Final chapter, guys! Let's go!

Thanks for all the reviews, everyone! For those who are wondering, I will write more Pikmin. It will probably take a little while, but it will happen!

Leaving the planet

The bulborb had apparently been sleeping in some kind of mud-cave, and the pikmin had woken it with their digging. Said pikmin were currently running in circles around the bulborb in panic. Luckily, this prevented it from eating them, as it could not focus on just one of them. However, that would not last long.

Olimar was quick to jump up on his feet, and a sharp whistle called the pikmin to his side. They quickly rushed toward Olimar and Alph. The bulborb was right behind them. Somehow, the red leaf was the first pikmin to reach Olimar. He quickly grabbed it and tossed it at the bulborb's eyes, just managing to stop it from eating a nearby yellow. The rest of the pikmin soon came to their place at his side. He nodded to Alph, before splitting up the pikmin and taking the reds, blues and half of the yellows with him.

Alph quickly caught on Olimar's plan and whistled the remaining pikmin to his side. The two split up, taking on the bulborb from both sides, so it would have more difficult focusing on just one target. Hopefully they would manage to take it out without losing any pikmin.

The bulborb was already very close to them, so Alph quickly moved to the side to avoid it, pikmin following his movements, not wanting to get eaten either. The red leaf that had been distracting the bulborb had lost its grip and fallen down, but it quickly made its way to Olimar's side before the bulborb got it.

Olimar was now right behind the bulborb, and started tossing the pikmin up on its back, where they started whacking it. As soon as it turned to Olimar, trying to both get to him, the pikmin, as well as shake of the pikmin currently on its back, Olimar threw his remaining pikmin at its eyes. Alph took his turn in tossing pikmin on the bulborb's back.

The bulborb roared in pain, trying to toss the pikmin of its back. Several of them fell down on the ground in front of it, and there was some frantic whistling to save all of them. Alph grabbed at the rocks and tossed them at the head of the bulborb, hoping to at least give it a headache, if nothing else.

The rocks hit the bulborb on the head, then plinked of, landing at its feet. There they started running in circles, and somehow, they ended up in the wet mud, where they had trouble moving. The bulborb had noticed this, too, and started moving toward them. Alph tried to warn Olimar, but he had already noticed what was going on and tossed some blue pikmin into the mud to help the rocks. Meanwhile Alph decided to try stalling the bulborb by having the wings go straight for its eyes.

Soon the blues had managed to help the rocks out of the mud, and all of them hurried over to Alph. He and Olimar then focused all their pikmin on the bulborb, which seemed to be quite weak already and, true enough, soon it lay dead on the ground.

"We got it," Olimar sighed and sat down on a small rock, staring at the bulborb corpse. Some of the pikmin were standing on top of it, doing some kind of victory-pose, apparently back in their more playful mode.

"Yeah," Alph agreed. "I wasn't really expecting that thing to be sleeping under there." He tried to peer into the tunnel the bulborb had come from. "I wonder if it has a nest or something under there?"

"Might be," Olimar agreed. "We could bring a few pikmin along to explore it," he suggested, hoping there might be something worthwhile in there, and also hoping there weren't any more bulborbs.

"Let's do it," Alph agreed. "We still have some time before we have to head back."

They decided to bring the reds and the blues along. The rest of the pikmin they left outside, hoping they would not get themselves in trouble. The mud cave was not very long, but it wasn't very large, even though the bulborb had fit through. It ended in a small cavern, inside a hollow in the corpse of the Mireclops. Inside, there wasn't a whole lot. No dwarf bulborbs or anything like that, thankfully. There was some nectar, maybe the bulborb had gathered it for some reason. At least they got the little red leaf to finally become a flower. There was also a large emerald gem. Olimar was very happy with this find.

"This could be worth quite a bit," he said as he examined it closer. "Maybe I'll now be able to get back my ship!" He sounded very excited at the thought. Alph figured anyone would be happy if they could get back their lost ship.

"Let's take it with us, then," he suggested. They should have enough pikmin to get everything back. "We should get going back soon, so the others won't have to worry."

"Yes, let's go," Olimar agreed. He set the blues to carry the gem out, and the reds followed them in a neat line.

When they exited the small cavern, they noticed the other pikmin had stayed nice and out of trouble (though they were all covered in mud.)

"Should we let the pikmin bring along the bulborb as well?" Alph wondered, looking over at the thing.

