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Thistle of Garrenoi Voyage Log

Summary:

Rescue Corps Incident Report

Investigation Status: Open, Ongoing

Charges Listed: Alleged Insubordination of Indentured Force (Pikmin), Breakage of Procedural Protocols in Daytime Harvest / Nighttime Harvest of Glow Sap, Deterioration of Authority in Harvest Area 65, Unlawful Alliance with Infected Subject (Leafling), Breakdown of Communications with Designated Superiors, Arson, and Untreated Psychosis of Employed Subject

Subject: Koppai x Hocotate Freight (KoCo Freight), Field Harvest and Security of Transport Unit 6321, Employee 9862i, Thistle of Koppai, Region of Residence Garrenoi

Notes:

Hello readers,

I tried to make this horror fic approachable for pikmin fans and non-pikmin fans alike. Original names of creatures / treasures will be used with brackets that contain brief descriptions for ease of reading. If you still want visual reference, please go to the Pikipedia website.

This fic is written in first person voyage logs describing a series of incidents under investigation.

For those unfamiliar with the pikmin universe, I'll keep it short and sweet. Humanoid, mini astronauts visit PNF-404 (Earth) for various reasons maybe for food (fruits, veggies, etc.), treasures (converted to fuel source), recreation / work, or even to rescue castaways (Rescue Corps). Carnivorous creatures dominate the planet and will try to eat pikmin or astronauts. Creatures become aggressive during the night time, and stranded astronauts may retreat underground into Caves, but they will lose consciousness if they do. Some astronauts face a worse fate if they run out of air--transforming into pikmin-like creatures called Leaflings with no memory of who they once were.

Pikmin are native creatures to PNF-404 that respond to whistle commands from an astronaut; they can fight or carry things. A plant structure called an Onion produces more pikmin when it absorbs dead creatures or pellets. An onion is capable of flight and will move with an astronaut's ship. Pikmin are the key to harvest and to survival.

Different color pikmin have different abilities. That's it.

Remember, don't stay out after sunset.

Chapter 1: Log 1…“Arrival on PNF-404”

Chapter Text

Four of us sat in the hull, unspeaking. There were windows, but I did not want to see outside so I stared straight ahead.

Our transport ship glided through space—I knew we were moving but it felt like nothing was happening—the moment we approached the exosphere of the planet, there came a shift. We passed through an electric field. It sent an inaudible hissing into my skull. For a moment, something like a flash, and I saw within my arms the bones white and glowing.

I closed my eyes. This was unreality.

Everything would be better after we landed, I thought. Just like they told us in training. Space travel is liminal.

The ship began its descent down down into the troposphere. In a moment, the pressure dropped as we landed on the planet’s surface. Three field workers shuffled past me, their single antennae glowing red, and exited through the hull door. One of them was a former coworker of mine at the juice plant. His name was Favinger. I did not know how he passed the physical tests to become a harvester. He was immunocompromised, prone to respiratory infections; anyone could find him in the factory by following the sound of his coughing.

Harvesters had the highest turnover rate on PNF-404. KoCo Freight would take whoever applied. But Favinger I feared would not last. He was avoiding the alternative—communal starvation. The emaciation of his family and friends. The dead-eyed facial expressions, the hollow cheek bones.

I exhaled slowly.

We flew awhile before we began our descent once more. I carefully examined my arms, but the visual hallucination of seeing my bones did not happen again. Now I wondered…had I seen it at all?

***

 

We landed.

At the threshold of the hull door, I shielded my eyes. It was sunset. Long streaks of orange slanted through the flower stems around me. Above was the only break in the floral canopy where our ship had descended; this was a forest without end.

The ground felt softer here than the ground on Koppai—was I imagining it? No wonder we could not grow enough food at home. Nothing but rock beneath our feet.

The pilot called out that he would be there in a moment; next he spoke indistinctly answering a radio transmission…something about the Chronos Reactor.

I checked the kopad on my wrist. Data had flooded into it from KoCo Freight satellites. Now I could see maps carefully labeled with structures, red creatures, and most interesting of all green dots that represented harvesters. I watched transfixed as they moved across the maps. There were dozens of them, but it was hard to believe it. It was hard to believe any of this.

