Chapter 4: Observe

The Leader seems anxious.

Maybe it's because it's getting harder to find food for his Colony. It's been a few days in a row now that the day ended with only feeding our Colonies and not his.

Which is weird, because his Colony is looking healthier than ever. All her shapes are smooth, the sparks are completely gone, she only smokes when she flies, even the noise she makes is quieter. She should be hungrier. At least, that's my guess, given how different she is.

The Leader has been acting a bit different too. He's started to talk in his own language at us sometimes. Or maybe he always has been, but only now is he not whispering. He knows we don't understand, he still gives us the same few orders, but he does it anyway.

Something doesn't feel right.

Our numbers are very high. High enough that I have trouble counting all of us in our Colony. High enough that sometimes I can't get out of the Colony when the Leader calls us before she closes the exits - I get a head start as the First, since the followers are lazy while inside, but even then it can be hard. Colonies that get this large can afford to take risks, to lose dozens of followers if it means potentially equally massive rewards.

But it feels like the Leader is taking fewer risks. We were getting faster at fighting predators, but now we're getting slower again because the Leader is trying to make sure that fewer followers die. Yet when some do die, he suddenly attacks all the harder, and the fight is over quickly. It's weird.

It seems to depend on the predator, as well. Hoppers make him a lot angrier than spotties and burrowers, while spitters he's pretty calm with. Except for the rock spitter, though we've only seen one of them. I remember him panicking against beakies and stompers, but we haven't seem any of them in a while either.

Then there was that...weird water thing this morning. Was it even a predator? It didn't seem to be trying to eat us, but the Leader did have to rescue some of us from inside it. Maybe it's more like a scavenger. We've only seen one scavenger, but the Colony says it was the tastiest of anything.

And now we have whatever this is that the Leader's being anxious about.

It's just sitting there, so it can't be a predator, or it would've attacked already. Maybe that's why the Leader is anxious, because it's just not doing anything at all. Even the water thing did something, it moved around slowly.

Where did it even come from? It wasn't here this morning when we fought the water thing. I guess it came in while we were taking the spoils back to the Colonies.

There's a sprout next to it that also wasn't here this morning. That's another mystery. Sometimes we find sprouts away from the Colonies, but only in places where there was a lot of losses before, and they never appear in the middle of the day. How could it have gotten here?

The Leader is approaching the thing and sprout slowly. Carefully. The thing isn't moving at all. Seems safe enough.

AAAHHH

ATTACK ATTACK AVOID ATTACK

(((FOLLOW)))

FOLLOW AVOID AVOID AVOID

THROWN

ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK

Oof.

That was scary. I don't think anyone died but it was complete chaos.

The Leader plucked the sprout, and I guess the thing didn't like that, because it started to swing its big arms around to hit us. Some of us got knocked down and lost our flowers. Others got hit into the ground and are now sprouts themselves. I don't know if the Leader got hit but he doesn't seem happy. The thing is dead.

I guess it's a planter. But it's not at all like the other planters, the flying ones that pick up two of us and throw us down into the ground. This one can't fly, but plants a lot more at once, and only if we upset it first.

I'll call it a sitting planter, and the others flying planters.

Everyone that got planted has flowers. Did they before? I'm not sure they did. That seems weird.

...

If I let myself get planted, would I grow into a proper Leader?

I've thought about this a few times before, when seeing the flying planters. But they seemed to deflower the followers they planted, so it felt like a bad idea. The sitting planter seems to flower them, to help them grow instead. So maybe it could help me. Or, well, another one that isn't dead.

I'd be able to be a proper Leader. I wouldn't be this strange thing that's a Leader and a First and a follower all at the same time yet also none of them.

But is that what I actually want?

I saw the Blue First during the fight. He wants to be a real Leader the most of us. I could ask him later. Does he feel the same way about wanting to be planted? Even if it might not work? Is he also uncertain whether he actually wants it?

The Yellow First isn't here, but I know him well. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want to be planted and become a real Leader. He's happy with things as they are.

(((HERE)))

The Leader wants us to carry the sitting planter. I act a bit slow so I miss my chance and can stay. I want to see if the followers that got planted are any different.