"Maybe we could," Olimar agreed. "Which pikmin type do you have the least of? Maybe we could let them have it?"

"I think we have least blues," Alph concluded after looking over the pikmin-numbers. "They were the last ones we found, so we didn't have a lot of time to sprout that many of them." He looked back at the pikmin numbers. "Brittany really likes the wings and sprouted a whole bunch, so we have the most of those. We also have quite a bit of the others as well."

"Blues it is, then," Olimar concluded, and whistled over the blues to carry the bulborb. They had the wings carry the fruit and then they and the remaining pikmin grabbed the parts from Olimar's crashed ship, and started the walk back to the Drake.

When they arrived, Brittany, Charlie and Louie were all there already, waiting for them to return. Brittany was looking somewhat impatient, having probably finished her job first and had nothing else to do but sit around and wait for everyone else. Charlie seemed to be trying to herd some rocks, who were apparently trying to go into the water, despite not being able to swim. Louie was just sitting on the ground, surrounded by the five reds he brought with him. He was in the possession of some plant and herbs. And he had taken down a dwarf bulborb, which he also had brought back to the ship, and was in the process of cutting up. Definitely planning dinner, then, Olimar thought.

"Hey," Alph greeted his shipmates when they had gotten close enough.

"You guys sure took your time," Brittany told him, still somewhat irritated, but slightly less than earlier. "We were just wondering if we'd have to come get you."

"I apologize," Olimar said. "Something came up and we also ran into this bulborb, as you can see." He gestured to the bulborb being carried by the blues.

"Well, we seem to be ready to leave now," Charlie said. "And just in time, it's starting to get late." It was indeed getting dark, as the sun was setting below the horizon.

"And say goodbye to the pikmin..." Brittany added sadly. She wondered if they would ever see the little guys again.

"But we must get back home to Koppai, to save everyone!" Charlie declared. "Everyone's relying on us!"

"Right," Alph agreed with Charlie, before turning to Brittany. "I'm sure we can come back here to visit sometime." It would be interesting to see how the pikmin managed without them, all on their own.

While the Koppaiates were discussing amongst themselves, Olimar went over to check on Louie.

"You alright?" he asked quietly. Louie glanced at him, nodded once, and went back to cutting up the meat. "Did you get everything you wanted?" This time, Louie took a few moments to think, before nodding again. "Finish up quickly, I think we're just about ready to leave." Another nod, and after just a few seconds, Louie pushed aside the majority of the dead dwarf bulborb and picked up the few pieces of meat he cut out, and the plants and herbs. He was now ready to leave. Good. Olimar nodded at him before turning his attention to the bunch of pikmin behind him.

There were mainly reds, with a few yellows and blues. One of the reds had six petals on the flower on its head, rather than the usual five, and Olimar immediately recognized it as the injured leaf from before. He bent down and patted it on the head. It squeaked happily and grabbed his hand with its tiny arms. He gently shook it off, putting it down on the ground.

"It's time to say goodbye," he told them. Though they didn't really understand what he was saying, he had picked up the habit of talking to the pikmin back when he crashed on the planet. Most of the pikmin backed off a little, except for the one, which walked up closer to him and held up its arms, as if wanting to be picked up. He patted it on the head again, but then steered it away from him, toward the other pikmin.

"Sorry," he told it, when it looked back at him with sad eyes. "I can't take you with me. You have to stay here, and take care of the other pikmin." It blinked at him, but eventually nodded and backed off to join the other pikmin.

"Are we ready to leave now?" Charlie asked everyone after a few moments. It seemed like everyone had said goodbye to the pikmin and taken one last look at the planet.

"Let's go! Back to Koppai!" Brittany declared, already on her way to the ship. Everyone else followed her example.

When they got aboard the ship, they first flew it up into the atmosphere, before putting in the Cosmic Drive Key and starting their journey back home.

"We're now 19 hours from Hocotate," Alph informed Olimar after the cosmic drive was engaged. "We're dropping you of there, before going on to Koppai."

"Thank you," Olimar replied, taking of his helmet and space-suit. Louie had already done that, and then relocated to the kitchen, which he had claimed for himself for tonight. Alph looked at Olimar thoughtfully, before asking.

"Could you now tell about those other pikmin-types you discovered?" He was very curious about these pikmin he didn't know about. How many types of pikmin were there on this planet? More than any of them had discovered?

