User:Scruffy/Louie

WARNING: this page contains major spoilers about the events of Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3.

This page is for a story I am writing all about the story, mentality, and thoughts of Louie, as told by Louie when he is left behind at the end of Pikmin 3. Louie always seemed the most interesting character to me, and left on PNF-404 twice he must be dealing with some complicated thoughts.

The story is separated into "chapters" and "records." Chapters are him recounting his life and his missions to PNF-404, all the way from before he was born. Records are logs of his current life on PNF-404, and they subtly connect in special ways to the overall story. Louie certainly has more than one Dark Secret to reveal...

I hope you enjoy it! I will update it as I finish more chapters.

Record 0: Prologue

Hi. My name’s Louie. I’m stranded on an alien planet with no means of communication. Again.

I’m beginning to think I don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Or at least, not to people. And that’d be fine with me; people don’t really matter either. But they do make the rules. And somehow their rules have ended me up here, setting up camp under a sky of completely foreign stars. Again.

Am I complaining? Yes and no. Yes because, well, I need something to do. I need a story to tell, even though no one will ever see it. I need to show that I was forgotten, that this isn’t my destiny. Or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that all this wasn’t my fault. Anyway, I’m also not complaining: this place is the life. I can explore here without limits, the sights, the smells, the flavors. It’s worlds better than Hocotate.

Hocotate. I’m sorry, but what a sad excuse for a home. Hocotate Freight, in particular. How good can an employer be if, apparently, they leave a fellow employee for dead on a largely uncharted planet, twice? And all for what, “treasure”? Most Hocotatians have no idea what treasure is, it’s all thanks to Hocotate Freight.

When your planet is renowned for shipping to other planets, nobody visits. All the “tourism” is just bureaucratic space-mail. No one goes there for the culture—or at least, no one did while I lived there—and hardly anyone who comes for the flight school stays, that’s the point of learning to operate a spacecraft. I’m getting ahead of myself though. I need to start with the beginning of it all.

Chapter 1: Clover-Roach Salad Surprise

I have to admit I will miss one thing about Hocotate, and that’s clover-roach salad surprise. Babba served it most every Thursday for dinner, so at first I didn’t see why it was a surprise. It was only after weeks of having it I begin to realize the “surprise” comes from the slight acidic pinch of clover-roach legs. It’s only after a few seconds of aftertaste, and only truly activated by the dash of cardamom Babba would always add. I now maintain it as the best dish I have ever eaten, and the biggest reference point in my mental flavor tree.

In my youth, however, my unrefined taste buds merely glazed the surface of all my grandmother’s concoctions, looking for hints of superficial flavor that could rival sweet, sweet Pikpik carrots. My harsh youthful tongue often failed to realize that a healthier, maturer delicacy rested before me. And that, unlike most farmer-chefs on Hocotate, Babba knew exactly what she was doing.

Babba was a nun of ménage, household upkeep, family relations; and our quaint little house was her abbey. I don’t recall a time she wasn’t tending to some part of the house or writing a thank-you transmission to so-and-so or, reportedly her favorite chore, caring for me.

But before I was around, Babba had to deal with Papa.

She was raised in a hovel in Hocotate Swamp, and anyone who lives in Hocotate Swamp for any amount of time learns the value of local resources and the vitality of household care. The terrain doesn’t support a house very well, and the dense trees hinder space-mail signals, so you have to constantly find tools and cultivate your own crops to support your house and your family. Hocotate Swamp also teaches whoever dares to inhabit it that, no matter how naturally difficult the living conditions are, life can and will go on. She lived there most of her life, and I suppose she never minded it at all, even after she begot Papa. Every breakfast, lunch, and dinner Babba and Papa would head out in the mire and catch some clover-roaches or cherubulbs to roast. And they grew Pikpik carrots and Hocotate brand onions and parsnips whenever the soil dried enough that the roots could hold firm. Babba loved it, she really loved it, and she shuddered at the thought of travel when her needs were already fulfilled. On the other hand, Papa—in his stories he would later tell me about his childhood—recounted that the roof of his childhood was the canopies of Hocotate Swamp conifers. He always wanted to know what went on beyond that.

In these stories he would always second guess himself and proceed to tell me how things really were beyond the swamp, before Hocotate Freight was around. I’ll admit, we were worse off without the commerce. He told me a bushel of Pikpik carrots might have cost 100 Pokos back in his day. Everything on that backwater planet is money-related. Hocotatians are known throughout the galaxy as treasure hoarders, treasure hunters, and cheapskates. It’s despicable, I’d rather be a citizen of PNF-404 than be associated with the stuff.