Suddenly there was movement. I snapped to attention, listened to only my breath in my helmet. Tiny white flowers trembled through a patch of clover. Little red faces peered out; pointy noses twitched and sniffed.

“Oh! Pikmin,” I whispered.

They emerged out of the clover, slid down flower stems, appeared from behind rocks in a swarm to surround myself and the ship. I stared at their little red faces and—unbelievably—tears filled my eyes. They took turns getting a closer look at me, touching my suit.

Mmm, mmm! They kept making that noise. Excitement! Like they had “discovered” me. Mmm!

I felt…there was something holy in this encounter. These little creatures had picked, fought, and died for the food we Koppaites processed into juice. They were the sole reason our population did not drop by 1/3 over the winter. And yet when I looked into their little faces, I knew it meant nothing to them. They had no feelings about it.

Through the clover appeared a rigid man—he walked like he had a knife in his side—and he whistled so loudly that I jumped. Were the whistles really that loud? How terrible! I felt it in my ribs!

The pikmin cleared a path for the man. Coming up behind him was a woman riding a black pup. These were to be my new teammates.

The man was Klark, the woman was Zileke, and the pup was Yew.

Klark hollered a greeting and asked for my name. Was…was he joking? I couldn’t believe he didn’t know my name. I told him. Behind us, the pilot appeared and threw my two duffle bags out of the hull door letting them crash at my feet. The pilot clasped Zileke’s hand, chatted with her as she typed on her kopad.

“Keep up, Thistle. Can you do that?” Klark asked without waiting for my response.

He led me into the flower forest. I ran to keep up with him. My suit felt like a layer of loose adipose—a blubbery wet swimsuit, but it did not slow me down. It enhanced the movement of my legs, tempered the effects of foreign gravity, lapped at my sweat to recirculate into my water supply. All of this—unfamiliar and fragile—kept me alive. It felt so uncomfortable; I kept pulling at the hem line down my thigh as it suctioned itself to my skin. The red pikmin however embraced my appearance: the bobbing of my antenna, the artificial sound of my breath coming through the filtered speaker. They ran alongside us in a membrane, eagerly looking back at me. I tried to count how many there were—30?

We arrived at basecamp a few minutes later. Klark ordered the red pikmin into the onion. They scattered quickly. As they cleared out, I realized they had carried my duffle bags and then dropped them on the ground. One of the pikmin paused as it climbed the leg of the onion and looked down at me.

An AI voice announced from the ship’s megaphone, “Perimeter motion alarms now active.”

“There we are,” Klark said, tapping at his kopad. “The man who sleeps with a machete is a fool every night but one.”

How frightening to think about—a nocturnal attack from creatures. On Koppai, we did not worry. Wild creatures were rare to see.

“When it is nighttime, do we only worry about creatures?” I asked Klark.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Should we fear people out here as well?”

Klark observed me for a moment before answering. “Nothing but teammates out here. Familiar faces all with IDs attached. Anyone who comes banging on our door in the middle of the night is in need of serious help,” he said. “We’ve never had issue with castaways if that’s what you’re referring to. They’re not for us to worry about anyway. The Rescue Corps is responsible for them.”

I said nothing further.

Inside their ship—KoCo Freight 6321—we sat at a table with our helmets removed. I drank the bottle of juice Klark set down without asking any questions. I couldn’t believe how good it was—citrus and sour and pulpy. It filled my aching stomach. I lapped at the droplets on my lips.

God, it was so good.

“That was for Zileke, actually,” Klark said. My face burned with embarrassment. “You should not have drank that. Really. You are in for a long night.” He leaned back in his chair. The hull door opened, and Yew charged right at me, smooshed her face to the ground to smell my boots. Zileke came inside next.

When she removed her helmet, her long dark hair fell and rested on her shoulders. She paused when she saw the empty bottle, looked me in the eye, and then punched my arm.

“Ouch!” I barked.

My arm blared with pain—she’d punched me in the same spot I’d gotten 9 inoculations in over the past 30 days, and she knew it too.