"Yes, I suppose I could," Olimar said, sitting down at the table to think a bit. Alph sat down opposite of him, waiting for the Hocotatian to talk. Charlie was also siting nearby, as curious about these pikmin as anyone else, but currently doing his duty as captain and was filling some reports about the planet and their adventures.

Brittany was also standing nearby. She was also very curious about these other pikmin-types. Was any of them as cute as the wings? Could they survive different elements than the reds, yellows and blues? She very much wanted to listen to what Olimar told about the pikmin, but she also wanted to keep an eye on Louie. The Hocotatian claimed to be a great chef, but she still didn't completely trust him. Not when he was also handling the fruit they found earlier that day.

"Well," Olimar started. "There were the white pikmin, the purple pikmin as well as the parasitic bulbmin." He drank some water, considering how he should describe each of the pikmin types. "The whites were smaller than other pikmin and had red eyes, and they were much faster. They were also more short-tempered." He chuckled at some memory of the pikmin, before continuing. "They were immune to poison, as well as being poisonous themselves. And they were able to see objects that were buried underground."

"They had x-ray vision?" Alph asked in wonder. That sounded amazing. He tried to visualize some small white pikmin with red eyes, that could see through things and threw temper tantrums every now and then. The image was somewhat amusing.

"Yes," Olimar confirmed. "It came in handy on several occasions." He leaned back in his chair to get more comfortable, almost falling over in the process, before he continued. "The purple pikmin were quite the opposite of the whites. They were larger and heavier than other pikmin, and also slower. However, they were also very strong, more powerful than the reds."

"Stronger than the reds?!" They must have been very strong, since the reds were already quite a bit stronger than the other pikmin. Alph could hardly imagine it.

"Yes, but they were also much slower than any other type of pikmin, so we had to constantly make sure they weren't left behind. They seemed to be rather laid back, and had a much milder temper than the whites."

"I wonder why we never came across these pikmin," Alph wondered out loud. He, at least, would have loved to meet these pikmin Olimar was describing.

"We could only get them via Candy Pop Buds, that we only found in a few select caves underground," Olimar explained. "They had no onion of their own."

"Oh," Alph understood. There hadn't been underground caves in the places they had explored. But... there was still one thing left. "What about that last type of pikmin?" Parasitic...? Was that what Olimar had called them?

"Yes, the bulbmin," Olimar remembered. "They were a parasitic type of pikmin that took over the bodies of other creatures, usually bulborbs. The young ones would follow us as any pikmin would. They were immune to all elements, but they were only found in underground caves and seemed unable to leave them. Perhaps they can't survive above ground for some reason."

"Wow," Alph thought the bulbmin sounded really cool, but also kind of scary. Just the thought of a parasite taking over another's body, making them do whatever it wanted. The thought made him shudder.

Brittany had been listening to the entire conversation and had to admit these pikmin types Captain Olimar and Louie had encountered sounded pretty amazing. The white pikmin sounded like they could be really cute. Not as cute as the wings, of course, but still. But she was very glad they never came across the parasite pikmin. They sounded creepy. Now the pikmin talk seemed to be over and the two were currently discussing some engineering mumbo-jumbo, she decided to stop listening to them. She decided to take the time to refine her fruit files. They needed some more information and detailed report, anyway.

"Looks like dinner is ready," she suddenly heard Olimar say, making her look up from her KopPad. Indeed, Louie was standing there with a pot full of food. There were a couple of other plates of food on the counter. They were all carried to the table, as was some plates and eating utensils. They all seated around the small table, Louie at Olimar's side, Alph at the end of the table and on Olimar's other side. Charlie was opposite of Olimar and next to Alph, while Brittany was on Charlie's other side, opposite of Louie.

"Let's eat!" Everyone grabbed some food to their plates, the Koppaiates more carefully, not knowing if Louie really was a good chef or not. The meal seemed to consist of marinated steak, with a sauce and some fruit and local plants and herbs making up sides, a purée and salad. Olimar and Louie were happily eating it, but the Koppaiates hesitated a bit. Brittany was the first to try it.

"How is it?" Alph asked. He wanted the food to taste good, but he didn't know if the Hocotatians' had a very different taste for food, and something good to them might not be good to Koppaiates. Brittany took a few minutes to properly taste the food, before deciding how she liked it.

"It's..." both Alph and Charlie were looking at her, wanting to hear her judgment. "Actually pretty good," she eventually admitted, eyes widening in surprise. The meat was tender and well-seasoned, it practically melted in her mouth. The fruit was equally well cooked, with just the right amount of juiciness and taste. Even though she didn't really like Louie, she had to admit he had great taste in food.