It was money—or, a lack thereof—that prevented Papa from enrolling in spaceflight school. Well, money and Babba: she never got excited over spaceflight, she preferred to think about the ground she lived on first. She was so worldly, we all should have just listened to her. But Papa couldn’t keep his eyes off the stars, his love of the cosmos would always pull through his horror stories of the Hocotate depression and the daunting administrators at Pilot Union. It would lead him to the true turning point of his tales: meeting the future President of Hocotate Freight.

The future President was at the time a small financial firm manager who had friends in very high places at Pilot Union Spaceflight Academy (no pun intended). Apparently he was the youngest ever graduate, and after earning his degree and bedecking Hocotate’s flight school with honor and interplanetary appeal, he took a soul-searching tour of the solar system. If you ask me, searching for his soul is a wild goose chase. I mean, he was always efficient; I doubt anyone could have run a business as efficiently as he did. But he was corrupt, and cunning, and according to Papa he always had a certain disquieting charm about him, at least at the time. He was a cold man born for business, and no matter how chummy he thinks he gets we aren’t about to see eye to eye.

Anyway, Papa told me the future President came back from this trek a “changed man,” a “valiant leader.” He rose up above the doldrums of the depression and trumpeted that Hocotate needed a booming business to attract people from neighbor planets. Unfortunately, we can’t do really anything of note. I mean, we have art, and music, but like I said, it’s all by space-mail, and it was the same way back then. No one was going to pay hard Pokos to visit the local art galleries or concert halls when they could just look up whatever they wanted to see online. So the President slyly started a business where Hocotate wasn’t the locus; it was just a middleman station on a grand freighting schematic, no creative skills necessary. He used space-mail to his advantage, he used our spaceflight school graduates to his advantage, and he knew a thing or two about repairing old spaceships in the junkyard. According to Papa, he always seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

That view was certainly challenged when Papa walked into the office of the fledging Hocotate Freight one crisp winter morning and literally kneeled down and groveled for a spot in the Spaceflight Academy. As he knew nothing about spaceflight or freight, the President didn’t hear him out for long. But as security approached, Papa suddenly unveiled a covered dish and placed it squarely on his desk. Inside was the secret weapon: a plate of clover-roach salad surprise Babba had made the previous day, thinking Papa was taking it to the local orphanage.

Now in the President’s shoes, I ordinarily would have taken this culinary offering as either pranked or poisoned. But clover-roach salad surprise emits a astoundingly delicious aroma, and I doubt—no, I refuse to believe the President could resist, especially back in those days when crop failures were more common. I just always wonder how confident Papa really was in this plan.

But no matter to that, it worked. Papa got a space-mail the following day inviting him and Babba to Hocotate Freight to discuss a possible opening in the Spaceflight Academy that he could negotiate. One salad would usher in a resounding friendship between my family and Hocotate Freight’s elite, and with enough strings pulled Papa got into the academy under the “Hocotate Freight Memorial Scholarship;” he would remain the only man to ever receive the “award.”

That’s the power of my grandmother’s cooking. But it would only carry my Papa so far.

Record 1: First Rule

I nearly did something terrible today. I’m recording this so future explorers on this planet can heed my warning, and Olimar’s rule.

On our first mission, I first described to Olimar how I was a culinary expert, and he was overjoyed to hear it. But he brought me aside and sternly demanded that I never cook one thing on this planet, no matter how appetizing it… or, they may seem. As little as I knew Olimar, he was the captain, and he seemed to feel strongly about it, so I swore I would not.

Last time I was abandoned here I was dazed, angered, exhilarated, scared—I had less time and space to think about cooking. But this time, I was just despondent: Olimar was no longer around, for the second time, and I felt I know longer had to live as his subordinate. And I was hungry, so hungry. Food I had never tried was all right there.

The conflicting parts of my brain and stomach acquiesced, and I took one aside from the others. One of the plump purple ones. They’re half-plant, half-animal, right? The flavor would be entirely new, I could tell. The whole dish would have a blanket of herbiness already added, no need for spices. And the leaf would be a complimentary salad attached by a perfect transition from greens to meat, dressed with its own…

I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it.

I have cooked and eaten every type of animal and plant I have found on this planet, save for a few. My stomach is steel and my tongue precedes my eyes. But I can’t prepare them, I can’t bring them to their doom so directly. There’s just something about them, something personal, something innocent. I had never really connected with them until I attempted this today, but now I see why Olimar made the rule. As long as we are on this planet, we are leaders, and we must be virtuous ones. Otherwise I’d just be another beast, another hazard thinking only of its own survival. I don’t care if it honors Olimar, or maybe I do, but from now on this is my first rule, my most important one.

Sorry, just needed to get that off my chest. For those who come after me, please don’t harm those little guys. They are innocent, all they want to do is help you. Give them that chance.

Now back to the story.

Chapter 2: Coming soon!