“New recruits are not supposed to drink,” Zileke said. “Don’t say you didn’t know because I know they tell you that in onboarding.” She turned to Klark. “You sat there and let her drink that?”

“Well, she drank it very quickly,” Klark said.

“She’s going to projectile vomit everywhere.”

“Most likely. But she’ll have to clean up after herself.”

“I wouldn’t dare throw up this juice,” I said. How could they think I’d waste juice? I’d sooner lick my vomit off the floor then let it go to waste.

They ignored me.

“Listen, I was saving that juice. I fucking labeled it. It was the last of the pocked airhead [dekopon],” Zileke said. Klark handed her another bottle, said it was lesser mock bottom [plum]. She crinkled her nose at it. “I work all day just to come home and drink this muck.”

“Juice is juice.” Klark waved her away. “You’re tired. Go to bed, Zileke.”

I bit my tongue. I had never heard someone complain about food before. They even had a choice about what they wanted to eat! I stared at the empty bottle in front of me unable to comprehend.

Zileke patted her thigh. Yew chirped and followed her to the sleeping quarters. I rubbed my sore arm—she was a cunt for punching me. Klark smirked, reading my thoughts.

He then asked about my training.

“Training? Oh yes, lectures about the creatures and the environment on PNF-404,” I answered. “As soon as we signed on, they took us to medical to begin physical tests and inoculation. They wanted us ready in exactly 29 days to be prepped and launched here.”

“Ah-ha,” is all he said to that.

I reached down to my duffle bag and pulled out a gaming tablet. Klark nodded, already knew what it was; he said the Dandori games were merely a preamble for the mental re-conditioning necessary for new recruits. [“Dandori is the art of organizing your tasks strategically and working with maximum efficiency”]

 

“Of course, you’re not here to harvest,” Klark said. “You’re our new security officer, but the work is the same. You need to be ubiquitous—watching me, watching Zileke, checking the path ahead, checking the path behind, checking your map, commanding squads of pikmin to cover the landscape—blue in the water, pink in the air—whatever is needed. You must live and breathe with eyes in the back of your head.”

He crossed his arms and looked at me a moment. “You seem a little feral, you know that?”

What does that mean?

I frowned at him, said, “How many pikmin will I get tomorrow? For security. What kind?”

Fifteen rock pikmin. He would be exclusively training me while Zileke and Yew harvested. They had eight treasures to excavate the following morning. He emphasized morning—they needed to harvest 19 total treasures tomorrow.

My mouth was agape. I asked him, “Is that all?”

He was incredulous. “Is that a—is that all?! You have no idea what you’re saying. More than 19 treasures in one day?” He barked a laugh. “You were a packer. I can tell just by looking at your chipped fingernails. You’re used to sealing boxes, moving pallets to transport ships. Easy repetition.” He exhaled. “What do you think it’s like for us out here in field work? I do want you to answer me that.”

“All I know,” I said to him, “is that it’s hard to concentrate, to lie down, to read, to talk, to do anything when you haven’t eaten all day. Everything loses meaning. That is what we deal with every day on Koppai. Food is very important to me.”

I stood up, took my duffle bags with me as I headed to the sleeping quarters. The door slid shut behind me. I unpacked—hairbrush here, lotion there, clothes folded and slid into drawers—and then sat down on the bed with my packing gloves in my hands. They were gray with a few oil stains.

Food is very important to me.

Part of this new job was being permitted several juices a day. I could…how much would I be able to accomplish without the distraction of hunger? I wanted to see that version of myself.

 

***

Come the early hours of the morning, I laid in a fetal position on the floor of my room. Sweat beaded my forehead. My gut churned with violence. Nothing on this earth would permit me to waste that juice.

So bad was the gut pain that I felt it even in my dreams. I was bent over a conveyor belt, labeling boxes with recipient addresses. The machine kept alarming; some of the boxes had been sealed with empty bottles, and these I could not open. I kept putting them aside to fix later.

Sometime in the night, I crawled to the bathroom to drink water. Or had I crawled across the factory floor? It had been sticky, I had my packer gloves on…my arms flashed in transparency like they had on the ship; glowing white bones.

Outside my window, I saw a single red pikmin sat below the onion. It stared at our ship.