Hello people! This is Diabowserker, and no, I'm not dead. I've been preparing to overhaul this story along with my first one. However, my old computer crashed and I still haven't transferred my fanfic files over to my new computer. In other words, everything I've written now no longer exists on Microsoft Word, so I've pretty much had to start from scratch. I'll let you all know when I've finished my overhaul. And, to clarify, every Pikmin story I write will have the same colors with the same attributes and appearances. I'm just too lazy to reintroduce each color. Now, enough author's notes and let the story continue.
White pikmin Toxin stood in the wooden guard tower near the gate of the fortress-city Frelgato. A casual glance at the young recruit would present the image of alertness. He stared ahead at the surrounding forest. He carried a longbow in his hand and wore a quiver of arrows over his back. A war hammer hung at his side and a pike leaned against a wall, within easy reach of Toxin's hand. The metal in all these weapons was a composite called bromine, which, he had learned at the academy, was made from Chrysanthemum sap mixed with some type of rock, which was then melted and refined to make the dull green metal. The academy, Toxin thought, Would even be more exciting than guard duty. For, contrary to appearances, he was not alert in the slightest, but actually bored out of his mind. Why did he have to get stuck with the boring jobs? Why couldn't he be on a hunting party, like his friend Streak? Or at least be patrolling the walls with Flannery. She usually found ways to turn the repetitive task of walking circles around the city enjoyable. Once, Toxin remembered, they had put ultra-bitter juice into the head guard's glass of nectar. He chuckled at the memory of the pompous fool's skin becoming completely inflexible. It had matched the man's personality. Of course, once he'd regained the power of movement, an hour long rant had ensued, culminating in his and Flannery's weeklong assignment to the janitorial squad. That, had not been cool. Which brings me back to where I am now, Toxin thought with a sigh. Who did they honestly expect to attack Frelgato? The criminal alliance of the Darkling Tide had been crushed years ago at the temple-city of Ooranghu. The various Clawmin tribes were bottled up behind Torin Pass, some 500 miles away. The Sporemin and the Puffstools that led them were content to fight each other over the barren mesas a few miles to the east. Still, Toxin had to concede, was not the worst duty you could be assigned. His friend Delve was on, "detached duty", which was basically a fancy way of saying he got to run errands for all the officers. Toxin had done this enough to know that it meant six hours of doing menial and degrading tasks. As if brought on by his thoughts, the bells that signaled the changing shifts rang out. Toxin smiled. Every shift was 6 hours, and all of his friends had this shift free. Pikmin didn't need sleep unless they had some kind of injury, so the free shift was very rarely used for its intended purpose. Toxin gathered up his weapons, waited for his replacement to show up, then climbed down, out of the tower, and on to the wall. He and his friends were only in their first year of service, which meant they hadn't been permanently assigned to a unit. That was good, since odds were none of them would be in the same unit. After you finished your first year, you were put in whichever group suited your skills the most, and Toxin and his friends had very different skills. Either way, he wasn't going to waste any time. He was going to get to the recruit barracks, meet up with his friends, and then get right down to business. I wonder what we'll do today, he thought as he approached the ladder off the wall.
Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'd say this chapter kicked the previous one's butt. Reviews make an author's world go 'round, just so you know.