmin, in one brutal movement, slam their stems into the Puffstoool's hide.
Another pulse.
SLAM
Again
And again
With each beat, the Puffstool's screams are reduced to animalistic yelps. Short and staccato. A call and response to the pain. And with each beat, it starts to fade away.
Dying...
But not dead
Drunk with power I save the last blow for myself.
As I step onto the Puffstools deflated body, I can feel it shudder beneath me. A single halfhearted sob. I don't care though. I approach one of the ugly creature's crooked eyestalks. I can here one more screech of pain as I grasp my hands around the eye stem...
And pull.
And rip it clean from the Puffstool's body, leaving milky yellow fluid to froth from the wound. The stem itself spasms twice before going limp.
The spasm is echoed by the entire body. And then it too goes limp.
Whatever dim power it had left on the mental web suddenly winks out. And with it a great fatigue settles over me.
It's...it's dead
What was once a living, breathing monstrosity corrupting the forest is now simply a decaying pile of waste.
There is nothing left of its presence on the mental web, that is now an empty void. The power is all mine now.
I look at vast number of mushroom pikmin surrounding me. I am the new Puffstool to them. I am their leader now.
To be a leader. To control...
But
I can't. To become like that thing.
But the power...
No
The spore inside me won't win
I can see the true colours of each of the mushroom pikmin. They deserve better. They deserve a life blooming with emotion. With the freedom to choose, to thrive, to cooperate. To face the horrors of the world and to smite them down all together.
I can give them that.
I plunge into the web. The delicate string of mental connections. I focus on one single thread between myself and a mushroom pikmin. With my conscious, I put some pressure on this tiny connection. My head spams in pain, the spore inside me needs these threads.
I greatly exert far more pressure and the thread snaps. My head roars with agony. That is the price for giving a single pikmin free will. A sense of self.
I have to do this.
This time I gather multitudes of threads, with my conscious. Bunch them together in my mind.
Snip
And my head erupts again. The spore and I are almost a single entity now, everything we feel will be together.
I can't stop though.
Not now.
I work in a frenzy, snapping connections like limbs. For each one the spore in my head explodes like a bomb rock.
It's going to kill me...
My vision swims in a dark crimson. My mind feels shattered. Everything is distorted.
I have to help them.
I can't do it anymore.
...
Just once more. That's all I have. That's all I can take.
I gather the remaining connections I have with all of the mushroom pikmin. There is no more web, just a single thick thread that needs to be severed.
If I sever it I may die. The spore will wither away, and I might just go with it.
But save hundreds.
I look around at the mushroom pikmin. Stare into their blank, white eyes. I remember the joys of having a self.
And with this thought...I snap the connection.
With what vision I have left, I see all the mushroom pikmin around me perk up in self awareness. Something comes alive in all of them. Something beyond description. And even in this moment of unbearable pain, this thought that I have saved so many gives me solace.
Solace that is far greater than the pain.
And then everything goes black.