Alph and Charlie now had the courage to dig into their own dinner, discovering Brittany had made quite the understatement saying it was pretty good. It was amazingly good. "This really is good," Charlie said, helping himself to a bit more sauce.

Louie tried to not look too proud at the praise, but the look Olimar gave him said he wasn't very successful.

Most of the dinner went pretty well. Brittany and Louie seemed to be having some kind of unspoken competition over who could eat more food. They were both glaring at each other while shoving food into their mouths. There was something Brittany was wondering about...

"Hey, Captain Olimar?" she asked him carefully, trying to figure out how to phrase her question.

"Yes?" Olimar looked at her with polite curiosity.

"I thought Hocotatians are vegetarians...?" she held up a piece of stake in her fork, the unasked question being "so why are you eating meat?" Alph and Charlie looked at them with curiosity, wondering the same thing.

"Well," Olimar laughed a bit, smoothing down his hair, taking a few moments to answer. "We are, mostly." At the Koppaiates questioning expressions, he elaborated. "When you're stuck on an alien planet, you can't really be fussy with what you eat."

"But why do you still eat it now that there are other options?" Alph asked carefully, not wanting to offend anyone. It didn't seem like he did, since Olimar just smiled and shrugged.

"Louie is a great chef, so it's difficult to not eat whatever he makes, regardless of what it contains." This time Louie actually blushed, and even turning his head away couldn't hide the tips of his pointy ears, also flushed.

"Oh, okay." Brittany seemed to accept this answer and carried on eating. She went to grab the last piece of fruit (a Sunseed berry). Only Louie was reaching for it as well.

And the two were trying to stare the other to give in and give up the fruit. The three others sighed in unison, expecting this to go on for some time. Both Brittany and Louie were very serious when it came to food, especially good food, and neither one would be giving up any time soon. After just a few minutes of the staring contest, Olimar decided to intervene.

"Louie, behave," he told the blond Hocotatian, tugging at his sleeve. Louie looked from the fruit to Olimar, back to the fruit, to Brittany, then back to Olimar, before looking down, letting Brittany have the fruit. Olimar in turn pushed his Sunseed berry from his plate to Louie's, making the blond perk up a bit.

Soon after that near disaster, dinner was soon finished. The plates were put away, and everyone could relax with their own tasks. Alph and Olimar had resumed their conversation about ships and engines, Louie was writing down something that presumably had to do with food, Brittany was working on her fruit-reports and Charlie was continuing with the documenting of their journey to PNF-404.

After some time, Olimar started doing some notes on what he remembered about the rock and winged pikmin. Every now and then he asked Alph for his opinion on things he didn't know. Together, they put together a fairly decent summary of the two types of pikmin. The notes included things like:

"The winged pikmin seem to possibly be of some relation to the white pikmin. Both have special compound eyes, allowing them to see in several directions at the same time. Since the wings are somewhat lacking in attack strength, they seem more suited to transport things. Their unique ability to fly allows them to go above most enemies, avoiding combat altogether."

"The rock pikmin possess durable, hard bodies. They are unable of being crushed, making them ideal for fighting against things like wollywogs, who can only kill pikmin by crushing them. Their hard bodies make them able to easily break through things like glass and even crystal. They also do quite a bit of damage to enemies when thrown on top of them. In addition to their rock-like bodies, they also seem to possess strangely rock-like brains."

A few hours later, everyone was getting tired, Louie dozing on Olimar's left shoulder, and Alph on his right shoulder, making him sigh lightly, before suggesting they all headed to bed now. (Charlie had tried to move in next to Brittany to get her to snooze against his shoulder. He did not succeed, and she almost fell on her face instead.) The Drake's auto-pilot would take them safely to Hocotate, and wake them up shortly before arrival. After that, the Koppaiates would journey back to their home planet, their mission a success.

A/N: That fight-scene wasn't much of anything, but then again, fight-scenes aren't really my thing.

I also wanted to give Olimar some treasure, so he could maybe get back his precious ship. Hopefully that works out for him.

I don't know how far Koppai is from Hocotate, or how long it takes to travel from there to PNF-404, or how long it takes to get from the planet to Hocotate. So, I just made up something.

I also let Louie make dinner. I don't know if everyone would actually eat meat, but now they do. I'm also no food expert, so I don't really know what Louie made, or if it even would be good, or edible.