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96, 97, 98, 99… 100. Good. Olimar blows his whistle around the landing site one last time before dismissing pikmin back to their retrospective onions. He gestures to Louie to follow him into their own ship. As Louie hops on board, Olimar notices that he holds his hands together close to his chest. Something, as Olimar has learned, he does when he’s anxious.
“Are you okay, Lou?”
No answer. Louie’s gaze fixates on his hands, which he now interlaced and squeezed tightly.
“Louie?” Olimar gently places a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.
“Hm? Oh...” Louie shuffles slightly away from Olimar and points with one hand at himself, showing a thumbs-up with the other.
“Okay then, but if something ever is wrong, please don’t hesitate to tell me, hm?”
Louie nods.
“Goodnight, Lou.” Louie waves back to Olimar, even though he’s already turned around.
°•. ✿ .•°
Olimar heads to the ship’s hull to retrieve new specimens they have found today that he really looks forward to examine.
“Captain, you WILL NOT drag this disgusting biomass into the living compartment.” A heavily automated voice shrieks through the ship’s speaker system. “I want at least one part of me to not be covered in… whatever you manage to spill out of these creatures.”
“I promise Rusty, once we’re back on Hocotate, I’ll give you a thorough clean…” Olimar answers kind of absent-mindedly trying to filter out the ship’s protests.
He places an orange and a red dwarf bulborb under the light of the transportation machine, sending the creatures to his make-shift lab.
°•. ✿ .•°
Despite how exhausted the day has left him, Olimar can’t help but feel excited about the discoveries he has made when examining the creatures. He takes off his butchers gloves and hangs them across the desk. He squats down in front of the bottom drawer with the intent of retrieving his journal, when he notices two beady eyes staring at him from the darkness. Startled he blinks, and so does the creature. He reaches out to the being (something he probably shouldn’t have done without his gloves but oh well he was so very tired) and it gently climbs onto his hand.
“A pikmin?” he asks as the red little thing busies itself by fiddling with its stem. “Oh my, how did you manage to sneak onto the ship?” His eyes narrow as he looks towards the speakers. “Rusty, why didn’t you oww—” He wipes the coolant off his face. “Stars, I was just asking!”
“She… she's mine…” a croaky voice speaks from the darkness. It takes a few seconds for Olimar to recognise it as Louie’s. He kneels at some distance from the pikmin which, once noticing his presence, happily runs up his arm and settles onto his shoulder. “S-sorry I should’ve told you…” Louie’s voice becomes slightly clearer and more like his own. “…but I was worried you wouldn’t let her stay…”.
Is that why he was so anxious earlier..?
“I’m not… angry at you Louie, but this was a very irresponsible thing for you to do.” Louie’s ears pin down. “It’s just that we don’t know how being away from the Onion at night might affect the poor thing.” Olimar adds seeing how distressed Louie has gotten.
“She kept crawling into my backpack!” Louie suddenly exclaims a bit too loudly. ‘I-I kept putting her back on the ground but she just kept jumping back…” The pikmin slides down to Louie’s open palms and puts its little paw on his chest and looks up towards his face. “And it felt cruel to leave her behind because… well…”
Louie stands up and grabs the pikmin by its scruff. He aims at the red dwarf bulborb (which unlike its cousin, still had its body intact) and tosses the pikmin at it with significant force. The pikmin moves a few steps away from the creature, squirming its eyes, then tilts its head looking at Louie. He whistles using his free hand and points to the bulborb with the other. The pikmin jumps at the whistle sound, ready to follow his commands, but stops in front of the bulborb only to give Louie that same confused look. Louie then whistles again, and the pikmin comes back to his lap.
“She didn’t even attempt to bring the thing to the onion.” he explains. “Something’s wrong with her and other pikmin don’t want her in their onion…” He pets the creature’s stem, tracing the shape of its leaf with his finger. “…The blues didn’t even try to help her when she fell into a puddle… She also seems shaky around her kind and always follows the pack at a bit of a distance. But… somehow she seems to calm down when she’s with… me.”
Olimar couldn’t argue with that last part. The pikmin has already fallen asleep tucked on Louie’s lap.
“She also seems to… like me. There never was a single thing in the world that would… like me as I am.”
Olimar suppresses the urge to say that what Louie said cannot be true and instead offers a soft reassuring smile. He wonders for a while about what he should say to his subordinate.
“Sounds like the two of you need each other.” He knows that they can’t keep the pikmin forever, but he also knows that so does Louie.
“Yeah…”
“Did you name her?”
“Katydid. You know after the bush cricket thingy.” Olimar did not know. “Katy for short.”