The sitting planter is carried away. The Leader is starting to pluck the sprouts.

They don't seem any different. I don't know what I expected. They were only planted for a short time. Not much longer than any new follower.

If I wanted to do this, I would have to escape the Leader.

I can't do that. I'm not abandoning he Leader. I don't know how to find another sitting planter, or if the idea would even work. And I'd be separated from the Colony. It wouldn't work at all.

We're probably not coming back here anyway. There's a lot of food for the Colonies, but we just got the last piece of food for the Leader's Colony. I know this because of what the Leader says. I don't understand him, but I am starting to find patterns. There's something he said here, when we got the food here for his Colony, that I remember him saying before. And after he said it those times, we found no more food for his Colony that day, and we haven't gone back to that place again.

Does that mean the Leader already knows were the food for his Colony is, without having to look for it? Sometimes it does feel like he knows where he's going without seeing it. But other times it feels like he's as new to a place as we are.

Everything about the Leader and his Colony is weird. Only a bit of me is weird. Does that make me closer to the Leader, or closer to the others?

The Leader's taking us back to the Colonies. It looks like the sitting planter went to my Colony. I wonder.

I place a hand on the Colony's leg. I don't need to begin the confluence, I just need a basic feeling.

The Colony did not like the sitting planter. Food is food, but it did not taste good. Interesting.

I wonder if there's a reason that sitting planters taste bad but scavengers taste good. But that's just another, "why are things the way they are". There's a lot of those. Why fire doesn't hurt us if we're red. Why only the blues can breathe water. Why some spotties are different colours. Why followers are almost completely unable to sense danger. Why changing flowers exist.

There's a lot of these.

What is the Leader doing now? He's holding a very large blob of nectar. He's putting it on the ground. He's cutting it into four parts.

He's...I can't tell what he's doing now.

What? The nectar turned blue!

Well, one of them did. One's blue, one's red, one's...a darker yellow, and one's not changed. What did he do?

The nectar looks weird when it's not its normal colour. Does it taste the same? I'm not sure if I want to know. The Leader tries very hard to protect us, but he still sometimes makes mistakes.

There's the Blue First. He looks a lot more interested than I am. I still have my flower, but he lost his during the fight, so that makes sense. He's going to do something rash, isn't he?

(((HERE)))

The Blue First almost jumps at the weird nectar. All the other followers without flowers follow.

I hope the Leader knows what he's doing. He doesn't know there's a First in the crowd of followers. He probably doesn't even know the First is more important. He-

What?!

I'm very confused.

Somehow, everyone that drank the blue nectar now has a blue flower. Everyone that drank the red nectar has a red flower. And everyone that drank the darker yellow nectar has a yellow flower. The normal nectar gave its drinkers normal white flowers.

That...is very weird.

The Leader seems excited. Was this his plan? Did he know this was going to happen? Or was he trying something without knowing the result?

I don't think the followers noticed at all. They're not acting any differently.

The Blue First looks...curious. He's poking his flower like he can't quite believe it. We agree on that.

The Leader is full of surprises.

I shall call it a Mamuta. My daughter would be thrilled, to see its namesake raised off her canvas and tending to the gardens. I wish I didn't kill it, but weeks of Wollywogs have taught me that allowing a Pikmin to be flattened is a death sentence. I had no reason to suspect that somehow this creature was a gentle giant.

Do the Pikmin enjoy being planted like this? They certainly do not enjoy Swooping Snitchbugs, though perhaps that is due to the method rather than the planting itself. The fact that the Mamuta added flowers to its "victims" suggests they perhaps should, but their general awareness of their own maturity level seems low. They certainly don't appear to be troubled when they lose their flowers.

Speaking of flowers, it appears that introducing food colouring into nectar has the effect of tinting a Pikmin's flower that same colour. Perhaps other parts of the world have nectars of different colours, and this is a related ability, in order to camouflage better with the local plants? Or perhaps it's simply a vestigial trait, given the Pikmin don't seem to even notice the difference.

I don't know why I tried it, to be honest. I suppose I'm going a bit stir-crazy at this point. But my goal is in sight, and that keeps me going.